The restaurant thing brings to mind another aspect that non-parents probably could understand, but in my experience frequently don’t respect. That is the concept of “child time”, which is very important with small children, and a less so as the get older.
The baby naps at 10, 1, and 4. The toddler naps at 2. We have to start dinner at 5, in order to hit bedtime at 7:30. All of these are there to keep the kid on schedule, which reduces the chaos in the parents’ lives.
Where this relates to restaurants: For me it was often a judgement call as to the mood of the child as to whether a restaurant visit was a good idea. The kid must be hungry, not hangry. A cranky and unpleasant child will refuse to eat, which results in tantrums, etc.
So the non-parents of a small child say, “let’s go out to eat.” I respond, “great, we should go now, Kid is getting hungry.” See the Why are you always late? thread for an explanation of what happens over the next hour.
“We are finally ready to go!” which results in me saying, “I can’t go, the Kid has waited too long, she’ll be completely disruptive in the restaurant, and you may not care, but I’m the one who will be oscillating between trying to get her to eat something so she settles down, and taking her outside so she doesn’t ruin it for everybody else. I need to just stay at home, because at least the tantrums and meltdown will only disrupt my dinner.”
Next time non-parental types say, “we’re going to fart around for an hour, why don’t you feed the kid so she doesn’t get cranky.” To which I have to respond, “I can do that, but then she’ll be bored at the restaurant because she’s not hungry anymore, so she may not go into a hunger tantrum, but will be bothering everybody due to boredom.”
Anyway, from about 1.5 to 4 I was very resistant to eating out.