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Stop Telling Me I Need a Village and Help Me Build One
A plea from an exhausted mother
Pro tip: If you ever want to piss me off, just shake your head, shrug your shoulders, and tell me, “It takes a village.”
Maybe add a tsk tsk in there for good measure.
People love to tell parents, particularly exhausted mothers, that “it takes a village.” And yet the last time I checked, villages were in scarce supply. I don’t know anyone who lives in a village. My uncle has an apartment near The Village, but I don’t think the bustling NYC neighborhood is exactly what all the head-shakers and shoulder-shruggers have in mind.
My parents both grew up in small-town suburbs, maybe not literal villages, but they enjoyed a version of that idyllic 1950s childhood in which they knew their neighbors and spent afternoons not in aftercare programs or on parent-arranged playdates, but rather roaming the streets with packs of children.
My mother’s parents even asked their neighborhood police officer to check in on their home while they were traveling, which I guess is something (white) families did back then. The officer once contacted my grandparents to relay the unfortunate news that one of the bedrooms had been ransacked. Turns out, the bedroom belonged to my uncle, who was never known to be tidy.
