To think that the way we are expected to parent in this country is unnatural?

[AndyWarholsBanana]

I don't mean the actual way of parenting, I mean the kind of family set up we have now. In a lot of countries, children are raised in a groups of some sort - either groups of women who all help look after each others' children or in extended families with grandparents, aunts, cousins around - it takes a village to raise a child etc. And having lots of extended family on hand was the norm in this country until pretty recently.
Nowadays, a lot of people move away from their parents to find work or whatever so don't have family nearby.
When I had DS1, I didn't know many people locally and I just remember the crushing isolation of it being just me and a baby for 10 hours a day and having no adult company. I honestly couldn't wait to get back to work.
When I had my third child 8 years later, I knew a lot more people including quite a few who were SAHMs or worked part time. We spent a lot of time in and out of each other's houses and it was always possible to get someone to have your child for a few hours so that you could go shopping or just have a bath. Also, my parents had retired so used to take Ds2 one morning a week. As well as it being great having adult company, it was nice for the kids to have other DCs around a lot of the time for company.
especially as DS2 was a very extrovert baby and seemed to get bored very quickly when he was stuck with just me.
It couldn't have been more different to when I had DS1 and I actually enjoyed it and would have been happy to stay at home longer. I've noticed that in the endless SAHM/WOHM debates, how many women describe going mad with boredom when they were on maternity leave. I just think it's "unnatural" to expect an adult to be with another human being 24/7 without a break and I think women end up feeling guilty because they don't enjoy it. It just feels suffocating and claustrophobic for a lot of people. I know it;s not somehing that's likely to change but just wondered what people thought.

Yes, also fills me with horror, the idea of "open house".

We have friends. We see them afte school or during half term etc.

But I don't want them "popping in".

Ever.

And I think the rise in PND is due to knowing what it is.

Whoops. Sorry about that!

I work with women who still live as part of extended families and have many 'villagers' around them. I wouldn't swop my independence for a day and I have no relatives around for child care and have the children pretty much full time. I hate other people parenting my children and am clearly a miserable, uptight misanthrope:)

I completely agree with this OP. Up until 5 years ago our family was spread across the UK, all working long days and chatting once a week on the phone. Then my 25 year old sister was diagnosed with aggressive cancer (initially given a terminal diagnosis) and it completely changed our lives. Nothing that used to matter, such as money and material possessions mattered anymore. Myself and my mother ended up giving up work to care for my sister and my dad and the husbands cut down their hours. Fast forward 5 years (sister is in remission and has had a miracle baby) and we all live within 10 minutes of each other. We may not have as much money but life is wonderful. I have had a child (another on the way) and I see my grandparents, parents and sister most days. The children play together every day and are so close. There is always someone to help you if needed and we are now very much like the old fashioned families. I know I am very lucky to have this though.

I live in the arse end of nowhere, on a 60mph road with no pavements. My nearest neighbours are half a mile away. There is one bus a week and we only have one car which DH needs for work.

So why live there, then?

I has my second dc in the ME, and asked who was my Mw. The consultant said he would answer any questions I had. There were no Mw. Or hv.

I expressed surprise at this, and he told me that most people, except the few expats like me, had dm and a mil to advise and support a pregnant and new mother, plus all the aunts who had had babies and knew what was best.

I didn't miss a constant stream of people and although home as a sahm in the UK and abroad, I don't feel I missed out on anything. I didn't sit in all day anyway.

My pil and their other dils have this type of arrangement which is fine if you can cope with your mil and family in and out of your house endlessly and no time for friends outside family, and being baby experts.it always comes down to your relationship with your family and your dp/ dh family, IMO.

I hate the idea of 'popping in' all the time too!

However OP, you have a point, there is a down side to the move towards woman being out of the home and in work, the down side is when you are just first a mum you don't have lots of other female family members around you who are also housewives. That said, I would take that 6-12 month "down side" over not having a 30-40 year career working life. I like that I wasn't expected to resign when I got married.

Personally, I didn't find having DCs isolating, but I made an effort from DS being about 2 weeks old to make sure I went out daily, to baby groups, visit the woman I met on my antenatel course (having set it up in advance, see above about hating popping in on people or others popping in on me!), and built a network of 'mum friends'. Perhaps it helped I'd moved to this area when pregnant so I was aware I need to meet people, I suppose if you'd lived in an area for a long time and felt you knew a lot of people it might not occur to you that you needed to make new friends if they all worked fulltime.

And let's not sugar coat this, the reason it would take a village to raise a child in a lot of cultures wasn't so the mum could put her feet up and watch some trash TV for an hour or so, it's so the mum can go do things like fetch water, tend to crops and lifestock, clean without hoovers, washing machines, dishwashers, cleaning products, cook without a nice oven you just switch on, foods that have to be completely prepared from scratch (few people in the West consider 'preparing from scratch' to include grinding your own flour), and in many cases, just take on paid work within the home. It takes a village because the mum can't just do it by herself and run a home which is a full time job in many less developed parts of the world.

We also have the option of going back to work early if we want to. A lot of woman do only take 4-5 months off post birth, that's perfectly valid choice in our society, I'm very glad I have choices.

I think you make an interesting point op

Certainly for me, meeting other mums and socializing when ds1 was little was a life line to me. A group ofus spent every Friday together, where we'd share experiences and give each other support. We are still friends 12 years later and are supporting one if the group through breast cancer

You do need others around you with similarly and dc even if it's just to see what's normal or acceptable, or you can best yourself up when you think your dc are doing something awful.

I'm a single mum now to two ds's and have friends with sons so for me it's brilliant for us as to be included in other's families, and for my dc to see what a dad should be doing.

Personally I need to see other people, I love friends popping in and feeling my home is welcoming, as do my friends. I couldn't function as a single mum without their support

So that 'village' is there but you have to put in the work to create it for yourself, rather than it just being there, if that makes sense!

Yanbu, and it makes me think of the threads I read on here where people say they have never been away from their 7/8 year olds for more than a few hours and don't trust the children's grandparents to take care of them etc. I don't think that is particularly healthy or 'natural'.

Extended families have probably gone for good int he western world, but I think there is a bit of a movement to rediscover "communal" living.

I don't know if anyone else saw the "Grand Designs" episode about a self-build project? Basically, a group of people (all unable to afford to buy a house in the normal way) got together, found a bit of land they could use, and in partnership with a housing association, proceeded to build their houses. When the programme revisted 10 or 15 years later, nearly all were still there. Each household had a private house, but there were communal veg gardens, BBQ area, play area, etc. Everyone had essentially become a huge family and it was a great place for the kids to grow up. It seemed a very supportive and attractive arrangement to me.

People do often need to move for work but they also choose where to live. I read so often on here about people moving to some rural idyll "for the children" then on other threads about people living where there's no public transport and they are isolated and dependent on their partner bringing the car back after work.
It would NEVER occur to me to isolate myself like that. We choose to live somewhere with community and baby groups galore and coffee shops and where everybody alms everywhere and goes to local school etc. yes it means we're in a 1-bed 1-boxroom flat on the second floor with on street parking but that's our choice for community.
Others choose the garden and driveway and extra bedrooms but need to move to isolating suburbs to do so.

Its probably as you are quite affluent/higher class. Most people who are working class have all their family and friends on hand and care for thrir children in the way you describe in op. I know I do and most people here.

This is all assuming everyone's family are lovely.

I have struggled with this misconception for years.just a short wander across the boards will tell you some families are better at a distance. Not everyone has a family they particularly want to raise their dc with, and quite a lot of people have blended families too, so have another group of people to deal with.

If you could go back in time to the scenarios for many women, you might find they had to put up with it, rather than embraced it. I don't think the issues with mils and families have changed that much over the centuries.

Apart from women getting the vote, being able to work and be financially independent, birth control.. No stigma for divorce from your violent drunken dh or workshy layabout dh.

I hope it isn't presumptuous for me to contribute here, as I don't yet have DCs, but I very much agree with your points on isolation and lack of communality.

Some people I know think I'm mad to have settled in the city where I grew up, not far from my parents and sister, and that I see my family at least once a week. I'm coming to the end of my PhD and the consensus in academia seems to be that you just have to accept you're going to be moving across the globe for a good few years, living separately from your partner, if need be. I know many people who do this. If you're not up for this, you're not committed enough to the field.

It means a lot to me to stay where I am right now, living with my husband and close to my parents and DSis. We get on much better now we're all older and I don't know how I'd have got through the last few years without my family (PhD, my mental health issues). And I'm sorry to say I don't think I would have got through it had I not lived with my husband. As I've gotten older, I've started to make my choices around having these people close by and if I don't end up with a glittering professorship at Harvard, so be it!

I think a key factor is that a lot of people move house when they are expecting first DC. It would probably be a good idea to move and build up friends before experiencing such a major life change. I was one of only two members of my NCT group who had lived in the area for any length of time - it has made a big difference.

read jean liedloff 'the continuum concept'.

BohemianGirl Cant take familial advice or follow tradition.
Are you joking? If I'd taken familial advice I wouldn't have breastfed either child as it was deemed to 'spoil' the baby and ruin one's figure.

Tradition in my family also dictated that wives stayed at home looking after the children while the men went out every night and drank until closing time.
No thanks.

I am neither affluent or higher class.

Your gross generalization is false, like all gross generalisations.

I think culturally British people are quite private and are very forthcoming in asserting boundaries in that sense, making it very difficult for people to become familiar with each other.

Equally, didn't the 60's have a lot to do with changing these set ups? I know in my family my Mum and Dad moved to London in their mid twenties from the midlands as they didn't want to become their parents and live 2 minutes away from all of their extended family- they saw this is dull and conservative with a small c.

Friday16 - I live there because I have a beautiful 4 bedroomed detached house with a massive garden in an area of outstanding natural beauty with a zilch crime rate. Because I live in the arse end of nowhere I get all that for pennies. Also, can't afford to move.

Have you ever watched the American tv show Sister Wives?

It's about a polygamous family, one man and 3 or 4 wives plus their 27 or so kids...

I watched it expecting carcrash TV, but was then slightly jealous because the women seemed to have a great relationship with each other and all the children. Plus they all got spare time to do things that they liked, they had babysitters on tap who they could trust and knew innately....

Maybe not so weird after all

It's not that you can't make friends through toddler groups etc. It's that the friends, unless in the same situation as you, just want you for friendship/playing with dcs, they don't want some reciprocal arrangement of minding each other's dcs while you go to the doctors or get a haircut - because they rely on their mum or sister-in-law or whatever for that.
I sometimes regret raising dcs so far from family support but then I read a few threads on here about interfering grandparents and I don't feel so bad

Most people on here op so dont think its that much of a generalisation as its usually true. Whereas in my rl and rl of similar people no one leaves their family behind. Everyone sticks in a certain place with all their family and friends and its a proper community.

When DS (now 25) was at primary school, a classmates mother was a respected psychiatrist. She said back then that women thrive in groups and she blamed the breakdown of extended communities for much diagnosed depression.

I also think it can vary in unexpected ways. I had DS near London, our antenatal group became friends as husbands worked long hours and commuted so were away long hours so I felt I had a community in them. We then moved up North and, where I had expected it to be more friendly, it was much more difficult as people were more settled and most women my age had old schoolfriends or family to socialise with. It also seemed to me that most of them had started their families sooner so I had one baby and long days to fill where they had older children and were busier with other activities, friends, school, etc