The Invisible Work of Creating a Village

What does it mean to have a village?

When my mother was young, her family of six lived in a two-family house, with an aunt, uncle, and cousins upstairs. Her grandmother was walking distance, and often looked after her in the mornings.

My own grandmother also grew up with her own grandmother a short walk away, who stopped by almost daily to help with cooking, watching the kids, and whatever needed to be done. 

This, quite simply, was a village. 

And while everyone SAYS you need a village or community to raise children, they aren’t often built-in anymore. Even though the number of multi-generational households has quadrupled over the past five decades, they still make up only 17% of all households. 

Now that villages are no longer “built in” to society or to child-rearing, the invisible work of creating community (and maintaining those relationships) falls to women. 

WHY WE NEED VILLAGES

Think about what happens when a friend has a baby, their close relative or dog dies, or they’re going through something serious, like divorce or cancer. Who rallies the troops to step up and help?

In my experience, it’s almost always a woman. (Much like my ancestors from years ago.) She organizes friends to help out with the kids, orchestrates a meal train, or even creates a fundraiser – – all while delicately navigating how the family best wants to receive help during a tough time. 

Communities help with the smaller stuff, too. Online parenting groups aren’t for everyone, but they’re wildly helpful to locate community events, find babysitters, navigate the confusing preschool process, find affordable baby gear, and learn about registration deadlines for sports and camps. (And when I say “online parenting groups,” let’s be honest –  I mostly mean moms groups. This is because the work of finding and sharing information about parenting is still largely carried by women.) 

Not to mention the simple act of finding friends. I live in a large town mostly made up of transplants, similar to most cities. When my child was about 18 months old, I realized I had zero friends in town with young children. Joining a local moms group helped me find a friend within weeks – one who shares similar values and is one of my closest friends today.

Without that moms group, I would miss out on social and emotional support that is so necessary, not only to raising children, but daily emotional connection.

SOCIETY PROVIDES LITTLE SUPPORT FOR RAISING FAMILIES

Let’s be honest – society doesn’t make our community goals easy. Here in the U.S., like most Westernized countries, we have a capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist, ableist culture that tells us we need a village, but provides virtually no infrastructure to do so. In fact, it discourages doing so!

We live in a society that tells you child care is your problem – that women SHOULD have all the babies, but never require any support to raise them. And hide the fact that said children exist. You need to win the boss lottery to have paid family leave or flex time to care for your aging mother. 

At the same time, men often still feel stigmatized in the workplace for wanting to take time to be with their families. So they go along with the outdated structures to get raises and promotions, which means nothing changes.

Related: Gender inequality at home hurts men, too

WHY WOMEN ARE THE ONES TO CREATE A VILLAGE

In lieu of societal structures to support caregiving, we add on the invisible work of creating community and building a village to women’s miles-long list of responsibilities. (Despite the fact that they already do almost 3 times the amount of housework and child care that men do.) The familiar echo of individualism whispers:

There’s no paid leave here, but hopefully you have a wife who can stay home and take care of the baby.

There’s no affordable child care, but hopefully you can just cut back on hours and still afford the ridiculous rents/mortgage in your area.

We’re raising the age to enter kindergarten without creating universal preschool, but hopefully you have a nearby mother-in-law who can help out.  

And maybe that’s a big reason why women take on the job of creating their own little villages – not only because they’re socialized to care about relationships but because they’re more likely to feel the strain of zero caregiving support. Women feel it in their wallets and in the diminishing hours of their day. Because women are more likely to take on extra caregiving, it necessarily means a reduction in paid work and fewer earnings, but an increase in unpaid work. 

HOW BOYS ARE SOCIALIZED TO THINK ABOUT FRIENDSHIPS

Despite all this, we continue to socialize boys NOT to emphasize close, meaningful relationships. We assume they’ll be “low drama” when it comes to friends- they’ll just fight it out for the ball and move on, right? 

We silently (or loudly) cheer when finding out the gender reveal cake is blue. This means less drama, fewer friend fights, and generally less moodiness in the teen years, right?

Meanwhile, grown adults groan on camera when it’s pink. We lament the “friendship drama” of girls in early elementary years – which basically means they learn to navigate relationship conflict for the first time. We forget to notice the positives – that this prepares girls for a lifetime of creating, maintaining, and repairing friendships. 

And it’s impossible to have a community without maintaining friendships.

Is it really innate for girls, and girls only, to desire closeness and support? Or maybe it’s that we teach boys to depend on themselves, to be an island, not to need anyone. And that, in fact, needing close friends is somehow less masculine. After all, boys learn early that to be more masculine is to be less feminine. So, if they do the exact opposite of what girls are doing, they may gain more social capital – a/k/a acceptance on the playground. 

Community is literally good for men’s health

But the impact of NOT prioritizing friendships for boys is hurting adult men.  In For the Love of Men, author Liz Plank reports that half of adult men say they don’t talk to their friends about personal problems. (I mean, why the heck do I have friends if I can’t complain to them sometimes about my own sh!t?) 

More importantly, those same men say they WANT closer connection with their male friends. They just don’t know how to do it while sticking close to the idealized masculinity expected of them. Because how can you be vulnerable around other men and still be considered “manly”? 

This is how we unconsciously raise boys, despite research showing that people who close friendships actually live longer and have a ton of health benefits.

A call to men

Until men begin to unravel masculinity intentionally, they’ll continue to rely on the invisible work women – their wives, mothers, sisters, and even daughters do – to create a village. 

How else will meals arrive after the death of a family member? 

How else will they do the Target pickup when the whole house has the flu?

How else will they find last minute child care when there’s a school closing or emergency at work? 

Our communities, our villages, prop us up. They support the ENTIRE family unit, including men, during the daily grind of raising humans and through the tough stuff in life. These “villages” are literally feeding us and improving our health. 

How long will it take, then, for men to take equal responsibility for the villages that lift us up?

Photo via Pexels RDNE

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Need more support? I help frazzled moms create a more equitable partnership so they can stop nagging their families & invest more time in themselves. Contact me if you’d like to learn more about coaching.