To think that it doesn't take a village

[Amaltanda]

DH and I both have large families but we don't live near them. We don't have any support except a fairly infrequent teenage babysitter, and we just manage our parenting and childcare etc between ourselves. We are a very solid unit and our kids are very well behaved, doing well at school etc etc.

We find that when we do go home, our siblings have very different parenting styles to us, our own parents think its still the '80s in terms of their approach to childcare and it can generally be very stressful that they have these attitudes which are very different to ours. I do think it is good for children to be exposed to different types of people and that its not good for them to live in a bubble where everyone is like mummy and daddy, but i notice that our kids get exposed to things before we want them to be, hear language we don't use around them and start developing unwanted behaviour such as answering back, having tantrums, not following instructions etc that they dont have when its just us.

Our kids then want to do things that their cousins can do but which we don't like, such as watching movies rated 15 when they are 9, or going out by themselves when we think they are too young.

I am a teacher and I notice that some of the children with the worst behaviour have huge extended families that they are very close to and one parent told me that she cant follow up with consequences at home because the grandparents just undermine the mum by saying 'kids will be kids'.

My husband said that he thinks the phrase 'it takes a village' isnt really just about having different childcare options, but also having different people to teach your child different things and nurture them in different ways to how you do it. The way I see it, in my experience at least, our 'village' hasn't been very helpful bar doing the basic supervision duties if we fancy a rare 2 hours at a nearby restaurant.

Do you have a village that you find helpful or do you find it stressful like me, when its around?

This.
OP's obvious feeling of superiority drips from her post!

I suppose in an ideal world you'd have what you consider the right sort of village. As a teenager with insular parents I was unprepared for adulthood in a lot of ways and my parents didn't realise because they so rarely saw me in a village. It definitely takes a village.

We live over an hour from family so too far for regular childcare which would've been a massive financial help in the early years. However, throughout childhood we always travelled and made plans regularly with extended family and my children have great relationship with their grandparents. None of which undermine our parenting and all have provided weekend / overnight care at times. I have a friend locally and her parents havr provided afterschool childcare for years and are very heavily involved day to day, again her children are lovely and not exposed to the things you mention.

I think maybe the issue is just that your family have different values to you? Was your childhood different to the way you are raising your kids? Maybe you moved away, went to uni, aspired to a more middle class life?

I also think that a village is more than just extended family and about more than just childcare.

As well as extended family (to different extents) I'd include family friends, the other parents from DS1s football team (lots of reciprocal lifts), some of the other school parents or people from church.

I think a village is similar to what makes up a community...those bits in your life that arent your immediate family or a paid service.

A village clearly has different meanings. I think you get to choose your village to sone extent by the people that you and your DC’s spend time with. Mine don’t spend a lot of time with some family members for the reasons you shared and worse. But they do see my friends and their families, neighbours, coaches at their hobbies, their own friends and their families and other community members.
A friend of mine has a very different parenting style and lets her ‘difficult’ DS run wild. He’s not difficult he’s just ignored and when I speak to him his behaviour is fine. My own DS mentioned him the other day and said that he’s a nightmare because his mum never says no to him. He’s old enough to see that others do things differently and the consequences. That’s not a bad thing.
Choose your village wisely but try not to make it full of people who are a carbon copy of you. Kids do need to see variety of outlooks on life.

Your village is what you make of it. We live in a village very close to the primary school and we’ve made a lot of friends who have similar aged children and “the village” is me having a friend’s child because she forgot about the inset day, a different friend having my toddler when I was heavily pregnant and she could see I needed a few hours to put my feet up, someone dropping calpol over as someone else has run out, that sort of thing. You offer help where you can and you receive help when you need it, it doesn’t happen by accident. Some of these families have nearby close relatives, some don’t have any. The day to day pitching in to help others out is a conscious decision irrespective of relationship.

@Girasoli

I think a village is similar to what makes up a community...those bits in your life that arent your immediate family or a paid service.

I think this is where some posters are getting confused. Because the concept of a community has been so eroded. People often only make time for family, forgetting the benefits of community and friendship.

The village is if you have an emergency and there are people you can call upon to pick up your kids from school or the like. I have a good one

Good post! I definitely don’t think it ‘takes a village’ in the sense that you absolutely need a village to raise children. But it definitely helps- if the ‘village’ is a positive influence. It can be incredibly stressful to bring up children without support. You are lucky to be not only a two parent family but one where the husband sounds like he is hands on. This isn’t true even in all nuclear families, and some parents are raising children alone and I think for those families the village is even more important.
Sadly not all villages will be a good influence. What you describe is a good example. I’m also thinking of situations even more extreme than yours where family dynamics are highly dysfunctional. Abusive/harmful even. If a person was brought up by abusive or neglectful parents then their children continuing to be exposed to those toxic grandparents might be a risk, especially if the parent hasn’t really processed their experiences. Those who have will hopefully want to keep their distance and protect their children from going through the same.

So why then only talk about extended family?

I think you are making this more complicated than it needs to be.

Kids understand “different houses have different rules” from a very young age.

My sibling parents very differently from my DH and me. That’s completely fine. All it takes is a small reminder before seeing the other family that Janet and John might be allowed to do
xyz but you are not.

Grandparents often have more relaxed rules for grandchildren than they did for their own children. That’s fine.

It’s good for children to learn to adapt to the circumstances of different places, different families and different occasions.

My kids have huge extended family and are perfectly behaved! That’s like me saying I work with kids and those who don’t have a huge extended family or spend time with them are really socially weird and lack a sense of humour, it’s a total generalisation

We have an enormous village and my his I’m so grateful for them all. Not particularly for childcare but for the opportunities my children had growing up, so close to their cousins and aunts and uncles, also a group of our friends who have done some amazing things with us as a family, our neighbours who we think of as family.
Their cousins really were their first friends, all us parents have pretty similar styles of parenting - den building, capture the glad, board games etc were played during the big cousin sleepovers at everyone’s house, 2
of my dc are now adults and they arrange regular ‘cousin meet ups’ because they all get on so well and look after and support each other. Celebrate each others achievements and rally when they are going through difficult times.
Honestly my village are the best thing about my life.

I think you’ve taken ‘it takes a village’ to mean ‘it takes a bunch of free babysitters who all think the same as me’. The village, imo, is a group of people around a family:

DH is super-handy and has a lot of tools, most of the neighbours will knock on our door before heading out to B and Q

My dog ran away from the sitter, a completely random woman I didn’t know caught him and took him home (after phoning me) until we could get something sorted

My adult son with ASD can’t find work, one of the main reasons is because he’s terrible at interviews - someone we know has given him a chance part time without an interview

When he was at school, ‘I’m running late, can you hold my kid at the park’ was a frequent text

Someone’s teenage daughter was getting hassled by a drunk man on the train - I stepped in (I didn’t know her)

That’s what the village is and is for: and if yours isn’t to your liking, crack on and make it better.

I think more influences on children are always better. A small number of adult influences can be at best intense and at worst abusive (with no other adults to check and rein in that behaviour). As your children age you'll lose a lot of your influence on them anyway - and if they fall out with you as teenagers it'll be helpful for them to have close relationships with other adults. Imo I'm in favour of a village and multiple positive influences on kids.

I don't think that's the same as a kid having influence from a large, extended, dysfunctional family though. I think teachers, older kids etc all can take the role of a village or mentor to your kids, and provide things you can't always as parents

I think that he answering back is natural as kids get older but if they have a village then they probably do pick it up from older relatives.

I remember when me and my sister were young, 6 and 7, we didn't have a village and an aunt that we hadn't met before couldn't believe how obedient etc we were.

A couple of years later, we still didn't have a village but we had started answering back because that is what kids do when they don't agree with something.

I’d have liked a village but I’ve got sod all.

I’ve got the two most brilliant DC aged 12 and 14 - kind, with good friends, funny, doing well at school and extra circular stuff, well behaved etc etc and I have a great relationship with them both (long may it last)

A village would have helped me, but they’ve not needed one.

Why are people so hung up on this expression?
It is just an old saying (originally African I think) that means it’s ideal for children to live in a community where they can develop socially and acquire skills through positive interactions with others within the community.
It’s true enough but it’s barely more than a platitude.

The “village” is not needed but helps a lot. I don’t have one and if I am sick, late or anything happens I literally don’t know what to do. I picked up kids in a state of sickness you can’t even imagine as I did not have anyone doing it. My daughter had some medical tests at 7 am and I had to get the other daughter along and miss school has I had no one to leave her till school opened at 7.45. I do pay people to help but sometimes they can’t/ are sick/ other commitments so it is really hard. I also miss big Sunday lunches with family, weekends plans with them or just having my mum/sister pop in the evening for a chat. In London people are formal and needs to be booked weeks in advance to see friends. I just texted a friend and her daughters and the first weekend they have free is in June!