To think we mums are utterly exhausted as it does take a village

[Namechsnger]

I was listening to a podcast where women were discussing the actual reason why modern day mums are absolutely exhausted cause raising a child was never a one or 2 people job but it was supported by whole extended family, lots of family members used to live together and support each other in raising children, that's what family was about. On top of that women used to stay home and not work which meant focusing solely on home and children, which I think would be easier to do than juggling home, kids and a job.
I am utterly exhausted with 2 children - a toddler and newborn and so are all my friends who have 2 children. People with one seem to be doing okay but still juggling all the plates.
I think this explains the ever slumping fertility rates in the West. Sigh!

It's a myth. This village raising in the old days. Perhaps many years ago. I'm 60. My mother had no help from her parents or in laws. They were working to keep their heads above water. They couldn't look after me. Neighbours couldn't look after me. They would help if they could, when needed not it wasn't some it takes a village mentality. We were a close knit community but didn't have the time, energy and resources to look after other children other than half an hour.

People on here are obsessed with having a toddler and newborn. If you have children so close together you're actively choosing to make things more difficult for yourself. Up until pretty recently, about a year ago, the average UK age gap between siblings was 3 years 8 months. But on this forum there us and always had been this creepy obsession with having two kids so close together.

I had mine close together because I knew I wanted 2 children (ended up with twins so actually have 3) but I also knew that if I waited any longer such as 3-4 years that I would be out of the baby stage and not want to go back there. I also didn't want to be having a 2nd at 40.

DRFT, but having read something on mumsnet where one parent off-loaded a child onto another as a matter of a life-or-death emergency, and then ripped the hosting parent an new arsehole because she'd dared to bath the child with her own daughter & washed their hair before putting them to bed, i can well understand why people don't want to get involved with other families.

I can remember numerous times during the 1980s when I was only a child and would be dumped on someone else when an emergency cropped up, and remember many more times when other children were dumped onto my mother. It was never questioned, they just did it, and children were fed & watered accordingly. I didn't matter if we kids hated each other, this was how it was.

I remember being about 4 years old when my dad fell off a ladder one Saturday morning. I - along with my two sister who would have been 11 and 12 - was trundled up the street to the house of another family, no questions asked, and I wouldn't have dared to protest. This family had a boy and a girl similar in age to my sisters. The boy was in the garage fixing a car with his dad. The girl immediately went out somewhere with my sisters. The mum went back upstairs to finish vacuuming, while I stood in the hallway alone, trying to make sense of it all. I'm not saying it was ideal, but back then everyone just got on with it.

I totally agree! I'm 61 and there was no 'village'!! My maternal granny did live with us, but she probably 'supervised' us more than anything else. My dad was a saint to live with his MIL for a huge part of their married life but they always got on because my granny never interfered!

If most of your family is overseas, you need to create your own local support network. You say that you're willing to put the work in, but how much help did you offer your friends and neighbours prior to having children? And how much help are you offering now?

I also think you need to make your own village. For example, now my teens are older, they can drive, cook, clean, walk the dog, go the shop and help me in an emergency. Someone commented to me the other day that I was lucky as I had an army helping me out.

Teach your kids life skills and one day you’ll wake up and you’ll have everyone in your house helping you out.

If a neighbour shouted ‘I’ll tell your mam’ to a mnetter’s child, they’d be on here wondering if they should report it and someone would be telling her, if it was them, they’d ’go nuclear’ and she should get on to the police ‘to log it!’
Want a village? You can’t smile at their baby in Tesco or there on here telling you about the ‘weirdo’ in the supermarket who ‘stared’ at their ‘bubba…..’

Unless you're a bloke when it does reduce your overall life workload as older women take on your domestic load

So true! This is after all the site where posters routinely post about hating everyone and never answering their doors. How can you have a village if they cant get past the barricades?

"Women used to stay at home" was never true for the working classes. The women in my family have always worked, they couldn't afford not to!

I don't entirely agree that the problem is reluctance to engage in village reciprocity.

My village is very geographically dispersed now, it's much smaller, and expectations have changed.

My grandparents had minimum 4 siblings each, who between them had an average of 3-4 children (even allowing for a few being childless), all lived within about 5 miles, and the wider network of aunts and cousins was huge (and very local). They knew their neighbours and were part of a community, they would have chatted on the bus, or in a queue at the butchers. My childhood memories included lots of women gossiping about their village, Jean-next-door's son is married to that nice girl from New Street who was the coal man's daughter, no from his second marriage when he married old Mrs Simpsons niece.

Contrast with today. I have one sibling who is equally pressured for time (though we do reciprocal emergency care), our parents spend most of the year abroad, and my in laws are two hours away. My town's high street doesn't have a butcher or greengrocer and my neighbours are all new to my local area and we don't have many shared acquaintances. The daughter from next door, lives 300 miles away.

I could invite lots of people for Christmas dinner, or spend my free time touring the country visiting relatives, but it wouldn't make a village, and it would make my lack of time and head space worse rather than better.

The village is a double edged sword. I grew up in a very toxic and sick village. I moved countries, so did DH and we are bringing up our daughter away from any family. When DH was travelling for job, I was on my own with a baby and then a toddler. It wasn't easy, especially due to my health issues but I was happy to be far away from any meddling and toxic relations who made my own childhood a bad memory. I'm NC with them but whenever I visited my family, I felt like a hunted animal as my relative went on a literal hunt to meet me. I'm happy on my own. Maybe it has made my life more difficult in terms of juggling health issues and working full time while having a child but I didn't have anyone trying to interfere with my family.

I don’t think there ever was this golden era of easy parenting. Life is hard. It throws curve balls and you have to roll with them. My mother’s life was very hard too in spite of being a housewife. I don’t consider my mother to have had an easier life than me in any way it was very difficult so I don’t hark back to it as some easier time. Then and now there were people who had it much worse than I have it. I also don’t think women in tribes in the far reaches of the planet have it easier as parents than we do. They are often responsible for producing food, getting water, breastfeeding into toddlerhood. But none of that negates the very hard job of being a decent working parent. It is demanding, gruelling and tough but I can only speak for myself it is so bloody rewarding. Best thing about my life being a parent.

My observation is it's becoming common for small children to have two parents in the 'dad' role and for nursery to do the heavy weight parenting. Not everyone though. Some families also seem to be successfully navigating both parents equally occupying the 'mum' and 'dad' roles with a bit of nursery too and both parents part time or compressed hours. The second looks exhausting though.

In our household we're probably the second but the split is not equal. I probably do 70% of the 'mum' job and dh does the rest. I work part time and him full time. Nursery 3 days.

Also, no or rare access to contraception and the general feeling that a woman's role is to breed children means that many of them go from pregnancy to pregnancy with brief breaks inbetween. You see those women in their 50s or 60s and they look very old.

In fact this isn't true in many societies where the village model is still in effect, and it didnt used to be true in the UK either. Although many men did/do "escape" providing care in later life by dying.

I know my own father who was by absolutely no means father of the year worked away and at home from dawn to dusk for his family. We had washing machines, dishwashers, lawn mowers, you name it for decades because pre internet that man figured out how to fix any bloody thing. He never stopped working and still doesn’t stop. My FIL was even less father of the year than my own father because he is an abusive fucker but he worked non stop too. Neither of them were caring though in any meaningful way but they worked as hard or harder than anyone on this thread.

Hard work alone, even on behalf of your family, does not always a good parent make.

I think emotionally this generation are far more involved than would have been possible in previous generations but so far at least across the board that hasn’t translated to good outcomes for children.

I’ve been thinking and I think a lot of people get more help now than they ever did in the past.
I can’t remember peoples grandparents picking them up from school in the 70s/80s, peoples grandmas always seemed to be incredibly old.Occasionally kids would go to their grandmas for a week in the summer (and hate it).
i know quite a few people whose parents do all their childcare. My neighbour drives over an hour to care for grandchildren, do cleaning and shopping for his son and his wife. Most mums when I was young didn’t even drive.
I think a lot of mums are just doing a lot more, not that they had more help.

Maybe as people leave it so late to have kids these days. I have 3.5 years between my first 2 then 9 more till the third. My DD has 7 years 4mths between hers ( through choice). She mentioned just the other day how she would never want kids so close in age to have toddler and baby.

How fortunate you were! Makes a huge difference

Yes I think this is the thing. We all want total autonomy over how we raise our children, yet we want a village. It was never the case that grandparents had to stick to the letter of “rules”’laid down by parents whilst helping them out.

I don’t know the answer as I also wouldn’t have wanted my parents doing things however they liked, ie not worrying about the car seat because “it’s only round the corner”.

But equally I found the baby and toddler years so exhausting, and I can’t really quite believe we evolved to have that level or exhaustion as standard!

It didn’t help that my children’s father (my exh) is and was a lazy arse of course. Or maybe selfish rather than lazy.

But interestingly it is scientifically the case that we did evolve to have grandmothers - that’s why women have a menopause!

Its partly about sharing wisdom as much as doing childcare though I think.

Women in their 50s and 60s absolutely had access to contraception!! I know because I am one!!

I think women my age look much younger than our mothers' generation did. We've very different attitudes, we dress much more fashionably and we don't get to retire at 60!!

I’m in my 50s too and had access to contraception. I meant the post more historically, when there still was a village.