'The Village Is Tired' — Family & Friends Of Overwhelmed Moms Are No Longer Interested In Watching Their Kids For Free
We're all trying to our heads above water.
Tomsickova Tatyana | Shutterstock When it comes to having children, there’s one phrase that’s repeated so often, its meaning has become distilled.
“It takes a village to raise a child,” the saying goes. It’s a nod to the fact that childrearing is hard, like, really hard, and the more support parents get, the better off everyone is.
Only reality isn’t quite that simple, leading many parents to feel like they have no viable options left.
Overwhelmed moms are discovering that their family and friends won’t watch their kids for free.
One woman delved into the cultural conversation around parenting and community, expressing her belief that it isn’t actually the responsibility of the village to raise anyone’s child.
She posted her reaction to a TikTok she’d seen in which a frustrated mom vented that she can’t accept certain jobs because she doesn’t have adequate childcare.
“In the comments, everyone is saying, ‘It’s the village. They don’t make the village like they used to.’ Let me tell you why the village isn’t like what it used to be,” the woman said.
She shared her interpretation of the mom’s situation, describing a hypothetical conversation between the mom, her family members, and her friends as they offered to help with her first child, only for their support and patience to grow thin as she had more kids.
In the imagined scenario, the mom continually leaned on her parents and other relatives to watch her kids to the point where they felt taken advantage of and overextended.
'The village is tired,' the woman concluded.
She’s not wrong in her assessment. Our communal stress and exhaustion seem to have hit their peak.
New Africa | Shutterstock
We’re all tired and overwhelmed, whether we’re parents or not, married or single, working or unemployed. Everyone has their own version of hardship, and struggle isn’t exactly comparable.
Whatever personal challenges we face don’t negate anyone else’s. In an ideal world, we’d show consistent compassion and understanding for others instead of wielding our troubles as though suffering was some kind of competition; winner takes all.
There’s no denying that parenting is demanding, and the way our society is structured puts undue pressure, almost always on moms, to hold everything together.
Modern motherhood in America can be isolating and emotionally draining in a way that often builds to collapse.
Many people live far away from their families of origin. Many can’t afford to put their kids in daycare or hire a nanny.
There are larger societal factors at play that make life feel especially difficult: wage stagnation, inflation, rising housing prices, and food that seems to get more expensive every day.
A woman named Joules Lowell offered her perspective on what happens when the village says no, touching on the sociopolitical implications of American parenting.
“We live in a capitalist society where people are drowning financially and mentally,” she explained.
“Sometimes, your village [is] tired, too,” Lowell added, noting that villagers have their own jobs and children and mental health issues to navigate.
Although it seems counterintuitive, telling moms to rely on the village is a way of maintaining a hyper-individualistic approach to parenting. Asking the village for help means that the government doesn't have to provide crucial social services, like subsidized daycare, universal health, or paid parental leave.
It means moms are forced to lean on neighbors, relatives, and friends, who in turn feel overextended and burnt out.
The village is made up of women who aren’t paid for their labor, their time, or the institutional knowledge they pass down that keeps our world afloat.
It isn’t enough to ask the village. We shouldn’t require mothers to do so, just as we shouldn’t automatically expect the people around them to pick up the slack for this particular crisis.
We all deserve more care than what we’re getting. We all need space to breathe and to lay down the weight we carry so that we can show up for ourselves and each other without causing more harm.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture, and all things to do with the entertainment industry.