It Takes a Village

Watching Hillary CLinton come back into the public eye after the devastating election loss last year to promote her new book reminded me of her previous book that I admired- It Takes a Village. I grew up in India in a family where it may not have been said aloud but was generally practiced that "it takes a village to raise a child." I spent a good chunk of the months before my first birthday at my grandparents' house while my mother finished her master's degree in another city. My brother and I spent an entire summer away from our parents once with my other set of grandparents. Annual summer trips to an uncle or aunt's house were de riguer. Some of the most important growing up advice I received was from my aunt, my mom's best friend and my maternal grandfather, all of whom were very involved in my childhood. Because I loved to read and there were no good libraries in India, on my birthday, I was sent books from every single first degree relative (and I have a lot of them) every year until I was 13, and requested alternate presents. My mom was a homemaker and did a great job of making us feel loved and always being there if we needed her. But the incredible burden of raising 2 healthy, happy, well educated children, was shared by a fairly large circle of my extended family and friends, in ways both material and spiritual. My parents did the same for all the kids of their respective siblings and close friends. In fact, my closest cousin and I shared a bedroom for 2 years so she could go to school near our house which offered better opportunities than her hometown.

I guess what I am trying to illustrate is how isolated modern American child raising is. Parents are expected to fulfill every role- parent, financier, counselor, friend, housekeeper, vacation planner, entertainer....the list goes on. Given the fragmentation of families and large geographic distances separating immediate relatives, the model I described above would be hard to implement for our lives today. Instead, maybe creating "care circles"- groups of friends and associates in similar situations- i.e. caring for children and/or aging parents- who band together their resources and time to share each others' burdens. In other words, creating a social family for those not able or unwilling to have their biologic families fulfill these roles. I think that would mark a very important shift in the way we think about community and their roles in our lives. Rugged individualism may be the "American way" but for raising children, I think it creates an unnecessary burden on parents and a lack of opportunities for kids to be exposed to perspectives other than their parents. Given that, more and more working parents in the US are admitting to burnout while "trying to do it all", this cultural shift would be a welcome change from the status quo.