We had a visit with one of Lis's mom's friends yesterday, and a few times the topic of help with child-raising came up in the conversation. There are obviously options of paid childcare for people, but what do you do when you need help on the day-to-day? How do you find a group of friends or trusted individuals that can step in when you're feeling overwhelmed or exhausted from all the baby madness? What do you do when you don't feel you can send your kid to formal childcare because you need assistance at a moment's notice?
A lot of people turn to immediate family, but even family members can have their limitations, not just as individuals but because of busy schedules and other factors. So the question is, when you've exhausted your conventional options, what other resources are available? Who else can you turn to?
I think probably a lot of women historically found themselves feeling very isolated when it got to that point. Their partners were not always reliable (and, from what I gather, usually not). In the fifties you might have been able to drop the kids off at the neighbours' place for a few hours, if you were lucky, but the support network was thin. It wasn't until the seventies that ideas like women's groups started to come into consciousness, in both formal and informal ways. For the lucky ones there was a sense of shared, community-based responsibilities, which expressed itself through a ready-made care network. Now I wasn't there, at least not intellectually, so I can only cobble together a picture from what I've heard and read, but I think I was hearing some echoes of that from our Baby Boomer guest yesterday. There was a real sense of reaching out, and to me it seemed incredibly positive. I know for a fact that Lis and I have been and will be relying on whatever help we can get in terms of information, empathy, and care itself. Our people are amazing. To know that there are such amazing folks that are on our side is an immense gift.
By the by, I also had another thought on this topic. The ever popular mommy's groups seem like a largely depoliticized version of women's groups from the seventies, at least as they're represented in the media (again, I've never been to one, so I'm just cobbling it together from what I've heard). Maybe it's just the depoliticization (or obfuscation) of the home space that makes these communities less overtly political these days; it seems like the phenomenon of showing off your baby-as-consumer-object, which I've reflected on previously, may also be a factor, but at the same time the value of shared care and community should not be underestimated, whatever clothes it's wearing.
Anyway, I feel like I may have been unintentionally controversial in posting this, which is weird. Perhaps this suggests that there is still some political force in the idea of banding together around the common cause of raising a child. It brings to mind that Igbo and Yoruba proverb: "It takes a whole village to raise a child." From what I gather there have been some conservative attacks on this idea, but I think for my part, I'm going to stick with the idea that the more aunties and uncles and grandmas and grandpas for little one, the better!
A lot of people turn to immediate family, but even family members can have their limitations, not just as individuals but because of busy schedules and other factors. So the question is, when you've exhausted your conventional options, what other resources are available? Who else can you turn to?
I think probably a lot of women historically found themselves feeling very isolated when it got to that point. Their partners were not always reliable (and, from what I gather, usually not). In the fifties you might have been able to drop the kids off at the neighbours' place for a few hours, if you were lucky, but the support network was thin. It wasn't until the seventies that ideas like women's groups started to come into consciousness, in both formal and informal ways. For the lucky ones there was a sense of shared, community-based responsibilities, which expressed itself through a ready-made care network. Now I wasn't there, at least not intellectually, so I can only cobble together a picture from what I've heard and read, but I think I was hearing some echoes of that from our Baby Boomer guest yesterday. There was a real sense of reaching out, and to me it seemed incredibly positive. I know for a fact that Lis and I have been and will be relying on whatever help we can get in terms of information, empathy, and care itself. Our people are amazing. To know that there are such amazing folks that are on our side is an immense gift.
By the by, I also had another thought on this topic. The ever popular mommy's groups seem like a largely depoliticized version of women's groups from the seventies, at least as they're represented in the media (again, I've never been to one, so I'm just cobbling it together from what I've heard). Maybe it's just the depoliticization (or obfuscation) of the home space that makes these communities less overtly political these days; it seems like the phenomenon of showing off your baby-as-consumer-object, which I've reflected on previously, may also be a factor, but at the same time the value of shared care and community should not be underestimated, whatever clothes it's wearing.
Anyway, I feel like I may have been unintentionally controversial in posting this, which is weird. Perhaps this suggests that there is still some political force in the idea of banding together around the common cause of raising a child. It brings to mind that Igbo and Yoruba proverb: "It takes a whole village to raise a child." From what I gather there have been some conservative attacks on this idea, but I think for my part, I'm going to stick with the idea that the more aunties and uncles and grandmas and grandpas for little one, the better!
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