Does anyone have a ‘village’?

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Just musing after a day having to bring DC with me to a medical appointment for myself and after a year of parenting with very very little ‘village’ so to speak of. Me and DH are 1.5 hours away from one set of parents and 2.5 hours from the other. There’s nobody to quickly come and watch DC, to take DC out to give me/DH a break. We’ve had one date night just the two of us in a year. We have a lovely time and juggle childcare, hobbies, holidays, family time, meals out and DC comes along. But it’s a different experience to friends who have far more hands on support and it’s something that runs through my mind as we start thinking about TTCing another baby.

I know we chose to have a child and we knew we lived far from family…but just wondering whether our experience is an increasingly common experience or what support from family/in-laws etc looks like for other people?

Our parents live far away (similar distance to you OP) but will help with occasional childcare eg a night out or when our childminder closed for a week cos of covid. But not regularly and they’re not close enough if your child is sent home from school sick one day.

Since my daughter has started school though things have improved. I chatted to people at the school gates, I went to birthday parties and socialised, I am active in the WhatsApp group. Tbh that’s just my personality and how I am anyway but a bonus has been I now have a number of friends who are happy to have the kids for an evening so we can go out, or collect from school and hang on to them for half an hour in an emergency, and one will also happily have my toddler as well. It is quid pro quo though, I frequently do the same for them.

My children are grown now but no we didn't - that was my fault though as I only realised too late that to have a village, I needed to be a village first.

I lived five hours away from family when my kids were growing up. I "built" a village. We, as a family, developed a lovely relationship with an older lady who became our regular babysitter. I worked hard to foster friendships with other mums, from ante-natal groups through every stage of my DCs development. I definitely found a sisterhood as many mums were in the same position. It takes work but it can be done.

Met a fabulous woman when pregnant who basically went up to anyone who looked to be in a similar life stage to her in our area and gathered them into a WhatsApp group. So many of our children ended up in the same nurseries, schools etc. We'd do occasional childcare swaps so couples could have date nights, solo parents could have nights off etc and there was always someone to hang out with. In spite of living in a city with half a million people it felt like a village. But at the same time most of them lived far away from their families and there was a culture of independence, so we didn't lean too heavily on one another. People were very good at holding boundaries/saying no to things if it wasn't convenient. So sometimes you'd be reaching out for help and none was forthcoming. I'm the sort of person to offer help to my own detriment, create community etc and after a few years of it feeling rather one sided I was starting to also become more boundaried about how much I hosted/volunteered/offered.

Moved last year to an actual village and the difference is stark. We've not even been here a year and people take each others children to/from school, kids are in and out of houses sometimes for hours, we've had multiple offers of help or just to hang out, to a level I've never experienced before. I'm currently heavily pregnant with baby #3 and have had multiple people say we can drop the children off with them/call them any time even in the middle of the night, people actively coming over to offer assistance rather than waiting to be asked. They seem to really mean it too. I'm so used to being the one offering that it's a tonic to be on the other side. Though am looking forward to paying it forward when baby has arrived. We've just bought a bigger car and actually opted for one with slightly more capacity as we envision being that family who take extras on days out with us 🥰

You have to make your own and that has to start by offering help before asking for it. We have no local family, no friends with kids before we had our own but I noticed when people were struggling and offered to take their kid for them if they had a work thing, appointment or whatever. For a while it was one sided but gradually becomes reciprocal.

We've had some good friends along the way and lovely neighbours but like with all problems of this sort, if you don't have it for free you have to apply time, thought and money, that's the long and short of it.

So:

Find and regularly employ (and generously pay).a trusted babysitter from e.g. Sitters.

Cultivate people with sensible teenage/young adult children. Pay them generously.

Cultivate other parents with similar age children. Get to know them. Have the kids over. Hopefully they will reciprocate (a lot of people won't though).

Look out for clubs, activities, gyms with creches etc so you can get an hour here or there.

Do things with your parents (if they and you would like to) such as a week somewhere and you might get a night off during that week (my mum was fantastic at rocking up with a sticker book at 4pm!)

I have found myself a small village. I’ve pared up with a like minded mum that also doesn’t have a village and we are each other’s village.

No village here. Only one grandparent has ever helped, they live over an hour away and also have health problems so it’s always been very sporadic.

as our kids got older, we’ve used babysitters and also do a reciprocal swap with other parents which works well.

I haven’t even got a hamlet. It’s me, me and me. All on my own. Nobody has ever offered to look after DS so I can do something of an evening. I put things on Facebook asking if anyone wants to join us (days out, concerts, theatre trips, Center parks stays) and nobody ever replies. It’s very lonely. Luckily DS is good company and have fun by ourselves.

@fintangel if you have the right people it does! For 6+ years I hosted, babysat, checked in with people, offered my time, organised playdates that blended into 'come to mine for lunch' and then 'if you have x,y and z to do why don't you leave the kids here for a few hours?'. It never became close to equally reciprocal. I'd say probably 90:10. As soon as we invited/organised something they'd be there, but very few people organised things themselves or offered out help, or even responded when help was requested. I enjoy hosting and being helpful, so for a long time it didn't really occur to me to mind (shouldn't give just to receive and all that), but the last few years have been really rough for my household with bereavements and other dramas and I was astonished at how few people showed up for us or checked in. It's so much down to the individual. Sometimes you can throw everything at creating the village and all you get is exhausted.

When we announced we were moving though people were genuinely sorrowful. We had lots of 'but you guys are the glue/organisers/hosts/centre of things, what will it be like without you?!' and since we left we've had a few texts from people trying to organise the things we did (pta stuff and things like that) as they now appreciate the effort that went into it. So, retrospectively validating!!! But having moved and found a bunch of people more like me and DH, it's blooming lovely to have others also making effort.