To think some people on here can be a bit naive with regard to ‘the village’?

[Buildyourvillage]

I see it quite a lot on here, that if you need sudden childcare either because of an emergency or last minute change of plans, you should have a village to call on.

I found out I was expecting my (planned!) baby a couple of weeks after the first lockdown was announced, but I was still determined to be as sociable as possible. My own parents died before I turned 30, so I didn’t have them as support, but we had DHs parents although they live about an hour and a half away.

We did the NCT course and we were really lucky as everyone in our group hit it off and I know not everyone does. However, we’re a little widespread geographically and most significantly, out of six of us, four went back to work FT: two straightaway, two initially went back PT but then got different FT jobs.

Toddler classes here are hit and miss at best. We do the activity with the toddlers and I am always friendly and sociable but somehow it’s hard to strike up meaningful conversations beyond ‘how old is she …’

I have seen on another thread that you should be apparently organising childcare swaps with other mums to cover for school holidays and the like and I’m not against that in theory but in practice I do wonder if one persons village is another persons CF. AIBU?

Friends takes a lot of work, definitely more than a passing comment about the school fete.

But friends you made at school/college/neighbourhood/work were all just randoms who happened to be in the same place at the same time.
That's how friends are made 🤷‍♀️

Exactly this.

There are people I've met through DC and some remained friendly acquaintances that I could talk to in the playground or at playgroup, but others became friends because it turned out we had other things in common other than children the same age.
I'd still happily help an acquaintance out or a friend of a friend out if they had a "shit tomorrow is wear something purple day at school, does anyone have anything spare".

Nobody would ever make friends if every new person was viewed as some random at (insert location here).

Well, I'm not a hermit and neither is my kid, so I'm open to getting to know people wherever we meet. However, if you think 7 years of primary school is not long enough to get to know someone, well I don't know what to say to that. Some Mumsnetters live on a different planet to mine.

They're not necessarily friends of mine, but we are very definitely friendly. I've been on a few nights out with school mums.

No, I wouldn't call on them as first port of call in a crisis, but I'd say they were more than acquaintances too.

@whatabeautifulwedding I agree. I moved into my home 9 months ago, very lonely at I thought the neighbour was being generally friendly offering help that wasn't needed and it was definitely under the guise that she was sizing me up for childcare

I think I've took her kid to school most of the past 9 months.

I'm moving again soon and tbh won't be so eager and friendly to make friends with other mums!

This isn't normal. I'm a single parent and I wouldn't let this put you off in future. Why are you doing school run regularly for someone else? Stop it off right now it's not a common thing. I don't know how you got in to this but it's OK to say NO! This is no longer working for me... just send a txt and say its no longer viable for you.

I wasn't friends with everyone in my "village." I was friendly with them though. There's a difference!

It's important-well it is to me!- not to keep a tally chart. If I'm going somewhere anywhere I have no problem with taking other people's kids with me-why would it?

Actually, the "village" doesn't work if people keep tally charts. It's more of a "to each according to their need, from each according to their ability" situation.

Generally, I think the problem is that people wouldn’t be open to being asked for help, and therefore feel that they can’t ask for help themselves.
I’d ask pretty much anyone, but they’d also know that they could always ask me, and there would be absolutely no hard feelings of the answer was “sorry, I can’t help atm”.

I live far away from my family so have had to adapt to not having a social network. My sister also reminded me not to depend on my parents as they're too old etc. Come to think of it my sister resented me visiting with my kids so would always engineer a row. We spent a lot of the visit out of the house because of her awful behaviour. So it is hard for people who don't have a network for different reasons.

Guess who's got on tap childcare sorted......?

I think most people would be happy to help in an emergency or now and then .It would be difficult to set up more regular help I think .Everyone has their own jobs and routines .A close friend is fine

The term definitely does mean living in a mutually supportive community. (I work in this field and it's how it's used.)

Of course this is difficult to come by nowadays because society has changed, we're more individualistic, we now need two parents working full time to cover basic survival needs, grandparents in many cases live far away, are either working or too elderly, people are expected to move home chasing jobs and social housing has been sold off, or is no longer provided for adult children, meaning people are forced out of their communities.

A natural human community would be more like in a tribe where everyone shares childcare and support. This is probably what New Labour's Sure Start was intended to replace and it was excellent in many ways (despite issues such as the view that children are better off in childcare rather than with families).

Where I live we're lucky to have a very strong community with baby drop ins and provision so it was easy to meet other parents and conversation tended to be about arr, philosophy and politics more than nappies and weaning, but since Austerity cuts it's much harder for new parents locally.

Exactly. And an understanding that children (and having children) are part of a shared community rather than the insane capitalist-individualist view of natural human existence as 'a lifestyle' choice the haters on here deem it!

It totally depends on who is providing the childcare. With immediate family it’s much easier but it comes with strings attached. With friends I think it is much harder than people realise and it’s easy to tip into CF territory if you aren’t careful.

I’m a lone parent and people are always telling me I ought to do a better job of cultivating childcare networks: in theory I have a decent local network of trusted parent friends. There are certainly three or four families I could call on in an emergency to help me with my DD, and have done. But it’s never been something I can plan my life around.

Serendipitous one offs are fine but In practice if you are expecting friends to provide free childcare on a regular basis to support your social or work life you are going to breed resentment.

I basically assume that I will always have to pay and if someone is able to do a favour it’s unexpected upside. I think if you over use it you will lose friends.

And an understanding that children (and having children) are part of a shared community rather than the insane capitalist-individualist view of natural human existence as 'a lifestyle' choice the haters on here deem it!

Thats fine in theory. But it can quickly become very asymmetrical with single parent households because they need far more childcare than two parent households.

@Thepeopleversuswork "Thats fine in theory. But it can quickly become very asymmetrical with single parent households because they need far more childcare than two parent households."

But it's honestly not about childcare!

@CurlewKate

But it's honestly not about childcare!

I understand that the concept of "the village" is much broader than just childcare. I guess my point is that for a single parent without family childcare is where the rubber hits the road and where the concept of "community" really kicks in.

Having raised a child single handedly with no financial help whatsoever and no family within 60 miles or so I've just noticed that there's a lot of supportive talk from people about helping out etc but very little of it is actionable enough to rely upon. In practice you tend to find people are very happy to do it once or twice but beyond that it tends to stretch their patience.

As a single parent I was very aware of my vulnerability when my kids were little, and I knew my need for emergency childcare would be greater than 2 parent families. Consequently I made a point of doing what I could when I could - having kids round for tea, taking them on trips, playing at the park so the other mums could go home etc. I built up a bank of goodwill, so when the inevitable emergencies arose, people were always happy to help. If I had ever felt things were getting uneven, I would have offered to pay people for their time. Luckily that never happened.

I think this was all well and good many years ago - maybe three or four generations ago and beyond, when women didn't have to go out to work, and many women didn't. Also some 15 to 25 extended family members lived within maybe 10 to 20 minutes walk - and there was a great big close community - neighbours were very close, work colleagues were closeby, workplaces for the men was often only a 15 to 20 minute walk or a quick bike ride away ...

But now people live multiple hundreds of miles - even thousands of miles away from family... siblings and cousins and even parents piss off to another country at the drop of the hat for a 'new life' ... like it's going to be soooo much better there. Then the complaints come and the pissing and moaning when they've got no network to help them in their new place/new life...

A woman in my road is 32 and moved to this area 2 years ago from her home town (70 miles away,) ... She had a baby last year with a bloke she knew for just a few weeks because she got 'maternal feelings' and he fucked off immediately and now she is alone. Her sister lives 70 miles away her brother lives 80 miles away.

Her mom and dad lives in South Africa - moved 10 years ago!) and she's got absolutely no-one to help... She's actually said to one or two of the neighbours that she doesn't understand why people don't offer to help her with her baby ... and offer to babysit so she can go out with her mates... LMFAO what a cheek! I'm nearly 60, and I've actually worked for nearly 45 years and raised 2 children of my own for the best part of a quarter century ... Like fuck am I going to be babysitting random neighbours kids while they fuck off out to the pub!

This is my time now. (Mine and DH's..) I loved all the years of raising my OWN kids and would never change a thing, but I have done it now. My baby/childminding years have passed...... I'll help my kids when they need it but I'm not going to be permanent child carer for them even... Been there done that, worked for 42-43 years and raised kids for nearly a quarter century...

As I said, like fuck am I going to take care of some random neighbours baby .... #sorrynotsorry! It's a different world now and neighbours and family members aren't going to look after your kids ... You have the kids you fucking look after them. What's more, NO-ONE ever helped me and DH with my kids. Sooooooooo suck it up buttercup.

I think this was all well and good many years ago - maybe three or four generations ago and beyond, when women didn't have to go out to work, and many women didn't.

Do you mean the community breakdoen happene that lomg ago in UK? That would explain the extremes I encountered here tbh.

Without having read the whole thread (sorry), has anyone brought up ask vs guess culture yet?

If you’re an “ask” person you have no problem asking someone else for a favour but you also have no problem if they say no. If someone asks you for a favour you have no problem either with them asking you (you would consider very few requests cheeky) or with you having to refuse them.

If you’re a “guess” person you will only ask if you are already pretty sure someone is going to say yes because you feel like if you ask someone and they say no they will feel really bad about it (and then you feel bad for asking them). So you put out feelers first and do everything you can to try and get someone to offer before you even have to ask them.

A “guess” person may well see an “ask” person’s requests as a bit cheeky because they will feel like they can’t turn them down.

So when someone who says they don’t have anyone they can ask to pick up their kids from school etc they are usually a “guess” person. There are probably plenty of people they could ask who would not see it as cheeky at all, but they imagine all those other people are “guess”
people too so they don’t feel like they can ask them.

I feel like I haven’t explained this very well, but sometime it really helps to understand the dynamics of asking and returning favours.

Sometimes I think it's a deliberate blindness to pretend it's much easier for families to balance everything. If people were honest that even if they have family, they can't always step in. And even if they have friends, they can't drop everything to help when they have their own lives. And even if they have 'mum/parent' friends from school/baby classes/toddler group - they're not always people who'd be able to step up. It lays bare that actually it's bloody difficult a lot of the time to balance DCs, work and life.
I have a big family. I have friends from lots of different stages of my life - who have known my DCs since they were babies. It was still bloody difficult to get people to watch our DCs in emergencies.

It suited our family for me to be a SAHM . I learnt very quickly though that some people thought that was free childcare for them . If you stay at home then there are compromises - we were a bit more frugal . It felt a real piss take for others to think you would help them have a better quality of life by providing free child care . I have plenty of friends but only 2/3 who I will help in an emergency and they will also help me . It’s based on real friendship not any concept of a village raising kids together . Raising kids is hard work and you really don’t need regular extra ones

I think when they start school, it's about finding arrangements that work foe both of u. So if one has Fridays off, the other Mondays, you can make that a regular thing throughout the summer holidays. Or if u both end up taking a week off for childcare, its maybe having the other person's child in that time too. It's quite down to luck tho, of finding someone you get on with well enough to negotiate with, that your kids get on well enough, and that logistics work foe both of u. I'm quite antisocial, and have found it easier to make mum friends now one is at school than at playgroups, as you're in contact with them so much more regularly. I think the regular contact thing is key tho- I do pick ups twice a week, if you didn't do any because of work it would be harder, and the ones who seem to know each other best are the ones who are there every day.