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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a in village. It’s not family, it’s friends and neighbors with similar age kids. I help them and they help us, it’s rare but we know we are there for each other.
Last week during a storm my kid (11) was at the pool and they closed for thunder. I wasn’t there, a friend of mine brought her home, that’s being a village…. [/quote]

Meh.  That’s not a “village.”   That’s an emergency contact.  Does the friend watch your kid while you work?[/quote]

I agree with this. I think with lots of dual income couples and families whose lives are just scheduled down to the minute, it's really hard to form the kinds of casual, meaningful villages that families had in the past. I can remember spending all afternoon or even all day in the summer at neighbors homes while my mom got ready to teach an evening class or took a sibling to medical appointments. And it wasn't this carefully orchestrated thing, it was easy, because there were so many SAHMs around and the kids all knew each other, so asking a neighbor if they minded keeping me over for dinner was no thing. My mom did it for others too. That's a village -- where raising kids is truly a somewhat communal experience, and where something like bringing your kid home from the neighborhood pool during a thunderstorm wouldn't even register because it would happen twice a week without it even being discussed.

We've really individualized families and parenting and it creates huge inequalities in resources. Families with grandparents who are able and willing to help, or the financial resources to hire help, can self-sustain. Families without those resources limp along and hope nothing goes wrong. In a pinch, a friend or neighbor might be able to help with something, but it better not be a weekly thing or people will start avoiding your calls, because they too are trying to piece together childcare and manage two careers and kids, and they don't have the bandwidth to help.

Sad to say it, but SAHMs made a lot of things work back when they were more common. Heck, SAHMs enabled my mom to go to school and then work part-time throughout my childhood.[/quote]

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