I know people probably don't want to hear about homeschoolers with all the preconceptions flying around--but we don't all homeschool to isolate and limit our kids, just saying! My experience sounds much like Sarah M's, being part of a homeschooling support group, starting way back in 1998. Yes, it was an effort getting to the park each week. Yes, it was awkward approaching the group when I was new. Yes, the quarterly planning meetings were a pain in the ass.
But I want to tell you, as a mother of grown children, what spending years in such a community offered me. What we were doing on a weekly basis was mostly simple--we were hanging out at the park while our kids played. (Many of the parents also worked outside the home, some full time, scheduling their work around these days. And yes, there was often a father in the circle. It wasn't just moms.) Our kids were getting lots of lightly supervised play with other kids, something kids are getting far too little of these days. We parents were mostly sitting in a circle, chatting. This meant I was getting support and learning how to be a parent outside of social norms, with people who shared many of my values, in conversation--and not from "experts" or online influencers (which weren't around in those early days!) I did care exchanges with other mothers who I met there, which gave me time to write during the day, which mattered a lot to me. Tons of other activities beyond these park days evolved over the years, most notably twice-a-year camping trips. Also, a pain in the ass to organize, but those trips are among my grown kids’ favorite childhood memories. They also gave the fathers in our group an opportunity to get to know each other and to build friendships--something men in our culture are also lacking.
Decades later, these families are still some of our closest friends. We show up at funerals for our parents and help each other through dark times--including the men in the group, some of whom have a weekly zoom call of support, others who go on backpacking trips with our grown kids. My three adult kids who all live in far-flung places still count the kids in this group as some of their closest friends. My oldest son lived in NYC (our family home is in CA) with his childhood bestie from this group. I just hung out with one of my own friends from this group last night, sharing why things have been tough lately and having my whole outlook shifted.
It's only been in retrospect that I can see how much this group offered--and continues to offer--me and my family. I'm certainly not advocating for homeschooling for all. But simply finding a way to schedule a regular meet-up at the park with other families *might* offer more, in time, than you could imagine.
I loved reading about your experience! Care exchanges - that's what I need. I've been saying that this group is profound, we're raising our kids together (as close as we can get anyway), and I love imagining attending weddings and hearing about the kids' kids in the future! Amazing you still have that connection.
Thank you for sharing this. Our son is three and we just moved back to the states for the first time in his life. We plan to homeschool and we're already working to try to build something like this... haven't got it quite right yet but it's encouraging to hear how impactful it was for you and your family.
You can start really small with a couple of likeminded families! That’s how my group started. It grew organically over time. Almost thirty years later, it’s still going with new young families!
Yes, this! It took a lot of trial to find "my tribe", but now I've got a handful of sweet sisters who would do anything for each other. We also make effort to do "moms-only" meetups once a month or so, with whoever can make it. Having other kids to run around with unstructured time makes things a lot easier, for that afternoon anyway.
Academic-wise, the collective effort is the way we've been able to do some of the more cost-intensive subjects, such as art and science labs.
So great! It took me time to find my people too; I spent a year feeling very lonely while trying to work my way into a group that wasn't a good fit. The feeling was instantly different when I found this other little group. We also had monthly evening meet-ups for the moms (and the occasional dad.) We do it less often now that our kids are grown, but we still gather in different constellations of folks pretty regularly!
And kids stuff is SO expensive - $20-30+ per kid adds up fast! My homeschool group meets at parks and also various places in nature - trails are always free. The library too. But more free/inexpensive public areas would be wonderful!
I'm part of a beautiful homeschooling co-op, where we're increasingly trying to create a "village" to the extent possible. Yet at the same time, I have to get the kids fed and ready and in the car on my own, then schlep them 20 minutes to an hour from my house, THEN get to sit and talk with other moms while the kids mostly roam free...until my kids have some kind of issue, then of course I am the one to handle it.
So there's some amazing aspects to this, yet in the day-to-day and practical grind, there's little help. We've made a committee for Mom Support this year, We do meal trains and help with childcare when one of us has a baby, though I'm encouraging everyone to post things like "Hey I have a Dr. appointment, can I drop off my kids to someone for 2 hours today?" or "I'm on my period, anyone wanna hang and do nothing while the kids run around?"
That said, we also have to be comfortable ASKING for help, which I think is also a big part of the problem as well. And when I look back at 12-16 years of working alone in school, no collaboration, many of us trying to be "good girls" and doing it all ourselves - of course we struggle to ask for help, to even articulate the need to ourselves. I think THAT is actually the biggest problem, is that while we know we need more, to even admit that pain and loneliness is scary.
You make a really good point. Asking for help feels like such an imposition on people and I struggle to do it. I wonder if it’s the schooling system or our intense individualism and perhaps even some misguided sense of ‘I have to prove I’m just as capable as men’ that’s stopping me from asking or even accepting offered help.
How did you find your homeschooling co-op? I’m considering if homeschooling would be an option and having a group aligned with that sounds great.
Oh yes to all of that! I came across our co-op somewhat randomly through a woman I met, but turns out they’d had a Facebook group and I never thought to look! I think FB is a common resource, in another town we were thinking about moving to, I just googled “city Homeschool” and found some groups that way. It was a dream come true for me, we all lean crunchy in various ways and are generally politically aligned, which helps my social anxiety a lot. I honestly go more for myself and the connection, of course the kids learn but it’s basically my breath of fresh air twice a week (sometimes more with birthday parties, park play dates, book club, etc.).
If you have any questions about homeschooling I’m happy to help! We were always planning on it, though some in our group only went that way during Covid, and others are just sick of their kids school for various reasons. Lots of different approaches too, it can be overwhelming at first but there’s a ton of freedom, which I love.
I'd love to hear more about your experience. I just moved back to the states for the first time since my son was born (he's three) and I'm really trying to dial in what we want our village to look like and create it. I read through Emily Race-Newmark's revillaging guide and I've been thinking a lot about so many of the themes you hit on here.
I think a big part of it for me is also chosing a village based not only on practical support but also the type of people I want my kid to grow up around which in some ways feels like it is even harder.
Thanks for mentioning Emily Race-Newmark - I wasn't familiar with her and just followed!
Interesting about the type of people you mention, I guess this wasn't something I sought out specifically (thougH I wanted it for a long time), but perhaps there's more of a conscious focus needed to get deeper support. There are certainly some in our group I wouldn't have the kids stay with them overnight or for an extended period, some who spank for instance, some religious (but not overtly judgmental). I tend to go by feel, and generally speaking, I feel pretty safe with these people and so do my kids. There are good values in the group and they have generally positive experiences.
I think if I were trying to consciously create such a thing, I'd just get caught up in my thoughts and anxieties and trying to perfect my ideas. But that's me, lol.
What concerns do you have around the type of people you want your kids around?
I guess I should preface this by saying I've done a lot to actively build a village and community for my kiddo since he was born. My husband and I run a small educational nonprofit and we did a lot of community programming when we lived in Mexico so he's been around all kinds of kids and their families his whole life between those programs and other meetups and things I found or organized myself.
It's really less about my concerns related to people I want to shield my son from and more about what I (maybe naively) think could be possible if certain things were normalized during his upbringing by chosing our immediate "village" very intentionally. I'm not interested in sheltering him completely or raising him in a bubble but how cool would it be if he grew up around people who actually valued his thoughts and ideas, listened when he speaks, were passionate and excited about what they were doing with their lives, modeled healthy relationships and personal growth etc. etc. ?
I am definitely getting caught up in my thoughts at the moment but I don't think it's necessarily stopping me from actively trying things out. I've created so many virtual and in-person groups over the last few years. Some have been more successful and ongoing than others and all have had a positive impact overall but none have gotten me quite what I feel like I'm longing for. Maybe it is just an ever moving goal post.
I know it's annoying to say this but I think the "village" is more about giving than receiving and probably always has been. It's also about creating economies of scale. You dislike kids' birthday parties (ditto) but I'm guessing there is something parenting-adjacent you are really good at, so in the village scenario you would do more of that. I love to cook, so I try to make meals for everyone when I can.
And honestly I do want a village! I don't want a nanny. I love the young Moms I know through our parish and they have done things for me no nanny can do, like sharing my grief through a miscarriage or planning regular group hangouts at the playground. I'm not sure if there's a non-religious parallel for this but a woman I'm friends with set up a prayer chain for a mutual friend so that someone is up, awake, and praying for said friend for every single hour of her labor, even in the middle of the night. Those bonds are really meaningful.
I think it's a bit bumpy getting to that level of friendship and yeah, I think anyone would agree that dealing with other people can be frustrating and scary. But I do think it gets easier with practice.
This discussion is about moms, but the same lack of community plagues men and boys, too. And my suggestion to them is similar to your experience: church. Statistically proven as a solution to many ills. Being tied to people you serve, serve with, and can be served by when needed is what it all comes down to.
I want to say express my pro-faux pas sentiment. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one putting my foot in my mouth and forgetting hand sanitizer and generally not being "super mom" I remind myself that many of my favorite mom friends are the people who just speak freely and are unapologetically themselves. My daughter's best friend is straightforward and if I offer to have her daughter over, she doesn't immediately grovel to reciprocate (she has had my daughter over too, but it just doesn't feel like she is performing "this needs to be equal"). And I really like her.
Sometimes moms share their personal opinions about parenting/marriage that aren't mine and I LIKE IT. It is interesting to hear how other's mind's work. And it is okay if another mom only wants her kids to eat organic home cooked meals because I feel good about my food choices.
If I were hanging out with you, Elena, I feel like the boy mom rant would have made me like you more. Just my two cents. Let's just all be ourselves.
I really appreciate your nanny being a “him or her”. I don’t have children of my own, but I’ve been volunteering with children and families for 20 years, and the hardest bit is just the sheer suspicion of men. I’m *never* alone with a child in a private place, and I *never* do any personal care, but it doesn’t stop the hostility.
So, I guess what I’m saying is, I really want a village too – I want a community, I want to be helping people, I want to watch children grow up! And I have very occasionally found that. The first children I visited weekly are in their twenties, and some of them ring me up when they have a hard day and need someone to talk to. But, as a man, you have to be very lucky to find families who trust you enough to let you build that kind of relationship.
We need men to be more involved in caregiving!! Hunter gatherer boys did almost as much childcare as girls and learned to be good fathers in this way, but in modern society we don’t trust boys or men to care for children. And then we’re like, why is my husband so bad at this? It’s a real shame.
One of my very favourite memories is from running into a mother whose child I had looked after in a crèche 5 years ago… she said: “I remember you! You’re the baby whisperer.”
I’ve had a decent career, and letters after my name, and suchlike, but there is really nothing I’m more proud of than the fact that most babies will stop crying when I walk with them and sing to them. It’s just rewarding on a gut level that is hard to explain to people.
This is why this "fringe weirdo" moved back in with her parents before her first baby was born 😂. In our house we have my parents, my husband and myself, two teenagers, a five year old, and a one year old. It's chaotic but it's better than being stressed all the time by myself. People think I'm crazy, but I don't really give a shit 😂
Yes! This is a great take on this, Elena, and you are helping to put into words something that we are all only just starting to think and talk about.
Part of the reason I like your work & Katherine Goldstein’s (not sure if you remember- I emailed you awhile ago about her!) is because when I had a (FOMO/high needs) newborn and was sitting alone with her in my living room doing tummy time one day I had an epiphany that this is not how its supposed to be and realizing that my misery (and I think the increased use of passive/background screen time among SAHMs with small children) is from being alone with only purple monkey in a bubble gum tree to keep me company. Before finding your work, I would go on rants to my husband and fantasize about raising her in a large kinship group and having other children and adults to interact with, without having to actively organize a social event or put myself out there.
But I think there is a discussion of class that is missing from this. There’s a recent clip of Trevor Noah discussing how capitalism makes us “outsource the village” and some academic work on how there are differences in relationships, helping, and community, based on class (see this article by Rebecca Carey https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.031).
It feels like material success and relational success are in some way, at odds.
I moved to a small town where I have suddenly found myself in the midst of a “village” (wouldn’t survive without them). I think the thing you and CHH are both missing is the shared sense of camaraderie vs just having free childcare.
I don’t have people watching my kids while I go shopping, but I do have a network of mums I can hang out with while parenting. So our children can look after eachother and we can sit and drink wine and chit chat. I would still be lonely as fuck even if I had a live in nanny I could use endlessly.
I don’t know how to link here, but Chloe Sladden from The Family Commons has a really good newsletter about how to build community and genuinely lessen the load on mothers.
I think mothers actually have two separate needs: social interactions and help. We are deprived of both in the modern context. Both would have been built-in, emergent properties of communal living in our evolutionary past. But in modern society we may have to seek these out separately. A mom group might be a great social outlet and can provide some reciprocal childcare, but the problem is that we are still relying too heavily on moms to do it all. Whereas hiring the local teen to babysit will provide the much needed help, provided you are organized enough to find and hire one.
Oh god, this is so true! I've spent so much time wishing for the built-in community, something that I was born into and grew organically between everyone, easy to access with everyone living close together and in each other's space all the time. I don't want to have to build it myself! And now more than ever, I want more people invested in my baby who want to help take care of him and I want a mixed age group of kids for him to play with as he starts to get older! I came to terms with it years ago, well before getting pregnant, that I just didn't have it and if I wanted anything, I'd have to build it myself. I'm working on it now. I just grit my teeth and keep moving forward, pushing to reach the easier time with people when you actually know each other well and are close instead of just acquaintances. But ugh, I still wish it wasn't this uphill battle! 😭
I wonder if the Denmark Co-Housing spaces would be a good modern example of the ideal you write about here. I first learned about it in the “Happy” documentary:
A lot of parenting and motherhood has become "ideology", and that makes is really hard to make friends.
If I talk about breast feeding/formula/starting solid/BLW/pediatrician/chiropractor/sleep struggles/whatever am I going to inadvertently make this stranger feel judged?
All you really have in common is "mom stuff", but so much of that becomes a third rail.
So you're having these really dull, surface level convos, stuck in your head. Or you just "be yourself", get ghosted and never know if it's ideology or a personality defect.
This was so interesting! We live in close to the community you described - on an army post abroad in apartments where folks spend lots of time in shared playground and outdoor eating spaces. There are lots of people around to keep an eye on your kid, do kid swaps, grab milk if they're already at the store, etc etc. And there are mixed age kids around too. A friend and I did a kid swap for the better part of a year - and while it was great the day I had off, I also had two toddlers the other day of the week. And I think this article at the end really nails it with, what actually reduces the workload of moms? Luckily my daughter got into an extremely affordable and high quality German Kita, all day, five days a week, which has been incredible and VERY meaningfully reduced my mom workload (especially since I also have a new baby). Great read!!
I was going to leave a comment about how the suburbs might be worsening this but then you pretty much got there in the end anyway haha. I wish there were easy solutions, but I fear in this current world where we’re kind of forced to be so isolated from each other, I don’t know what they’d be.
Living in a cohousing community has provided our family with a lot of what you describe here. Small personal houses/apartments, communal recreational space, constant daily opportunities to talk to neighbors and for informal childcare sharing. Also our small town has a babysitters club of responsible 11 year olds who charge almost nothing for childcare...maybe small communities provide some of this too? But cohousing comes with one caveat: be ready to be very stretched in your ability to weather community conflict, keep showing up when it's hard, and also handle being annoyed by the people you live with. It is not curated, and there will be a diversity of opinions. But the community you get in exchange is worth it, in my opinion.
I know people probably don't want to hear about homeschoolers with all the preconceptions flying around--but we don't all homeschool to isolate and limit our kids, just saying! My experience sounds much like Sarah M's, being part of a homeschooling support group, starting way back in 1998. Yes, it was an effort getting to the park each week. Yes, it was awkward approaching the group when I was new. Yes, the quarterly planning meetings were a pain in the ass.
But I want to tell you, as a mother of grown children, what spending years in such a community offered me. What we were doing on a weekly basis was mostly simple--we were hanging out at the park while our kids played. (Many of the parents also worked outside the home, some full time, scheduling their work around these days. And yes, there was often a father in the circle. It wasn't just moms.) Our kids were getting lots of lightly supervised play with other kids, something kids are getting far too little of these days. We parents were mostly sitting in a circle, chatting. This meant I was getting support and learning how to be a parent outside of social norms, with people who shared many of my values, in conversation--and not from "experts" or online influencers (which weren't around in those early days!) I did care exchanges with other mothers who I met there, which gave me time to write during the day, which mattered a lot to me. Tons of other activities beyond these park days evolved over the years, most notably twice-a-year camping trips. Also, a pain in the ass to organize, but those trips are among my grown kids’ favorite childhood memories. They also gave the fathers in our group an opportunity to get to know each other and to build friendships--something men in our culture are also lacking.
Decades later, these families are still some of our closest friends. We show up at funerals for our parents and help each other through dark times--including the men in the group, some of whom have a weekly zoom call of support, others who go on backpacking trips with our grown kids. My three adult kids who all live in far-flung places still count the kids in this group as some of their closest friends. My oldest son lived in NYC (our family home is in CA) with his childhood bestie from this group. I just hung out with one of my own friends from this group last night, sharing why things have been tough lately and having my whole outlook shifted.
It's only been in retrospect that I can see how much this group offered--and continues to offer--me and my family. I'm certainly not advocating for homeschooling for all. But simply finding a way to schedule a regular meet-up at the park with other families *might* offer more, in time, than you could imagine.
I loved reading about your experience! Care exchanges - that's what I need. I've been saying that this group is profound, we're raising our kids together (as close as we can get anyway), and I love imagining attending weddings and hearing about the kids' kids in the future! Amazing you still have that connection.
Thank you for sharing this. Our son is three and we just moved back to the states for the first time in his life. We plan to homeschool and we're already working to try to build something like this... haven't got it quite right yet but it's encouraging to hear how impactful it was for you and your family.
You can start really small with a couple of likeminded families! That’s how my group started. It grew organically over time. Almost thirty years later, it’s still going with new young families!
Yes, this! It took a lot of trial to find "my tribe", but now I've got a handful of sweet sisters who would do anything for each other. We also make effort to do "moms-only" meetups once a month or so, with whoever can make it. Having other kids to run around with unstructured time makes things a lot easier, for that afternoon anyway.
Academic-wise, the collective effort is the way we've been able to do some of the more cost-intensive subjects, such as art and science labs.
So great! It took me time to find my people too; I spent a year feeling very lonely while trying to work my way into a group that wasn't a good fit. The feeling was instantly different when I found this other little group. We also had monthly evening meet-ups for the moms (and the occasional dad.) We do it less often now that our kids are grown, but we still gather in different constellations of folks pretty regularly!
And kids stuff is SO expensive - $20-30+ per kid adds up fast! My homeschool group meets at parks and also various places in nature - trails are always free. The library too. But more free/inexpensive public areas would be wonderful!
I'm part of a beautiful homeschooling co-op, where we're increasingly trying to create a "village" to the extent possible. Yet at the same time, I have to get the kids fed and ready and in the car on my own, then schlep them 20 minutes to an hour from my house, THEN get to sit and talk with other moms while the kids mostly roam free...until my kids have some kind of issue, then of course I am the one to handle it.
So there's some amazing aspects to this, yet in the day-to-day and practical grind, there's little help. We've made a committee for Mom Support this year, We do meal trains and help with childcare when one of us has a baby, though I'm encouraging everyone to post things like "Hey I have a Dr. appointment, can I drop off my kids to someone for 2 hours today?" or "I'm on my period, anyone wanna hang and do nothing while the kids run around?"
That said, we also have to be comfortable ASKING for help, which I think is also a big part of the problem as well. And when I look back at 12-16 years of working alone in school, no collaboration, many of us trying to be "good girls" and doing it all ourselves - of course we struggle to ask for help, to even articulate the need to ourselves. I think THAT is actually the biggest problem, is that while we know we need more, to even admit that pain and loneliness is scary.
You make a really good point. Asking for help feels like such an imposition on people and I struggle to do it. I wonder if it’s the schooling system or our intense individualism and perhaps even some misguided sense of ‘I have to prove I’m just as capable as men’ that’s stopping me from asking or even accepting offered help.
How did you find your homeschooling co-op? I’m considering if homeschooling would be an option and having a group aligned with that sounds great.
Oh yes to all of that! I came across our co-op somewhat randomly through a woman I met, but turns out they’d had a Facebook group and I never thought to look! I think FB is a common resource, in another town we were thinking about moving to, I just googled “city Homeschool” and found some groups that way. It was a dream come true for me, we all lean crunchy in various ways and are generally politically aligned, which helps my social anxiety a lot. I honestly go more for myself and the connection, of course the kids learn but it’s basically my breath of fresh air twice a week (sometimes more with birthday parties, park play dates, book club, etc.).
If you have any questions about homeschooling I’m happy to help! We were always planning on it, though some in our group only went that way during Covid, and others are just sick of their kids school for various reasons. Lots of different approaches too, it can be overwhelming at first but there’s a ton of freedom, which I love.
I'd love to hear more about your experience. I just moved back to the states for the first time since my son was born (he's three) and I'm really trying to dial in what we want our village to look like and create it. I read through Emily Race-Newmark's revillaging guide and I've been thinking a lot about so many of the themes you hit on here.
I think a big part of it for me is also chosing a village based not only on practical support but also the type of people I want my kid to grow up around which in some ways feels like it is even harder.
Thanks for mentioning Emily Race-Newmark - I wasn't familiar with her and just followed!
Interesting about the type of people you mention, I guess this wasn't something I sought out specifically (thougH I wanted it for a long time), but perhaps there's more of a conscious focus needed to get deeper support. There are certainly some in our group I wouldn't have the kids stay with them overnight or for an extended period, some who spank for instance, some religious (but not overtly judgmental). I tend to go by feel, and generally speaking, I feel pretty safe with these people and so do my kids. There are good values in the group and they have generally positive experiences.
I think if I were trying to consciously create such a thing, I'd just get caught up in my thoughts and anxieties and trying to perfect my ideas. But that's me, lol.
What concerns do you have around the type of people you want your kids around?
I guess I should preface this by saying I've done a lot to actively build a village and community for my kiddo since he was born. My husband and I run a small educational nonprofit and we did a lot of community programming when we lived in Mexico so he's been around all kinds of kids and their families his whole life between those programs and other meetups and things I found or organized myself.
It's really less about my concerns related to people I want to shield my son from and more about what I (maybe naively) think could be possible if certain things were normalized during his upbringing by chosing our immediate "village" very intentionally. I'm not interested in sheltering him completely or raising him in a bubble but how cool would it be if he grew up around people who actually valued his thoughts and ideas, listened when he speaks, were passionate and excited about what they were doing with their lives, modeled healthy relationships and personal growth etc. etc. ?
I am definitely getting caught up in my thoughts at the moment but I don't think it's necessarily stopping me from actively trying things out. I've created so many virtual and in-person groups over the last few years. Some have been more successful and ongoing than others and all have had a positive impact overall but none have gotten me quite what I feel like I'm longing for. Maybe it is just an ever moving goal post.
I know it's annoying to say this but I think the "village" is more about giving than receiving and probably always has been. It's also about creating economies of scale. You dislike kids' birthday parties (ditto) but I'm guessing there is something parenting-adjacent you are really good at, so in the village scenario you would do more of that. I love to cook, so I try to make meals for everyone when I can.
And honestly I do want a village! I don't want a nanny. I love the young Moms I know through our parish and they have done things for me no nanny can do, like sharing my grief through a miscarriage or planning regular group hangouts at the playground. I'm not sure if there's a non-religious parallel for this but a woman I'm friends with set up a prayer chain for a mutual friend so that someone is up, awake, and praying for said friend for every single hour of her labor, even in the middle of the night. Those bonds are really meaningful.
I think it's a bit bumpy getting to that level of friendship and yeah, I think anyone would agree that dealing with other people can be frustrating and scary. But I do think it gets easier with practice.
This discussion is about moms, but the same lack of community plagues men and boys, too. And my suggestion to them is similar to your experience: church. Statistically proven as a solution to many ills. Being tied to people you serve, serve with, and can be served by when needed is what it all comes down to.
I want to say express my pro-faux pas sentiment. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one putting my foot in my mouth and forgetting hand sanitizer and generally not being "super mom" I remind myself that many of my favorite mom friends are the people who just speak freely and are unapologetically themselves. My daughter's best friend is straightforward and if I offer to have her daughter over, she doesn't immediately grovel to reciprocate (she has had my daughter over too, but it just doesn't feel like she is performing "this needs to be equal"). And I really like her.
Sometimes moms share their personal opinions about parenting/marriage that aren't mine and I LIKE IT. It is interesting to hear how other's mind's work. And it is okay if another mom only wants her kids to eat organic home cooked meals because I feel good about my food choices.
If I were hanging out with you, Elena, I feel like the boy mom rant would have made me like you more. Just my two cents. Let's just all be ourselves.
I really appreciate your nanny being a “him or her”. I don’t have children of my own, but I’ve been volunteering with children and families for 20 years, and the hardest bit is just the sheer suspicion of men. I’m *never* alone with a child in a private place, and I *never* do any personal care, but it doesn’t stop the hostility.
So, I guess what I’m saying is, I really want a village too – I want a community, I want to be helping people, I want to watch children grow up! And I have very occasionally found that. The first children I visited weekly are in their twenties, and some of them ring me up when they have a hard day and need someone to talk to. But, as a man, you have to be very lucky to find families who trust you enough to let you build that kind of relationship.
We need men to be more involved in caregiving!! Hunter gatherer boys did almost as much childcare as girls and learned to be good fathers in this way, but in modern society we don’t trust boys or men to care for children. And then we’re like, why is my husband so bad at this? It’s a real shame.
One of my very favourite memories is from running into a mother whose child I had looked after in a crèche 5 years ago… she said: “I remember you! You’re the baby whisperer.”
I’ve had a decent career, and letters after my name, and suchlike, but there is really nothing I’m more proud of than the fact that most babies will stop crying when I walk with them and sing to them. It’s just rewarding on a gut level that is hard to explain to people.
This is why this "fringe weirdo" moved back in with her parents before her first baby was born 😂. In our house we have my parents, my husband and myself, two teenagers, a five year old, and a one year old. It's chaotic but it's better than being stressed all the time by myself. People think I'm crazy, but I don't really give a shit 😂
It sounds fantastic! Long live the fringe weirdos!
Yes! This is a great take on this, Elena, and you are helping to put into words something that we are all only just starting to think and talk about.
Part of the reason I like your work & Katherine Goldstein’s (not sure if you remember- I emailed you awhile ago about her!) is because when I had a (FOMO/high needs) newborn and was sitting alone with her in my living room doing tummy time one day I had an epiphany that this is not how its supposed to be and realizing that my misery (and I think the increased use of passive/background screen time among SAHMs with small children) is from being alone with only purple monkey in a bubble gum tree to keep me company. Before finding your work, I would go on rants to my husband and fantasize about raising her in a large kinship group and having other children and adults to interact with, without having to actively organize a social event or put myself out there.
But I think there is a discussion of class that is missing from this. There’s a recent clip of Trevor Noah discussing how capitalism makes us “outsource the village” and some academic work on how there are differences in relationships, helping, and community, based on class (see this article by Rebecca Carey https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.031).
It feels like material success and relational success are in some way, at odds.
This really got me "my misery is from being alone with only purple monkey in a bubble gum tree to keep me company." YES.
I moved to a small town where I have suddenly found myself in the midst of a “village” (wouldn’t survive without them). I think the thing you and CHH are both missing is the shared sense of camaraderie vs just having free childcare.
I don’t have people watching my kids while I go shopping, but I do have a network of mums I can hang out with while parenting. So our children can look after eachother and we can sit and drink wine and chit chat. I would still be lonely as fuck even if I had a live in nanny I could use endlessly.
I don’t know how to link here, but Chloe Sladden from The Family Commons has a really good newsletter about how to build community and genuinely lessen the load on mothers.
I think mothers actually have two separate needs: social interactions and help. We are deprived of both in the modern context. Both would have been built-in, emergent properties of communal living in our evolutionary past. But in modern society we may have to seek these out separately. A mom group might be a great social outlet and can provide some reciprocal childcare, but the problem is that we are still relying too heavily on moms to do it all. Whereas hiring the local teen to babysit will provide the much needed help, provided you are organized enough to find and hire one.
Oh god, this is so true! I've spent so much time wishing for the built-in community, something that I was born into and grew organically between everyone, easy to access with everyone living close together and in each other's space all the time. I don't want to have to build it myself! And now more than ever, I want more people invested in my baby who want to help take care of him and I want a mixed age group of kids for him to play with as he starts to get older! I came to terms with it years ago, well before getting pregnant, that I just didn't have it and if I wanted anything, I'd have to build it myself. I'm working on it now. I just grit my teeth and keep moving forward, pushing to reach the easier time with people when you actually know each other well and are close instead of just acquaintances. But ugh, I still wish it wasn't this uphill battle! 😭
I wonder if the Denmark Co-Housing spaces would be a good modern example of the ideal you write about here. I first learned about it in the “Happy” documentary:
https://youtu.be/_cleTzREJNs?si=Z7i-jGsviLksHkf5
A lot of parenting and motherhood has become "ideology", and that makes is really hard to make friends.
If I talk about breast feeding/formula/starting solid/BLW/pediatrician/chiropractor/sleep struggles/whatever am I going to inadvertently make this stranger feel judged?
All you really have in common is "mom stuff", but so much of that becomes a third rail.
So you're having these really dull, surface level convos, stuck in your head. Or you just "be yourself", get ghosted and never know if it's ideology or a personality defect.
This was so interesting! We live in close to the community you described - on an army post abroad in apartments where folks spend lots of time in shared playground and outdoor eating spaces. There are lots of people around to keep an eye on your kid, do kid swaps, grab milk if they're already at the store, etc etc. And there are mixed age kids around too. A friend and I did a kid swap for the better part of a year - and while it was great the day I had off, I also had two toddlers the other day of the week. And I think this article at the end really nails it with, what actually reduces the workload of moms? Luckily my daughter got into an extremely affordable and high quality German Kita, all day, five days a week, which has been incredible and VERY meaningfully reduced my mom workload (especially since I also have a new baby). Great read!!
I was going to leave a comment about how the suburbs might be worsening this but then you pretty much got there in the end anyway haha. I wish there were easy solutions, but I fear in this current world where we’re kind of forced to be so isolated from each other, I don’t know what they’d be.
Living in a cohousing community has provided our family with a lot of what you describe here. Small personal houses/apartments, communal recreational space, constant daily opportunities to talk to neighbors and for informal childcare sharing. Also our small town has a babysitters club of responsible 11 year olds who charge almost nothing for childcare...maybe small communities provide some of this too? But cohousing comes with one caveat: be ready to be very stretched in your ability to weather community conflict, keep showing up when it's hard, and also handle being annoyed by the people you live with. It is not curated, and there will be a diversity of opinions. But the community you get in exchange is worth it, in my opinion.
You are brilliant and so damn funny too
We all want the sense of community from a European village… without the part where we have to shovel manure before breakfast 😂