The phrase ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ is a good one but mostly in white western middle class homes it is a solitary and lonely activity. What can be done I wonder? Cooperative living is a good solution …
Thanks for your reply. I’m on a constant thought exploration on this topic. We discuss it in our parenting peer support groups. Working class women have always relied on their communities as child care and emotional support. I wonder if this is a class problem?
Yes it’s a symptom of owning quite a bit of stuff and putting a 6 foot fence between us and our neughbours due to fear of someone getting our stuff. We then create the ‘other’. This divides. Then we have to do it alone.
I was a single parent when I had my first child and raised her with my parents (we lived with them) and the help of my close friends for the first five years of her life. Then I got married, had a second child and was thrown into isolation! I got severe post-partum depression after my second baby but I didn't recognize it as such, and neither did my doctor. I felt so guilty. I love your vision for community families and of course that still exists in other parts of the world. We deny ourselves so much pleasure here in the Global North with our strict doctrines.
Beautifully put thank you.
I don’t think we want to actually think about this though. We would rather leave the mothers, the disabled etc… to suffer alone.
The phrase ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ is a good one but mostly in white western middle class homes it is a solitary and lonely activity. What can be done I wonder? Cooperative living is a good solution …
Thanks for your reply. I’m on a constant thought exploration on this topic. We discuss it in our parenting peer support groups. Working class women have always relied on their communities as child care and emotional support. I wonder if this is a class problem?
Yes it’s a symptom of owning quite a bit of stuff and putting a 6 foot fence between us and our neughbours due to fear of someone getting our stuff. We then create the ‘other’. This divides. Then we have to do it alone.
I was a single parent when I had my first child and raised her with my parents (we lived with them) and the help of my close friends for the first five years of her life. Then I got married, had a second child and was thrown into isolation! I got severe post-partum depression after my second baby but I didn't recognize it as such, and neither did my doctor. I felt so guilty. I love your vision for community families and of course that still exists in other parts of the world. We deny ourselves so much pleasure here in the Global North with our strict doctrines.