In my research, I recently came across this measure assessing the strength of a social network. The short form contains these three questions:
How many of your friends/relatives do you see or hear from at least once a month?
How many friends/relatives do you feel at ease with that you can talk about private matters?
How many friends/relatives do you feel close to such that you could call on them for help?
While this scale was developed for use among the elderly, it has also been found to be predictive of loneliness among mothers raising young children. Yet while I first looked through the scale’s questions and reassured myself that I do indeed have a good social network, it didn’t take me long before I realised that I had an issue with the last question.
How many people could I call on for help?
Realistically, not that many.
There’s plenty of people that I feel close enough to that I could ask them. Yet not so many that I would ask.
See, there’s my good friend who lives over an hour away. There’s my other friend who recently went back to full-time employment. Most people in my immediate family also work full time. There’s my friend with morning sickness. There’s my friend expecting another baby any day now.
So while these are all people that I see and hear from often, and that I could talk to about private matters, most of them are not people that I would call on for help. One mum that I interviewed put it perfectly when she said:
“[We] needed more support that we couldn’t get. I had a lot of friends who were supportive emotionally and mentally. But you also need support like with the house and with meals, just with going through life.”
The issue is that for many parents, the things that we need help with on a daily basis are things that we’re generally not comfortable asking someone to go out of their way to help us with. They’re small things - folding the washing, cooking the dinner, cleaning the dishes, or holding the baby while we wash our hair. And while this type of help may be forthcoming in the early days when everyone is excited to come over and see the new baby, it quickly dries up. We’re left drowning under the pressure of trying to do it all, uncomfortable asking even close family and friends to help with the things we feel we should be able to do ourselves, if only we could systematise and organise ourselves sufficiently. We don’t want to bother them over something small, preferring to bottle up our help asking for something “worthy” enough.
Additionally, we don’t want to ask our friends and family to take a day off work when we need a sick day ourselves. As another mum put it:
“It wouldn't be like, hey, I have gastro, can you please go and get them [the kids from daycare]? It would be like, Hey, I'm in the hospital. Can you please get them?”
We push through illnesses and injuries that people in any other occupation would determine is severe enough for a day off. We fool ourselves into thinking that the only support we need to get through the flu is some Vitamin C pills, a fresh box of tissues, and a movie for the kids. We feel uncomfortable asking even our partners to take a day off (even if they have access to paid carer’s leave) so that we can access our own “sick leave” and take a day to rest in bed.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, yet the physical villages disappeared with the industrial revolution and urbanisation. However, even a generation or two ago, mothers typically had a stronger and larger group of people they could call on for help – a tangible village, even if not one that was spatially constrained in the form of earlier villages. Now, I think the village is almost entirely intangible, made up of the Facebook groups we find support in, the group chats where we send memes about how our day is going, and the parenting influencers we follow on Instagram for advice. Unfortunately, this has left many parents feeling a distinct lack of physical support, even if they’re not lonely.
So where did the last remnants of the village disappear to?
I don’t have all the answers, and if you have more ideas than the ones I am going to present, then I’d love to hear them. Yet tracking certain trends over the last 30 or so years gives us some clues about what happened to the village.
1. The village is at their paid employment
In the last 40 years within Australia, the proportion of families with dependent children (under 15 years old) where both parents work full time has almost doubled, from around 40% in 1980, to close to 80% today. Additionally, where 1 in 3 mothers engaged in some form of employment, either part- or full-time, with a child under the age of 2 in 1991, by 2021 the rate was now 1 in 2. The dip in employment participation that used to be present around child-bearing age has almost entirely vanished.
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Mothers with children of all ages are present in greater numbers than ever in the workforce. I’m not suggesting this is a bad thing, and for many families it is a financial necessity, but it does come with the consequence that there are less mothers in the home who are available to lend support to other mothers. This is something I’ve personally experienced time and time again. I’ve been able to form deep, mutually supporting friendships over a period of about 18 months, and then maternity leave ends, and we’re left trying to sustain friendships over already busy weekends, no longer able to call on each other for help in the small ways most needed while parenting young children.
2. The village is not casually meeting
Every Wednesday, I take the kids to the park for a couple of hours. We live within walking distance of several schools, yet we rarely see children walking home. This reflects the larger trend in Australia. In 1970, close to 50% of children walked to school, and only 16% were driven. By 1994, these rates were effectively reversed. This is just one example reflecting the overall increase of driving to places we previously walked to – to school, to the shops, to the library. To state the obvious, we don’t talk to the people driving next to us. But we often do talk to the people walking next to us, particularly if we see them regularly. And when we’re driving past a neighbour’s house, we don’t hop out of our cars to quickly pop in and see how they’re going, yet we’re much more likely to do so if we’re walking. When everyone drives there are less opportunities for casual encounters.
3. The village is not gathering at family-supportive places
Church has long been a place where families gather to find purpose and community. Yet since the 1950s, there has been a sharp decline in the number of people attending religious services. While a sense of community, purpose, betterment, and accountability can be found in other places of gathering (like at CrossFit), many of these alternative places are not as supportive of families. While you might worship as a family at church on a Sunday, you’re much less likely to bring the kids along to your 6am gym session, or even include ‘parent’ in the identity you share with your companions at the gym. As such, while supportive individual relationships can be formed in these alternate gathering places, it’s less likely that these relationships will reach the level of supporting your entire family.
4. The village keeps moving
By family composition, those who are far and away the most likely to have moved house within the last few years are families with young children. While I don’t have the data to show who moved where, over the last 5 years there has been a net movement away from the cities and into regional areas. Any move is disruptive, yet the further a family moves, the more likely they are to lose access to their established social support networks. With close to 50% of families moving within the last five years, the impact of internal migration on support structures is likely to be felt even by those who aren’t moving house, as many friends and family members move away to more affordable areas.
5. The village is aging
In 1961, most first-time mothers were aged between 20-24. Now, most mothers have their first child between the ages of 30-34. This means that where a person could reasonably expect to become a grandparent in their 40s a generation or two ago, grandparents now are likely to be in their 60s by the time their first grandchild is born. The result is less grandparents, great-aunts and -uncles, and even great-grandparents who are physically able to help care for young children and provide support for young families.
The village didn’t disappear overnight. It’s a bundle of factors, which together have left parents, and especially mothers, feeling more overwhelmed than ever. While we might not be lonely or socially isolated, the physical isolation we experience leads to a heavy burden – one that was never meant to be shouldered alone.
However, there is hope. Small pockets of the village can still be found. There are still neighbours who trade eggs for baked goods over the fence. There are still friends who are willing to pick your kids up from school if you’re running late. There are still neighbours who share the load, one watching the kids while the other provides an afternoon snack. These connections may not form as spontaneously and naturally as they once did. But they can still be found.
Your comments help me think deeper about this topic, which makes this newsletter (and aforementioned book-in-progress) better.
Beck, this is the article I didn't know I needed to read! Every single thing you mention has been my experience and it can feel so disheartening. I used to wonder if this was just in the US but it seems like it's happening around the world too. Thank you for this article. It's so well written and very clearly outlines how our villages have been decimated.