Human beings weren’t designed to be independent so why are we forced to be?

[Buttercupsandpoppys]

I always prided myself on being independent. From 18 I went to uni, got a job, bought a house on my own etc. Being so independent has always been important to me and is seen as such a virtue in society.

Yet now I’ve had 2 kids and a DP I’ve come to realise that actually humans are meant to be dependant on eachother. I’ve been very blessed with lots of friends/family and I’ve relied on them so much over these past 2 years since my first was born.

I’ve also had a realisation on what a breakdown in society we have. Due to encouraging independence we’ve also shamed people for being dependent (disabled, elderly etc).

But humans are not made to be independent. We NEED others. If we have illness we need someone medical to treat us. If we have a child we need someone to either physically look after them whilst we work or to provide so we don’t have to work and can physically look after them.
We need shelter so we need someone to employ us or if self employed then to use our service.

Humans literally need other humans. But it’s drummed into us to never be dependent.

I’m currently on mat leave with my second baby and the amount of struggling mothers I’ve met at playgroups that don’t have any support outside of their DP is so sad.
Even the ones who have local friends wouldn’t ever ring a friend and ask for help unless it was a dire emergency because otherwise they worry they’d be seen as cheeky or struggling. Yet it’s entirely normal to need help because humans were made to live in communities and rely on eachother. It’s literally in our DNA to live in packs for the very reason of helping eachother. But it’s actively discouraged to be dependant in anyway shape or form.

I wondered why this is, and I think maybe capitalism? The less of a community there is and shame in asking for help, then the more insular people become yet because we need humans we now have to pay to have that need met(whilst thinking we’re independent yet still depending on others).

Does anyone else know why independence is so massively encouraged and dependency of any kind so shameful nowadays?

Good lord, she has said how she's helped people. Read properly. No need to go on the attack.

Agree!

I agree with so much of what you say - and importantly the damage it can cause.

I was always independent and so that was encouraged. I then had a child who is disabled but didn't get support because im so independent it was assumed I could cope without it. I was also always the one to provide support but it was never reciprocated.

My sister however wasn't independent. So she was always first in line for any support even when need wasn't greatest. She has an army of people fawning over her. It's just the way of things.

My brother who was also the youngest had a more balanced upbringing. He's independent, provides support but can also ask for support. He's also the most successful and I don't think this is co incidence.

It's only now - in my 40's - a few years after my mum died that I'm learning it's ok not to be ok. It's ok to be vulnerable. It's ok not to give to people who won't reciprocate. It's ok to ask for help. It's ok to be annoyed that you don't have support when it's needed - especially when you've supported so many over the decades.

Problem is that I'm still in that independent bubble and I don't think that'll change - but I think it'll cause me issues in my later life as I'm also single. It also worries me what will happen to ds when I'm no longer here.

No it isn't healthy. You should be up and moving about as soon as possible,, ,( within reason, )

I agree. Yet on MN it's a competition to see who have keep people away the longest.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was an AIBU one day about MIL meeting their grandchild for the first time at their first birthday party!

If you can be independent financially, have a secure home over your head, good job etc, that is good. Many don't have that option.

Society and the economy in general is geared in many ways around the presumption that you are not independent, indeed in many aspects I think it makes the assumption you are the traditional nuclear family. Which for various reasons is the minority of households.

This is a British thing. In my husbands culture, it’s very much accepted that we need one another and so people are more patient of each other, knowing that they need us and we need them. Even if we don’t need them now, we will later, and we have a duty to care for others. I found this belief to be the same when I’ve worked abroad. In the UK people pride themselves in independence and doing things alone. They are also less patient with neighbors, family and friends and cut them off for the smallest offense and almost feel proud of how quickly they remove people from their lives. It’s sad, I think.

It's the impact of neoliberalism over 50 years in Anglo-Saxon cultures. The individual is placed at the heart of everything. We fetishise self reliance and independence and scorn any sign of dependency. It has leeched for the worse into every part of our culture. Our high priests are the "self made" billionaires. And our lowest castes are those who need support in any form whatsoever. We gave reached the apogee now where under the last government they assumed people were resentful of spending on any public services at all - hence the child care cost crisis. You are simultaneously expected to be independent and not require support with children whilst working full-time in jobs which don't even cover the cost of childcare. When you are unable to square that impossible circle you are judged a failure as a parent.

In the 1970's my brother died very suddenly when I was a baby, my mum had friends and neighbours that rallied around and literally helped her and my dad to survive day to day, many of whom are still there now.
One of those friends died recently and Mum said how she had called around every day for a year to check on her (she had three kids of her own too) and how she would never forget that kindness or how she'd have coped without it.
It made me feel very sad to think that people just don't have the time to be kind and selfless for others like that anymore,if it was now that friend would be busy working and running their kids to after school activities and spa weekends and enforcing their own boundaries to protect their wellbeing and self care.

These might all be positive progressions in and of themselves but some very basic things have most definitely been lost along the way.
I totally agree that capitalism plays a huge part as does the Thatcherite philosophy to care about progressing yourself to the extent that it's so deeply entrenched in our culture now we can't even see it.

Nowadays my mum and dad would probably have got lots of hearts and kind words on Social media but not so much of the actual physical help to pull them through the darkest of days.

• also my mum has spent her life paying it forward and being the kindest and most thoughtful friend and family member to others.

It's sad how much our expectations around friends revolve around material things rather than our time. I find it cheeky that (wealthy) friends have sent me lists of presents to buy them for their wedding or baby shower. And yet I don't find it at all cheeky that, when we moved into our new house, our elderly neighbours came and asked us if we would put up their Christmas decorations for them. It's become a lovely annual tradition now and I'm glad to help. These little acts of helping each other can benefit us all.

Re the argument that it’s capitalism, I once saw an archive film from the early 60s trying to encourage businesses to move to Haverhill, which was not a wholly new town but had been greatly expanded.
One of the arguments they made for why Haverhill would be great for your business was that because the area lacked the strong community that you got in traditional industrial areas there was much less risk of strikes.
I was surprised by how blatant they were!

I think independence is important, how would we develop skills to be useful to anyone else if we haven't learnt how to look after ourselves first?

From this thread it seems that the lack of community support is noticed most by women when they have children. Decades ago we may have lived closer to family who would have provided support but during my childhood additional support was provided as much by neighbours as family. Women supported each other so the women you describe in your OP literally have the solution within the play groups but people don't seem to want to cultivate community with individuals in similar circumstances.

The downside of the village approach, in today's culture, is that my neighbours would have told me off if they'd seen me behaving badly. My parents wouldn't have complained about the neighbours interfering, they'd have probably punished me based on the neighbours report. There are threads here everyday about parents annoyed that their children are being treated unfairly by other adults so many people choose to stay out of other families affairs. It's difficult to form a village if you need to control every single aspect of how people in that village act.

I think it's interesting too that as interdependence, cooperation and collaboration have decreased there seems to have been an increase in codependent behaviour in close relationships and people are more anxious and stressed than ever.

"They are also less patient with neighbors, family and friends and cut them off for the smallest offense and almost feel proud of how quickly they remove people from their lives. It’s sad, I think."

wow* *generalisation much?

I apologise if you think I was being impolite - I didn't mean it that way. Co-operation, being helpful and kind - these things are very much encouraged in good nurseries.

Absolutely. And as other people have said, being part of ‘the village’ often meant restrictions on what you could do or putting up with abuse from people in power.

This is an interesting article about the idea of the village:

The Village

Not really if MN is anything to go by! 😆

I agree OP

1. Families support each other because that’s where the genetic investment is. We are programmed to try and pass our genes on into the future: that’s why we have, raise and support our children and give them the best chance of succeeding in the future - so that they can go on to do the same.
2. ‘The village’ - humans needed to work together to survive. It’s as simple as that. Farming communities needed lots of people, not necessarily related by this point, to cooperate successfully to provide food, shelter, defence etc.
3. The downside to the above was that people had to live according to very strict social rules that were designed to protect the proper functioning of the ‘village’ . So a very hierarchical, almost always patriarchal, structure, with very strict rules about what’s acceptable behaviour and punishment for those that break them. People living in ‘the village’ didn’t have a lot of choice about who they married, or freedom to express themselves in any way.
4. eventually that’s what broke ‘the village’. As societies developed they got to the point where things like defence, safety, food supply etc could be provided for at a population level and could be purchased by individuals, which meant that they could leave the suffocating world of ‘the village’ - and of course a multitude of businesses etc have emerged to meet their every need / fancy / whim ( because it makes the producers / sellers of ‘stuff’ very rich and thus more able to invest in their own offspring).
5. but being able to buy stuff doesn’t replace our deep need to be connected with family and community. Hence an epidemic of loneliness, depression, anxiety and yes, pnd.

i chose not to live near my family and while I appreciate that I’ve been able to live my life quite ‘independently’ I really missed them when I had babies. I would have traded some degree of personal freedom and having to tolerate the annoying things about them for some hands on, caring, invested-in-my-baby’s-welfare family help.

I've been a single parent to two boys with mild ND. At times, I couldn't get my head around how I was supposed to manage this.

The loneliness, mind numbing boredom with no adult company, overstimulating from bickering, needy children, lack of money, total loss of personal freedom, and being judged and expected to cope felt like being abandoned by society.

To me, it felt like a human rights issue. Yet, women are expected to do it without complaining or they might be accused of not 'loving' their children enough.

Meanwhile, our brains are geared for communal parenting due to our evolutionary history. The stress from so many angles is way too much.

I think the OP has missed the point that as social animals, if humans are isolated they die and that is the the end of that genomes journey in life.

We're left with the ones that survived.

I agree OP. Humans are herd animals we only thrive in a tribe. We benefit not only from receiving help but from giving it. Without reciprocal relationships we aren’t human. It’s wonderful to be both needed and supported.

I think people are confusing independence and dependency. To me it's all about thinking about other people and not always about yourself. Doing something for someone even if it might not benefit you. Putting an effort into relationships. This doesn't mean you are a doormat. Basically be a nice person, help someone out if they need it even if it might inconvenience you, and hopefully that will be reciprocated. And if not, you can feel good knowing you've done something good in the world and made it a tiny bit better. The cynics on here, have you never done something nice for someone with no benefit to yourself and it made you feel happy anyway? Or has a stranger never done something for you and it made you feel happy and good with the world?

No we don't. Many people cannot make an appointment with a doctor's or even have an NHS dentist with a free space within 30+miles of where they live. The police often don't bother coming out if you have been burgled or for plenty of other crimes and not everyone can find a suitable school for their children.

I don't actually see many people cut people off for the smallest thing they didn't like. I mostly see lots of people tolerating lots of toxic behaviour because we are told blood is thicker than water etc

If our village causes us more stress and isn't beneficial for us or our children in that they are learning outdated views concepts like boys do this girls do that ect then no we don't want that village.

I think if as a society we all took responsibility to be healthier individuals that have something to offer a community/village. As well as more men seeing the value in relationships and community. Putting more work into them so it's not all just left for women to do. That would be a great start.

In real life I mostly just see people pull back from family or friends when it wasn't a healthy reciprocal relationship. Those people have to face the consequence of not having support to ideally motivate them to change their ways. However you can easily buy in support or they are part of a toxic environment where the most toxic person always garners the most support. Ironically the more caring generous are left to be the scapegoat and recieve very little.

It takes a higher level of emotional maturity to assess and moderate your own behaviour. Unfortunately I rarely see this even spoke about let alone encouraged. It just becomes a war and ends in no contact. Most people don't want to be without their families it's a real last resort.

it isn't

I think people don't realise how dependent they are on others anyway. Even if you are independent, living far from relatives, didn't have friends to rely on. You are still depending on other people to make different choices than you to keep society running. People to grow and transport food, people who make electricity etc.

I also see that women feel it the most after they have a baby, but a lot of disabled and elderly feel it too.