To think if it takes a village to raise a child, why is it left mainly to the Mother/parents?

[chuckb4ss]

I only say the Mother because I feel at present Fathers taking shared leave isn’t as common. But I am not surprised women suffer from PND when they are left to raise a baby for the vast majority of time on their own. It makes me think that maybe the modern nuclear family of two parents and two children doesn’t work, and that we are better how we were in the past as tribes or surrounded by extended family for support. This would also reduce the loneliness experienced by the elderly too.

YANBU

Depends on your extended family to be honest! Sometimes it’s preferable to be alone.

My marriage wasn’t like this. I took four months maternity, happily ans then went back to work. Generally when women take longer it’s not because they are forced but because they wish to. My husband and I did fifty, fifty, and it’s the same for my friends

I think really it’s about understanding what support you have before deciding to have a child with someone.

Agree with PP: Depends on your extended family to be honest! Sometimes it’s preferable to be alone.

Because our society is not set up to actually ensure that families have a decent support network

Doesn't it also depend on whether extended family want to be involved? I'm not overly involved in my niece or nephews lives and wouldn't really want to be. There are loads of threads about grandparents that aren't arsed either. What then?

Have you never read the threads are here about parents/in-laws offering advice or help?
It’s generally considered that they are interfering/trying to take over/out of date etc and the advice is to go NC.

No wonder so many parents are left to get on with it on their own.

I think it depends on your family......my daughter has 2 daughters and it’s like they belong to us all.....they spent time regularly with me and my partner and other nanny and grandad and aunts and uncles.....different people take them to school or pick them up each day.....we all do homework with them.....even my mum ( their great grandma) spends time doing things with them....it was also like this when I was a child....so I guess it’s just that different families do things differently over the ages......not that there is a modern way and an older way.

You read enough posts about new mums who doesn't want their parents or in laws involved to understand why.

You can't expect the village to just be convenient babysitters. If they are going to be involved regularly, they should a right to discipline and share at least some elements or their values and customs, but you g parents don't want that, so they remain insular.

I think "it takes a village" no longer applies to our modern society. In the past, people would look after each others children, share resources and skills. Mothers, aunts, sisters would all live in the same town and (for example) look after toddlers when mum had a new baby.

These days, families are dispersed, childcare outside the family is used more heavily and people don't have time to help each other as they hardly have enough time to look after their own family.

I think men should step up and give a hand with raising their own children before expecting members of the wider family to do it for them

There are some Asian cultures where you lie in bed for 40 or so days whilst everyone else does everything around you...to the point they hand you your baby (if in cot), so you literally rest all day and night...unfortunately wasn’t my case but have seen this in family and although I’d probably feel quite claustrophobic with that much ‘care’- I wouldn’t have minded someone cooking and cleaning for me

As humans, we actually evolved to have grandmothers. Women stop being fertile for a large amount of their life because it’s not possible for one person to care for a child alone - obviously men should be there to care for their own child, but evolution obviously couldn’t rely on this.

Only humans and elephants have this - no longer fertile matriarchs.

Humans are born much more helpless that other animals - we have big heads to accommodate our big brains, and as a result need to be born “too soon”.

It’s very fashionable to say gps have done their bit and didn’t choose to be gps etc. But that means something else is needed in place of hands on god. We have actually evolved so that a mother doesn’t have to cope alone.

Hands on gps, not god.

Definitely agree men should do more - but being able to do more would help. I only had 2 weeks pat leave - should definitely be longer. Love furlough, so much more time with my family. Dreading getting back to 'normal'.

I think the "village" model only works when the village is all working from the same book, which tribes generally would be. All the different parenting styles across generations and backgrounds aren't really conducive to a consistent environment for children.

Maybe we need more small tribe-like communes...

Have you tried interfering with anyone's child-rearing OP? You cant even say "please stop kicking me" to the average child without a huge aggressive response from their parents.

I always liked the idea of the extended family helping etc. But in reality you as a mum have to give up a huge amount of control in order for that to work. My husband is Pakistani but his in laws live in Pakistan. When we went to visit there we were there for 3 weeks but i still wasnt "allowed" to do my own laundry! They thought they were being kind doing it for me but by that time i really wanted some independence back and just to do things for myself. You've got countless incidents where people do live with in laws or an extended family and the grandparents get to decide everything for the baby and the mum has no choices. Im on my third child now and i am quite confident in my parenting choices. I enjoy making choices for my children and feel that's my role as there mum. Sometimes it would be nice to have others around to help out but i think the grass always seems greener and the reality is in order to accept help from others you have to give up alot of control which is harder than we realise. I think the best is having a supportive family living nearby who respect and love the mum and the grandchildren but let the mum make her own decisions.

I agree Dads should do more (than is done in most cases) but I’m just saying we should acknowledge the evolutionary need for more than one person hands on, especially with an infant, rather than just leaving mothers to it.

I do think multi-generational living and support must have huge benefits when 'done right'. Of course, this is not just using a village to raise a child - the same village then needs to support and care for its elders, which people don't seem quite so keen on.

That would have been my worst nightmare having loads of people interfering with me and my DC as babies.

Quite happy though for them to cook, clean and babysit without giving unsolicited opinions.

I think it is even worse than just mothers doing it alone. They are doing it alone AND expected to work in good careers, look good, nice houses, raise children with a thousand hobbies. We have very little family help and it is so so hard. I would have loved to raise my kids in a village. @Kitkat151 your set up sounds perfect, room for a couple more

We live in a totally different world to before.

A- women’s life were often dedicated to their children and household chores due to not being allowed to work. I can’t see how working moms who barely have time to see their own kids could fit in other people’s children on a regular basis without further affecting quality time spent with their own kids.

B- back in the days (and not too long ago) children where NOT seen as the center of the universe. The notion that you would bring your baby to a baby class to enhance his cerebral abilities would have been laughed at for example. You could reprimand anybody’s kids without being questioned and the parenting that was given to the kids by the “village” is drastically different to what would be acceptable now. Now mums read half a million books about parenting before the baby is born, many think saying “no” is extremely damaging and have planned almost minute by minute what they want their kids to do/learn/ear and are not ready to compromise on it, try and give a suggestion to a mom about what to do with her baby and you will see the majority will less than appreciative.

Mums currently want the village if it means free baby sitting and if the village follows the thousands of instructions they have carefully drafted in a PDF as if the village has never raised a kid to adulthood before.

There are benefits to the village and I do think mums and elderly (especially elderly) need more support BUT I think mums have isolated themselves from the village rather than the village from mums. It’s impossible now to go to a baby class without every single mom comparing their kids to each other, bragging about their own kids, judging the parenting choices of others. Honestly parenting is now this weird toxic competition where people want to show off and nobody dares to be honest as a result making it impossible to offer advice or support without making the other person feel like she is failing or triggering a defensive reaction.

I agree that this is one of the downsides of modern society. Sure, some people are perfectly happy doing things alone but so many mothers/parents struggle.

I became a lone parent with a small baby (quite a few years ago now) and it was a huge struggle for me as I was living a very long distance from family.

As PP have said, this is nice but requires mothers to follow the status quo in how to raise their children and be much less in control of how kids are raised. Which could be good or bad.

I think a nice happy medium would be a way to link up older people and babies, tbh- I often imagine coffee mornings or a find a granny type service!

I think it requires a village yet you come on here and people are outraged that you might want grandparents to help when you’re on your knees.