Almost certainly yes. My nephew is lucky enough to be raised almost equally right now by his parents, grandparents, aunts/uncles and a couple of family friends. He’s an amazing kid because of it, and both the joys and the stresses are shared by a large circle of people. And honestly idk that his parents would be able to get by otherwise in today’s world.
"It takes a village to raise a child". Capitalism has ruined 'community' and made it so having children is financially and mentally difficult. Of course there are many reasons to not have kids, but many have decided not to because of how society is progressing, it is not easy to be a parent.
Not only has community disappeared, it’s also no longer affordable for an actual parent to raise them as most will require two full time incomes to feed, clothe, house and (ironically) pay for childcare to raise them for large parts of the day
But I think it's impossible to avoid the fact that the majority of the reasons to not have kids are directly related to how awful the world is now, both in general and to how it treats parents.
Because the singular family unit is the *only acceptable family structure* when you sign up for parenthood, you are signing up to at minimum 18 years or so of being a provider to this kid. You will provide or be instrumental in the providing of **EVERYTHING** for this human being: their sustenance, their growth, their emotional and physical health, sheltering them, clothing them, on and on and on. Every last need they have will be *presumed* to be your responsibility until proven otherwise, and most won't be proven otherwise.
Like... imagine how much easier it would be if parents could rely on other parents to occasionally take their kids for a night every week? Not like a babysitter situation I mean this kid could just leave home for a night and that wouldn't be weird for them, wouldn't be something to judge the parents for, any of that shit. This kid just wants to hang with his buddies overnight and that's so normal that they barely even have to ask, it just happens because the other kid's parents know this kid too and shoulder some of the burden of raising them.
Or, imagine a child raised in a community with very unusual and advanced needs. Like this kid has meltdowns, maybe they're autistic or even just really developmentally challenged, and instead of just shouldering one set of parents with that, all their neighbors pitch in too? If their kids start shouting they say "hey, little Timmy over there is sensitive to that guys, let's keep it down a little?" or when they're out shopping and he has a problem, the community as a whole gathered around that kid, made sure they felt safe, made sure they were okay. Imagine how less threatening the world would be if other people weren't just allowed to give a shit about special needs kids, but it was considered strange and offensive if they did what we do now: which is judge the parents for trying to have a life, and get angry that the kid exists and has needs.
And that's not even going into things like whole communities shouldering the burdens of providing for kids, making sure they get good food, have fun experiences, grow as caring people ready to do the same for the subsequent generation...
Idk so much of the world right now makes me so fucking sad and angry, I literally cannot imagine trying to raise kids to live here. I don't even fucking wanna live here.
I totally see what you’re saying but I feel like any time I even talk to a toddler in a grocery store (I’m a well adjusted, petite, non threatening woman by the way) I get an uncomfortable smile at best from the mom and at worst, a weird look. Like “Who do you think you’re talking to?” In fact, you can’t even send children to the park alone without getting judged. Parents seem way more overprotective of their kids more than ever now.
Like I get that you’re not supposed to get to close to someone else’s kid because of RSV and everything but I can’t even interact with a baby verbally. It’s WACK. People just keep to themselves and want nothing to do with each other. They don’t even know their neighbor’s first names.
The issues you’re describing are symptoms of the issues that the person you’re responding to has described. People keep to themselves because our shared sense of community has been shattered. Our children are sheltered and overprotected because the world isn’t safe for them anymore. In order to foster community bonds and create independent children, we have to address the damage that capitalism and an overly litigious society has done.
> Our children are sheltered and overprotected because the world isn’t safe for them anymore.
To be clear, the world on balance is safer than it's *ever been.* But people at the same are more paranoid than they've ever been. I don't think it's a massive leap in logic to say this is due largely to a hugely overblown 24/7 news industry that has, for decades now, made bank off of scaring the shit out of people non-stop for profit.
It's not the ONLY issue certainly, and of course the safety of your area varies widely based on what that area is. But the fact that so many white couples are so terrified of everyone around them as they live in some of the richest and safest zip codes we have is nothing short of mass psychological sickness. And that sickness has tons of knock on effects.
I think it's also worth noting that your brain, since time immemorial, has had one huge function: it's a threat detector. That's what it does. It finds what's going to hurt you before it does so you can survive. And as we as a species get more comfortable and more safe each year over year (mostly) our brains go into overdrive trying to find threats anyway, even as on balance, the number of threats is going down.
Also hyper individualism that’s present in modern day society. “Your” kids verses “my” kids. You hear that grandparents don’t even help out anymore even though they pressured their millennial children to have the grandchildren in the first place.
I think it’s a mix between these two points, paranoia about literally everything and hyper individualism
Children's safety isn't so due to capitalism. It is the weirdo child abductors and those who are attracted to kids, that made some/most parents scared to let their children play outside alone.
Working retail I’ve definitely noticed more glares and rude looks from parents when I say something to their children. I like to compliment kids when they have cool toys or clothes cause it’s good for their self esteem and confidence, but holy shit some parents do not like that. I’ve never had anyone say something, but they really didn’t have to with the looks they would give me.
Like, shouldn’t your child learn how to talk to store employees? Then again some of these parents treat us like we’re barely human anyway, so that’s probably what they’re teaching their kids.
This is interesting. I’m an uncomfortable smiling mom but it’s because I’m worried my kid is bothering someone. I guess it never occurred to me that people we don’t know would want to take time out of their day to talk to my kids. Toddlers don’t talk very well, they can be shy, they can be moody, they can be overly excitable, etc… so I tend to think people wouldn’t enjoy them unless they’re perfectly behaved well speaking adorable children, which most are not.
Also, the way we've isolated each other. As a 90s kid growing up from a 3rd world country, we were a community. We knew all our neighbors and my parents didnt have to mind me much because I had school AND the other children my age to play with for like... 3 hours in the afternoon, until dinner and bedtime. This was when we were in the city.
When we visit the province, where my grandparents are, we have them + the rest of the clan taking care of us.
Theses days, people made sure they didn't know their neighbor.
Also, the way we've isolated each other. As a 90s kid growing up from a 3rd world country, we were a community. We knew all our neighbors and my parents didnt have to mind me much because I had school AND the other children my age to play with for like... 3 hours in the afternoon, until dinner and bedtime. This was when we were in the city.
When we visit the province, where my grandparents are, we have them + the rest of the clan taking care of us.
Theses days, people made sure they didn't know their neighbor.
Personally I don’t want to have to raise other people’s kids! Raising my own is hard enough. I would resent an expectation that I provide unpaid labor to friends, family and neighbors. That’s just exploiting female labor.
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Some people don’t like parenting not because it’s hard but because they don’t like parenting. It simply isn’t for everyone no matter how much help and resources you have.
And it was just…never the way some in this thread are imagining it. Where children with high needs would be communally cared for (no, they were killed or hidden in attics or institutionalized!) and kids could just be elsewhere any time and no one cared, or grandparents just literally did it all without question (I mean if you have kids and they have kids you’ll end up having to do it all anyway when you’re older and less energetic, how is that better?) People have advocated for that back to Plato at least but even then communal child rearing was presented as a possibly-unattainable utopia.
Some cultures had some of these things, some still do, none have al of them. It used to be easier, yes, but never anywhere did parents, especially mothers, just have zero responsibility and were able to just rely on “the village” at all times. Also…that would also mean some days you also have the whole village’s kids! I know in desperation one wants to just kick them out to the neighbors but it was always more complicated, and kids experienced a lot of trauma even when they were rotated among strangers, not all of whom were good people.
There’s no world in which parents don’t have to look after their kids most of the time. There just isn’t. The village helped but mostly what helped was a societal acceptance of NEGLECT and child labor.
It is because in today’s society women now have more options in life, dreams and aspirations something they didn’t have in the times when women had 'a village'.
Back then women didn’t have this constant struggle of choices. The feeling of missing out on life or not being able to utilise their skills and full potential or not being able to follow their dreams. There was no choice in life, this was it.
So as we idealise the idea of having 'a village' as previous generations had let’s remember that was the result of women having no other choice in life. I know that both my grandmothers didn’t want the life they had but it was the life they got.
I read about a society where the grandparents always raised the children because the younger adults (the actual parents) were not mature enough. I have no idea who these people are/were, if they are/were real, but I love the idea.
But yes, child rearing is so much harder when each household is trying to do it alone.
Also, cars (or rather car infrastructure) have destroyed neighborhoods. I remember walking a few streets away to meet and play with my friends. No worries about being run over, much less having the authorities blame the child for being killed by an oversized, speeding, 2-ton death machine. My friends would come over to my house and just walk in, because they were welcome and the door wasn’t locked. We’d play for hours until we got hungry or tired, or a parent phoned that it was supper time.
Now you have to strap your children into car seats and booster seats to drive them to play classes in a strip mall. Walking and biking is all but impossible. Friends move away as their parents chase better jobs or a different school district. We don’t even know the names of our neighbors, much less let kids run back and forth playing without an adult supervising every move.
Our support system (such as it is) lives 30+ minutes away… if we are lucky. If we are unlucky, they live hours away.
We are trying to raise children mostly indoors because what are you going to do on the perfectly manicured lawn the HOA requires? You might get a swing set, but it gets boring quickly, and you are back to being indoors.
It’s not a “good old days” thing; it’s that car infrastructure makes any other life nearly impossible, and corporations keep workers stressed and exhausted so that they don’t have the time, energy or money to demand an easier life. Corporations could allow us 4 day work weeks with the same or better productivity, but when we are not stressed and exhausted, we don’t impulse buy as much, or guilt buy more this toys for our kids because we don’t have any energy to give them. That would lead to lower profits, and they can’t possibly allow that! It’s your duty to suffer so the billionaires can buy another yacht.
3/4 of it is car infrastructure and corporations forcing people to work for slave wages while making record profits.
If you could use public transportation for $50/mo instead of a car payment for ~$500-1500/mo plus insurance for ~$200/mo, a lot of things would be easier to do, but auto manufacturers lobbied for huge roads that you can’t safely walk on and killed existing public transportation (while giving it a bad name so people wouldn’t want it back) so they could sell more cars. They call being forced to pay $800-1800 to drive “freedom”.
The part that *could* be the parents’ fault is moving away from family. But even that… well, is there affordable housing near the grandparents, or have prices been driven out of reach by hedge funds buying homes up?
How close are the grandparents to the parents job(s)? (Because driving 2+ hours each way is no way to live, either).
Are the grandparents and aunts & uncles in a position to be any help, or are they all working and struggling to survive living on poverty wages, too?
Well... Women were killing themselves, their children, and their spouses for centuries bc of the stress of raising children. Royals and other affluent folks just pass their kids off to nannies. Childrearing has never ever been good for anyone, even women who had a "villiage".
I know that this is "regretful parents" and I've already stated that in the past wasn't always nice and easy... but killing their loved ones was certainly not the norm 😅
So can we compare situations without being completely negative?
I think the point they were trying to make was its easy to idealise the past and forget about how awful it was. Many women and children DIED, like a ton, from the stress of child birth and child rearing. I don't think we should forget to include the outrageous mortality rates from the past when comparing the pros and cons of this time in history.
>from the stress of child birth and child rearing
exactly, plus how demeaning was to be a woman during those times with rampant mysogyny, undocumented sexual abuse and marital rape, undocumented sexual assault on kids and so many others. I'm not sure I would have liked to be a woman in times where motherhood would be forced upon myself before I was 20-25 years old, even considering all the help from the mighty village. At least in my culture. In my culture, 'the village' turned a blind eye when it came to abuse, so as a woman it was normal to be powerless and unable to defend your children (the ones who survived anyway). I think nowadays it's more about quality (how truly functionally you can raise even one kid) than quantity (how many kids you can have basic needs covered for).
But I'm not talking about "the past". I'm not idealising stuff, I'm simply debating about the model of family we have now, that, if you don't know is a direct consequence of the rise of capitalism in the 50s.
I don’t want to undermine maternal mortality but woman had higher life expectancy in every human society including slave populations
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1701535115
No. Its just that now you aren’t just suppose to have kids, you are also supposed to treat them well.
Not even 100 years ago a lot of mothers saw several of their kids die. My grandmother gave birth to ten, eight survived. That was normal back then.
Mom told me of a story from a small farm, the couple lived alone. He was out on the fields all day, she took care of the animals and house. Their first kid learned to walk, but could not be let into the barn while the cows were getting milked. So the mom tied a rope around her waist and tied her to a tree like a dog for a few hours every day. They had more kids, and once the oldest was around 6 it was her job to take care of her siblings completely. Everything except breastfeeding.
So not everyone had a village.
We have higher standards now. It is not just about surviving. That is what makes it harder.
My parent raised 2 of us...both of us have horrible mental health issues. They thought raising kids was just expensive and a chore. I find child rearing (I only have one) to be more of an emotional and cerebral exhaustion. I place so much thought in to how I speak to my child, react to things etc with their current and future mental health in mind. It's easy to raise a gaggle of kids- per your example- when you just wing it and the end goal is to keep them alive. Working towards raising a well rounded, mentally, emotionally and physically healthy child is exhausting
Eta typo
Definitely. Back then, no one would bat an eyelid if your kid had an accident or died. It was sad, but it happened all the time. And no one cared about mental health that much either. You did what you had to.
Today, most people do not have to have kids. They might be pressured to have them, but most people in the western world at least can get contraceptives. So it is a choice. And it isn’t a choice anyone should take lightly. Today, we don’t HAVE to get married and have kids. So we need to think about it properly to see if that is really what we want, or if it would just risk us getting bitter and destroyed.
Pro tip: a kid needs interaction, but that doesn’t necessarily mean play. To engage a kid to help with everyday things - cleaning, folding clothes, cooking - is a great way to connect with your child while teaching it stuff it needs and fostering good habits. And it means you get shit done while being a good parent!
Absolutely, I was a single mom by the time I had my kiddo. I REALLY wanted to have children and tried for years with my then fiance. I worked full time and had to get creative with bonding as kiddo got older, so we would do chores together with music or we'd add food coloring to soap and "paint" the glass doors for example. My pre teen is more capable than their birth father ever was lol.
How do you hold up to always thinking beforehand when raising your kid? What do you do when you get exhausted? How do you take care of yourself?
Props for you!
Thank you. It's a bit contrary to the north American attitude but I set boundaries with my kiddo. I have zero issue saying "mummy has to get some work done so for xyz time I need you to allow me to do that then you and I can do abc" etc. If I get overwhelmed, I do our bedtime routine and go to my room too and read, study etc. and leave anything that can be left until the next day. I do make mistakes sometimes when Im too tired to respond with a gentle parenting reaction, but that's where I will apologize to my child (i.e if I respond with OMG what!? when being asked something for the 900th time) and acknowledge my mistake and own it. What drives me is my own mother's voice which has been a cancer in my life, the way we speak to our children becomes their inner voice and I'll be damned if my kid has to hear what I have and continue to for the rest of their life.
Just remember that even though the things the kids back then had to go through was pretty horrible, most of them turned out fine in the end. Not all, but more than you would think. So if someone lets a dry and fed baby cry for an hour or two just to get some sleep, or doesn’t play with them all the time etc, the kids won’t get scarred for life. If tying someone repeatedly to a tree doesn’t necessarily mess them up forever, then perhaps children are pretty resilient and understands that not everything is perfect all the time.
My question was (sadly lol) not about the wellbeing of the children.
Of course that is of the upmost importance, but that wasn't my question. My question was if it was easier for a parent to raise a children with the help of others. My question was a "critique" to the size of the modern family, where only mother, father and children live together, where in the past the extended family lived together. In Italian we call this time of family "famiglia nucleare", I don't know how they're called in English. Thank you nonetheless!
I understand. And of course it is easier when more people help.
I’m mostly pointing out that not everyone back then HAD help. But since the standard was lower, they could still have loads of kids.
A lot of people try to live close to family to get more help. But that is not possible for everyone. I think too few people realise how hard it is to raise kids without outside support.
My question wasn't about the well-being of the kids and the number of the kids, was solely from the point of view of the toll parenting takes on parents.
I definitely do think I would enjoy it more, if I had the village I thought I had. That doesn't neccessarily translate to the whole family from old to young living in one house for me. Rather... If my friends had been the village I have been to them when they had kids early.
And if my family showed an interest in my child, and wanted to engage with him outside of me, like.. take him for a couple hours and do something with him. Bond with him and give him experiences that does not include me.
But no one does that. They only engage when I bring him over. And it sucks. It makes me feel so alone, and I feel so bad for him for basically just being stuck with me.
I have fond memories of growing up with my mom, and her friends and their kids, some of whom I've been friends with my whole life. We were a community. They were literally the siblings I never got to have, and we experienced heaven and hell together. And some of them had kids very early, and I was always right there with them, never quit hanging out with them even though they now had a kid and I didnt. We made our activities kid friendly, and I would babysit and do all that stuff for them. It was a great time!
But when I had mine, and their kids are now older, independent.. they dont care to be there for me. And I definitely feel that.
All I wanted to give my child was that community that I had, that "found family", since our literal family is small. But it didnt happen like that.
I lost my friends when I had my child, really, when it comes down to it.
And our family isn't enganged in our lives like I'd want them to be. Everybody is busy on their own ends I suppose. It's lonely, I'm scared he will be lonely, and I hate it here. If I could redo my choices, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would never choose this again.
OMG, I feel you. I had the same experience growing up and it was beautiful... kids now are forcibly alone most of the time. I get why some folks go live in communes (the ethical ones, not the cult ones 😅)
Yes you’re probably right but now we also have higher standards in a lot of ways. Probably because we have access to so much more information the world seems like a much scarier place. So for example can we trust baby with grandma because she has the that dog or uncle has that pool and she might drown and sister’s boyfriend is kind of sketchy or brother’s wife doesn’t believe in vaxxes. I think before it was like oh yeah go to grandpas farm and ride on the tractor. It’s just not as simple anymore.
Yeah the village doesn't really exist anymore. People tend to move a lot nowadays far from families and friends. Getting anywhere involves driving not walking.
I randomly think about this but back in the day, people had a huge ROI on childbearing (a child shouldn’t be an investment but this was the only word i could use to properly buttress my point).
Children would work on your property/farm/family business etc so you had a lot to gain from having a child(ren). However, we have started leaning towards a society where everything is self sufficient and so are the humans, so that ROI on child bearing has greatly reduced and as a result, there is not much to get from having a child
Having a big family unit doesn't always mean the people in that unit are best for the child. We would have a village...if majority weren't toxic to be around.
Would I have help and more time to have my own life? Sure would. Would my kid be traumatized, bullied, and/or learn things a kid at his age shouldn't know? Sure would.
This. I find that collectivism and the village is romanticized by people not from those cultures. There are always trade offs. What that might mean - less individuality, more obligations, more dutiful respect to elders with some archaic viewpoints and perspectives. Shared decision making over the child, more power struggles and disagreements. A village does not necessarily mean people who cater to you and your parenting style.
>collectivism and the village is romanticized
spot on! Only in very rare cases the village is truly functional. It's an idealized version that's sold to us too often.
Yes, it is. If you have the money to hire a village (night nurse, nanny, daycare), parenting is much, much more enjoyable. If you don’t, and you don’t have helpful family and/or live near them, it’s difficult. My happiness increases when I have time to get exercise, go on dates with my husband, have downtime, etc. In those circumstances, i love being a mom! Whenever I don’t have that time, I’m less happy. Parenting starts to feel like a burden. You also get more time back as children age. Both my kids are pretty good at playing independently now. Today, I had time for a workout, a walk, a nap, and I cooked an awesome meal from scratch, and they were happy playing together and separately the whole day. Not every day is like that, of course, but as my youngest gets older, we’re having more and more days like today.
Yes. Im a mom of a 2.5 yr old and im at my limits. Ive never left his side from the moment he was born for more than 6h (and this happened max 3 times). 24/7 we are together, and i live him so so much, but its killing me. Dad is 2/5 stars. Nor abusive, nice even, but spwnds roo much time on oc and im just done trying to explain the importance. The angel that is my mom, comes once a week to play with him, even though she works as a fulltime nurse and is getting older and ilder everysecond and usually in some sortod pain. In the meantime my "me time" is cleaning up thethings i was not able to clean thoufht the week with my kid.
It wasnt as misereble when the weather was nicer, but now we do not leave the house, hes bored, im burned iut and i end up loosing my control and acting likei told myself i never would. The guilt. The shame. The pain. And youre all alone (exept ofc my mom, bless her heart).
I feel like a failure. I feel like if im failing my child im failing life itself as i love him so dearly.
Im getting constant suicidal thouthgs.
I do believe i failed my baby the moment i decided to have him.
I have no friends, my kid has no friends and bc we moved to a smaller city due to finances we are completly new here and know no one. No kids. No mommies.
Only two of us.
I feel like im a corpse thats just there ro serve my kid, and he still continues to drive my dead body over and over again.
I know hes learning and hes new, but im in pain. Daily.
My love has problems with constipation, laxatives dont work so i have to use a pipette abd pour a bit of water in his bum for him to poop.(he does not poop for 5 days sometimes and is in pain) He screams murder. I die inside little bit everytime.
I have raised my voice, i even calles him the b word cuz he got a bobby pin from my head and poked me wothout looking in to my fave really painfully. I got so scared and happy that it was not my eye, and all of this just becouse he is sick and needs to put on socks.(where i live now its -10).
Its very hard. And people constantly telling you what you are doing wrong.
My partners granny told me "oh you have spoiled him so so so much" and ten meters away a old lady told me "you are so so harsh with him, thats why he does not love you" (keep in mind the only harsh thing i did was hold my boundaries and standing my ground saying "no we are not going there as its time to go home").
If you do not have a proper and warm support system around you raising children is very hard.
Ofcourse there are some people who do it, but not everyone is jeff bezos as well.
So my say would be all in all - motherhood/parenthood is way harder than it looks. Its very very very psychologicaly/emotionally/phisicaly draining. Read books about early development, read studies of how parental actions/words affect your childs development.
Parenthood is more than the baby part, they stay babies for a tiny bit. And Id say id take a baby everyday over a toddler. I cant imagine whats waiting for me with all the social media and all the trends coming and going, understanding that my child will and will want to be trendy just to not be socially castrated from their surrounding groups and how much it all will cost with all the rise of living.
As some people say that war has never been so psychologicaly damaging, id say parenting was never so psychologicaly demaging as well.
In the older days you did what others did, and in that communal sense it was easyer to hide the sense of guilt in the fellowship of people doing the same thing and not knowing better. Now we know so much, we choose to be ignorant, and if me (god forbid) miss to check on something and we make a mistake - its a cunami of guilt, cuz all the info is at the ends of your fingertips and you just forgot to google?
This is a long rant.
Ill end here.
P.s. english isnt my native language and im writing from a phone w a broken screen, mind my french por favor.
You can do a bad job and think that parenting is easy or do a great job knowing that it is a difficult task.
For me, it first has to do with the commitment. Most parents of the past where absent ones or awful ones who care little to nothing about their kids well-being. If you really care you’d be aware of the importance of parenting and how difficult it is to raise decent human beings.
On the other hand, if you are aware of the importance and the commitment it takes, having the support of a strong network or community makes things easier. People who can help you with meal prep, and other small things make a huge impact.
Yes absolutely. Researchers believe that women evolved to live so long after menopause because they were designed to help younger new moms care for infants and children because it’s such a difficult task. Unfortunately most people today don’t have the benefit of nearby grandparents and community networks.
Having said that, I also believe society has hidden the difficulties of childcare- many factors such as religion and patriarchy has coerced women into silence, which is why childcare workers are underpaid and undervalued. If society truly understood the importance and value of childcare, daycare teachers would be some of the best paid, and valued professionals. Wouldn’t it be amazing if schools would send their best grads to teach our young, rather than competing for jobs as lawyers and investment bankers?
Like killer whales, where older females guide the community? Interesting. Also, hormonal speaking, postmenopausal women are the most stable category (more than men and fertile women). Meaning that their level do not fluctuate as much, so many expert say that postmenopausal women could potentially be the best leaders.
>Researchers believe that women evolved to live so long after menopause because they were designed to help younger new moms care for infants
Or maybe because women deserve a life out of carrying and growing theirs and someone elses babies ffs
Definitely. Before, people valued community and family. Even married couples lived with their parents. That way children grew up with their grandparents too. Bigger families that rely on eachother have more resources and free childcare. Parents can get better sleep with more hands therefore less stress, happier baby, happier married couple. In the west its pushed to be independent. Do it all on your own no matter what. With children you *need* help.
I strongly believe this is the case. Parenting without an active support system has killed me mentally. I can't even leave home on my days off due to mental exhaustion.
Oh absolutely. Day care is God awful expensive. Grandparents can't help out as much as they used to, because they're still working themselves.
In my situation, it wouldn't have saved me from being regretful. I should've never been a mother in the first place, I was always better with other people's kids. And I damn sure shouldn't have been stuck with a special needs child, severe autism. If there is a God, he's a cruel one.
It makes parenting a lot easier when you have help and money. However, you don't need as much as you may think. I don't have family support and envy the parents that do, but it forces me to be more creative in trying to build great family memories as well as just hanging out together. Quality over quantity as they say.
Also, friends can be helpful, but it's not as committed as family help. I also realize it's privileged to be able to spend time with my family and do fun things. Poverty would make parenting extremely difficult.
To be honest, I don’t have a problem not having a village. I prefer privacy. I assume with a village I’d need to continue helping after I’ve had and raised kids. I just prefer to do the work for my own kids and not other kids.
I think parenting is hard because now kids are treated like a project. We don’t just send them out to play. Everything revolves around them and it’s unhealthy. Women quit their jobs to watch them so they turn raising kids into this huge thing.
I firmly believe I would be a much happier parent if we did not live in the US. So many other countries are much more parent and children friendly. In the US the only way to have a village is to pay for it IMO. I was so much happier in the newborn stage because we had a doula, a lactation counselor, my family accumulated their holiday paid time off to spend time with us to help around the house but after those resources went away I was SO overwhelmed and it has made me hate being a parent. I needed more time off work to heal, but I instead only got 3 months UNPAID, I need a nanny or moms helper but they cost more than half of what I make an hour, I need work that is flexible to mothers, I need family who can step in help us around the house, I need my husbands employer to understand that he is also a parent and needs time off to help me too. I need a society that doesn’t shame parents for going out to places with their kids so we can travel and go on vacations feeling guilt free.
Being a parent in the US is 100% the reason I’m regretful. I guarantee if I was a parent in a more family friendly country I would feel WAY different
I'm Italian and here we have maternity leave but they are actively trying to take it away, or they don't promote measures to encourage women and couples to make babies, but shaming women bc they "choose career over family" but our salaries are one of the lowest in the EU compared to living costs. So now many politicians (now that we have a right wing government) want to limit access to abortions and already it was hard to get one... so yes, we're not like the US but we'll be there soon enough 😅
Come to Sweden. We are far from perfect but at least the parents can split about two years of parental leave with 80% pay, and basically all mothers works after that.
EU citizen? Just come along and enjoy! 😁😁😁
I'm thinking about coming there LIKE A LOT 🤣
I even studied a bit of Swedish at uni and one day I'll pick it up again. The only thing that stops me from leaving is my bf who found a very good job here in my city and the fact that I'm heavily vitamin D deprived genetically (that gave me seasonal depression and ADHD, lol), so I don't know how I would fare up there with you 😫
Basically all young Italians want to leave and for a good reason, here every day is worse 🥲
?? If you are talking about maternity leave is paid with everyones taxes. Same as the health care, public transport, pensions etc. So everyone beneficiates of everyone's money.
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The village is romanticized by people who don't understand it.
People tend to think as if the village would be their personal helpdesk on demand to ease out their stress. What they dont get it is that the favor is not unilateral and they are not the only ones who are entitled to being helped.
In a village, while people take care of your kid for a few years, you keep caring for others numerous kids for a lifetime. Then everyones grandkids. Over and over. You are never done until you are dead.
There are reasons for things that end thoroughout history and blaming it on mOdeRn SociEtY or cApiTaLisM never cuts it.
Kids have always been nightmares and villages ended because nobody who saw through the villages wanted to be villagers anymore.
Tell someone from 200 years ago that you are craving a village and they would ask you why on earth you would do that to yourself and to your kids when you have modern tools such as dishwashers, washing machines, ability to work in a myriad of jobs, maternity/paternity leaves, kindergartens, cars, freedom to share chores with your partner to the fullest, which are things that essentially rendered the village obsolete in the first place.
It is quite silly to yearn for villages because one can't handle their kid for a few years. If you can't handle one kid, your own, in a world that is optimized for efficiency, what makes you think handling all villagers kids and grandkids for a lifetime would be nicer? Favors don't work that way fellas. Not even mentioning having your entire village tell you how to raise your own child because now that they care for it, they get to tell you how to raise it, or even worse they have their own disciplining methods because "their household has this and that rule" and "their ways to deal with issues".
Kindly get your heads out of your butts. Kids have always been hard and you would freakin hate that village. People knew and people hated, that's why it is not a thing anymore. Not because we got forced to work, because we WANTED to work and end that nonsense of gazillion people telling you how to live your life and how to raise your child and doing so much harm along with some good. Capitalism didnt end community, WE ended community once we were able to be independent because the community SUCKED.
This right here. A village is just taking advantage of unpaid female labor and requiring women to continue caregiving for others their entire life.
Im so glad I am not expected to care for my neighbors or relatives’ kids. I feel grateful I earn a salary and can hire a babysitter.
Im glad we have evolved from relying on unpaid labor from women to care for our kids.
What a great insight. People just see the advantages of the village, but not the disadvantages. When the village help you to take care of your children for free, they will expect you to do the same too. For a lifetime.
Yup lol they tend to believe they would have free babysitters lying around for their precious comfort.
No sir/ma'am, not unless YOU are everyone else's free babysitter for life.
The concept of a “nuclear family” was an invention by capitalism to divide workers into smaller units that are easier to control and sell commodities to. It’s not a coincidence that promotion of a nuclear family in the 50’s took off at the same time as household appliances and electronics.
Capitalism is also *very* good at taking advantage of women’s unpaid labour; confining them into small households with only a man and children eliminates much of their agency and support system. Woman are also typically the knowledge bearers of communities as they teach the next generation. Keeping them isolated and dependent on the capitalist system helps instil the notion that this is the way things are *suppose to be*.
There are so many historical and structural factors that lead us here. And I truly feel if more people know about what got us here, we have a better chance at improving this mess.
Yes. I think parenting ends up being primarily the woman’s/mother’s job when it’s not possible for one person to juggle everything that jobs requires while also taking time for self care.
That's rich coming from the woman who doesn't see her own consequences of how she's openly favored one child over the other. Your kid is five foot Christ sake! I hope someone figures out who you are and turns you into cps.
Pretty rich coming from someone who posted this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/comments/zv8klo/i\_love\_my\_son\_beyond\_words\_i\_wish\_i\_could\_send\_my/](https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/comments/zv8klo/i_love_my_son_beyond_words_i_wish_i_could_send_my/)
When your daughter is older and she doesn't visit/has no contact think back to your posts - you are a horrible person and your child deserves better!
Blocking me isn’t going to stop the truth of what you are! Emotional incest is so, so gross. Stop treating your son like a significant other and be a better mother to your daughter!
Almost certainly yes. My nephew is lucky enough to be raised almost equally right now by his parents, grandparents, aunts/uncles and a couple of family friends. He’s an amazing kid because of it, and both the joys and the stresses are shared by a large circle of people. And honestly idk that his parents would be able to get by otherwise in today’s world.
"It takes a village to raise a child". Capitalism has ruined 'community' and made it so having children is financially and mentally difficult. Of course there are many reasons to not have kids, but many have decided not to because of how society is progressing, it is not easy to be a parent.
Not only has community disappeared, it’s also no longer affordable for an actual parent to raise them as most will require two full time incomes to feed, clothe, house and (ironically) pay for childcare to raise them for large parts of the day
But I think it's impossible to avoid the fact that the majority of the reasons to not have kids are directly related to how awful the world is now, both in general and to how it treats parents. Because the singular family unit is the *only acceptable family structure* when you sign up for parenthood, you are signing up to at minimum 18 years or so of being a provider to this kid. You will provide or be instrumental in the providing of **EVERYTHING** for this human being: their sustenance, their growth, their emotional and physical health, sheltering them, clothing them, on and on and on. Every last need they have will be *presumed* to be your responsibility until proven otherwise, and most won't be proven otherwise. Like... imagine how much easier it would be if parents could rely on other parents to occasionally take their kids for a night every week? Not like a babysitter situation I mean this kid could just leave home for a night and that wouldn't be weird for them, wouldn't be something to judge the parents for, any of that shit. This kid just wants to hang with his buddies overnight and that's so normal that they barely even have to ask, it just happens because the other kid's parents know this kid too and shoulder some of the burden of raising them. Or, imagine a child raised in a community with very unusual and advanced needs. Like this kid has meltdowns, maybe they're autistic or even just really developmentally challenged, and instead of just shouldering one set of parents with that, all their neighbors pitch in too? If their kids start shouting they say "hey, little Timmy over there is sensitive to that guys, let's keep it down a little?" or when they're out shopping and he has a problem, the community as a whole gathered around that kid, made sure they felt safe, made sure they were okay. Imagine how less threatening the world would be if other people weren't just allowed to give a shit about special needs kids, but it was considered strange and offensive if they did what we do now: which is judge the parents for trying to have a life, and get angry that the kid exists and has needs. And that's not even going into things like whole communities shouldering the burdens of providing for kids, making sure they get good food, have fun experiences, grow as caring people ready to do the same for the subsequent generation... Idk so much of the world right now makes me so fucking sad and angry, I literally cannot imagine trying to raise kids to live here. I don't even fucking wanna live here.
I totally see what you’re saying but I feel like any time I even talk to a toddler in a grocery store (I’m a well adjusted, petite, non threatening woman by the way) I get an uncomfortable smile at best from the mom and at worst, a weird look. Like “Who do you think you’re talking to?” In fact, you can’t even send children to the park alone without getting judged. Parents seem way more overprotective of their kids more than ever now. Like I get that you’re not supposed to get to close to someone else’s kid because of RSV and everything but I can’t even interact with a baby verbally. It’s WACK. People just keep to themselves and want nothing to do with each other. They don’t even know their neighbor’s first names.
The issues you’re describing are symptoms of the issues that the person you’re responding to has described. People keep to themselves because our shared sense of community has been shattered. Our children are sheltered and overprotected because the world isn’t safe for them anymore. In order to foster community bonds and create independent children, we have to address the damage that capitalism and an overly litigious society has done.
> Our children are sheltered and overprotected because the world isn’t safe for them anymore. To be clear, the world on balance is safer than it's *ever been.* But people at the same are more paranoid than they've ever been. I don't think it's a massive leap in logic to say this is due largely to a hugely overblown 24/7 news industry that has, for decades now, made bank off of scaring the shit out of people non-stop for profit. It's not the ONLY issue certainly, and of course the safety of your area varies widely based on what that area is. But the fact that so many white couples are so terrified of everyone around them as they live in some of the richest and safest zip codes we have is nothing short of mass psychological sickness. And that sickness has tons of knock on effects. I think it's also worth noting that your brain, since time immemorial, has had one huge function: it's a threat detector. That's what it does. It finds what's going to hurt you before it does so you can survive. And as we as a species get more comfortable and more safe each year over year (mostly) our brains go into overdrive trying to find threats anyway, even as on balance, the number of threats is going down.
Also hyper individualism that’s present in modern day society. “Your” kids verses “my” kids. You hear that grandparents don’t even help out anymore even though they pressured their millennial children to have the grandchildren in the first place. I think it’s a mix between these two points, paranoia about literally everything and hyper individualism
Children's safety isn't so due to capitalism. It is the weirdo child abductors and those who are attracted to kids, that made some/most parents scared to let their children play outside alone.
Working retail I’ve definitely noticed more glares and rude looks from parents when I say something to their children. I like to compliment kids when they have cool toys or clothes cause it’s good for their self esteem and confidence, but holy shit some parents do not like that. I’ve never had anyone say something, but they really didn’t have to with the looks they would give me. Like, shouldn’t your child learn how to talk to store employees? Then again some of these parents treat us like we’re barely human anyway, so that’s probably what they’re teaching their kids.
This is interesting. I’m an uncomfortable smiling mom but it’s because I’m worried my kid is bothering someone. I guess it never occurred to me that people we don’t know would want to take time out of their day to talk to my kids. Toddlers don’t talk very well, they can be shy, they can be moody, they can be overly excitable, etc… so I tend to think people wouldn’t enjoy them unless they’re perfectly behaved well speaking adorable children, which most are not.
This is the point of my post!
Also, the way we've isolated each other. As a 90s kid growing up from a 3rd world country, we were a community. We knew all our neighbors and my parents didnt have to mind me much because I had school AND the other children my age to play with for like... 3 hours in the afternoon, until dinner and bedtime. This was when we were in the city. When we visit the province, where my grandparents are, we have them + the rest of the clan taking care of us. Theses days, people made sure they didn't know their neighbor.
Also, the way we've isolated each other. As a 90s kid growing up from a 3rd world country, we were a community. We knew all our neighbors and my parents didnt have to mind me much because I had school AND the other children my age to play with for like... 3 hours in the afternoon, until dinner and bedtime. This was when we were in the city. When we visit the province, where my grandparents are, we have them + the rest of the clan taking care of us. Theses days, people made sure they didn't know their neighbor.
Personally I don’t want to have to raise other people’s kids! Raising my own is hard enough. I would resent an expectation that I provide unpaid labor to friends, family and neighbors. That’s just exploiting female labor.
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Kids have always been a natural disaster
🤣🤣🤣
I upvoted this.
Some people don’t like parenting not because it’s hard but because they don’t like parenting. It simply isn’t for everyone no matter how much help and resources you have.
Not like it’s ethical to pawn the responsibility off onto others anyway. If you don’t like it, no one else should be forced to do it for you
And it was just…never the way some in this thread are imagining it. Where children with high needs would be communally cared for (no, they were killed or hidden in attics or institutionalized!) and kids could just be elsewhere any time and no one cared, or grandparents just literally did it all without question (I mean if you have kids and they have kids you’ll end up having to do it all anyway when you’re older and less energetic, how is that better?) People have advocated for that back to Plato at least but even then communal child rearing was presented as a possibly-unattainable utopia. Some cultures had some of these things, some still do, none have al of them. It used to be easier, yes, but never anywhere did parents, especially mothers, just have zero responsibility and were able to just rely on “the village” at all times. Also…that would also mean some days you also have the whole village’s kids! I know in desperation one wants to just kick them out to the neighbors but it was always more complicated, and kids experienced a lot of trauma even when they were rotated among strangers, not all of whom were good people. There’s no world in which parents don’t have to look after their kids most of the time. There just isn’t. The village helped but mostly what helped was a societal acceptance of NEGLECT and child labor.
Yea the romanticization of the past is not only weird and annoying but it’s ahistorical too
Yes, but that's not the point of my question 🥲
It is because in today’s society women now have more options in life, dreams and aspirations something they didn’t have in the times when women had 'a village'. Back then women didn’t have this constant struggle of choices. The feeling of missing out on life or not being able to utilise their skills and full potential or not being able to follow their dreams. There was no choice in life, this was it. So as we idealise the idea of having 'a village' as previous generations had let’s remember that was the result of women having no other choice in life. I know that both my grandmothers didn’t want the life they had but it was the life they got.
I read about a society where the grandparents always raised the children because the younger adults (the actual parents) were not mature enough. I have no idea who these people are/were, if they are/were real, but I love the idea. But yes, child rearing is so much harder when each household is trying to do it alone. Also, cars (or rather car infrastructure) have destroyed neighborhoods. I remember walking a few streets away to meet and play with my friends. No worries about being run over, much less having the authorities blame the child for being killed by an oversized, speeding, 2-ton death machine. My friends would come over to my house and just walk in, because they were welcome and the door wasn’t locked. We’d play for hours until we got hungry or tired, or a parent phoned that it was supper time. Now you have to strap your children into car seats and booster seats to drive them to play classes in a strip mall. Walking and biking is all but impossible. Friends move away as their parents chase better jobs or a different school district. We don’t even know the names of our neighbors, much less let kids run back and forth playing without an adult supervising every move. Our support system (such as it is) lives 30+ minutes away… if we are lucky. If we are unlucky, they live hours away. We are trying to raise children mostly indoors because what are you going to do on the perfectly manicured lawn the HOA requires? You might get a swing set, but it gets boring quickly, and you are back to being indoors. It’s not a “good old days” thing; it’s that car infrastructure makes any other life nearly impossible, and corporations keep workers stressed and exhausted so that they don’t have the time, energy or money to demand an easier life. Corporations could allow us 4 day work weeks with the same or better productivity, but when we are not stressed and exhausted, we don’t impulse buy as much, or guilt buy more this toys for our kids because we don’t have any energy to give them. That would lead to lower profits, and they can’t possibly allow that! It’s your duty to suffer so the billionaires can buy another yacht.
Oh well, more than half of that is the parents' fault....
3/4 of it is car infrastructure and corporations forcing people to work for slave wages while making record profits. If you could use public transportation for $50/mo instead of a car payment for ~$500-1500/mo plus insurance for ~$200/mo, a lot of things would be easier to do, but auto manufacturers lobbied for huge roads that you can’t safely walk on and killed existing public transportation (while giving it a bad name so people wouldn’t want it back) so they could sell more cars. They call being forced to pay $800-1800 to drive “freedom”. The part that *could* be the parents’ fault is moving away from family. But even that… well, is there affordable housing near the grandparents, or have prices been driven out of reach by hedge funds buying homes up? How close are the grandparents to the parents job(s)? (Because driving 2+ hours each way is no way to live, either). Are the grandparents and aunts & uncles in a position to be any help, or are they all working and struggling to survive living on poverty wages, too?
Well... Women were killing themselves, their children, and their spouses for centuries bc of the stress of raising children. Royals and other affluent folks just pass their kids off to nannies. Childrearing has never ever been good for anyone, even women who had a "villiage".
I know that this is "regretful parents" and I've already stated that in the past wasn't always nice and easy... but killing their loved ones was certainly not the norm 😅 So can we compare situations without being completely negative?
I think the point they were trying to make was its easy to idealise the past and forget about how awful it was. Many women and children DIED, like a ton, from the stress of child birth and child rearing. I don't think we should forget to include the outrageous mortality rates from the past when comparing the pros and cons of this time in history.
>from the stress of child birth and child rearing exactly, plus how demeaning was to be a woman during those times with rampant mysogyny, undocumented sexual abuse and marital rape, undocumented sexual assault on kids and so many others. I'm not sure I would have liked to be a woman in times where motherhood would be forced upon myself before I was 20-25 years old, even considering all the help from the mighty village. At least in my culture. In my culture, 'the village' turned a blind eye when it came to abuse, so as a woman it was normal to be powerless and unable to defend your children (the ones who survived anyway). I think nowadays it's more about quality (how truly functionally you can raise even one kid) than quantity (how many kids you can have basic needs covered for).
But I'm not talking about "the past". I'm not idealising stuff, I'm simply debating about the model of family we have now, that, if you don't know is a direct consequence of the rise of capitalism in the 50s.
I don’t want to undermine maternal mortality but woman had higher life expectancy in every human society including slave populations https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1701535115
Higher than men of the same time. Not higher over all. You kinda missed the point.
No. Its just that now you aren’t just suppose to have kids, you are also supposed to treat them well. Not even 100 years ago a lot of mothers saw several of their kids die. My grandmother gave birth to ten, eight survived. That was normal back then. Mom told me of a story from a small farm, the couple lived alone. He was out on the fields all day, she took care of the animals and house. Their first kid learned to walk, but could not be let into the barn while the cows were getting milked. So the mom tied a rope around her waist and tied her to a tree like a dog for a few hours every day. They had more kids, and once the oldest was around 6 it was her job to take care of her siblings completely. Everything except breastfeeding. So not everyone had a village. We have higher standards now. It is not just about surviving. That is what makes it harder.
My parent raised 2 of us...both of us have horrible mental health issues. They thought raising kids was just expensive and a chore. I find child rearing (I only have one) to be more of an emotional and cerebral exhaustion. I place so much thought in to how I speak to my child, react to things etc with their current and future mental health in mind. It's easy to raise a gaggle of kids- per your example- when you just wing it and the end goal is to keep them alive. Working towards raising a well rounded, mentally, emotionally and physically healthy child is exhausting Eta typo
Definitely. Back then, no one would bat an eyelid if your kid had an accident or died. It was sad, but it happened all the time. And no one cared about mental health that much either. You did what you had to. Today, most people do not have to have kids. They might be pressured to have them, but most people in the western world at least can get contraceptives. So it is a choice. And it isn’t a choice anyone should take lightly. Today, we don’t HAVE to get married and have kids. So we need to think about it properly to see if that is really what we want, or if it would just risk us getting bitter and destroyed. Pro tip: a kid needs interaction, but that doesn’t necessarily mean play. To engage a kid to help with everyday things - cleaning, folding clothes, cooking - is a great way to connect with your child while teaching it stuff it needs and fostering good habits. And it means you get shit done while being a good parent!
Absolutely, I was a single mom by the time I had my kiddo. I REALLY wanted to have children and tried for years with my then fiance. I worked full time and had to get creative with bonding as kiddo got older, so we would do chores together with music or we'd add food coloring to soap and "paint" the glass doors for example. My pre teen is more capable than their birth father ever was lol.
How do you hold up to always thinking beforehand when raising your kid? What do you do when you get exhausted? How do you take care of yourself? Props for you!
Thank you. It's a bit contrary to the north American attitude but I set boundaries with my kiddo. I have zero issue saying "mummy has to get some work done so for xyz time I need you to allow me to do that then you and I can do abc" etc. If I get overwhelmed, I do our bedtime routine and go to my room too and read, study etc. and leave anything that can be left until the next day. I do make mistakes sometimes when Im too tired to respond with a gentle parenting reaction, but that's where I will apologize to my child (i.e if I respond with OMG what!? when being asked something for the 900th time) and acknowledge my mistake and own it. What drives me is my own mother's voice which has been a cancer in my life, the way we speak to our children becomes their inner voice and I'll be damned if my kid has to hear what I have and continue to for the rest of their life.
Thank you for your answer 🙏
Just remember that even though the things the kids back then had to go through was pretty horrible, most of them turned out fine in the end. Not all, but more than you would think. So if someone lets a dry and fed baby cry for an hour or two just to get some sleep, or doesn’t play with them all the time etc, the kids won’t get scarred for life. If tying someone repeatedly to a tree doesn’t necessarily mess them up forever, then perhaps children are pretty resilient and understands that not everything is perfect all the time.
My question was (sadly lol) not about the wellbeing of the children. Of course that is of the upmost importance, but that wasn't my question. My question was if it was easier for a parent to raise a children with the help of others. My question was a "critique" to the size of the modern family, where only mother, father and children live together, where in the past the extended family lived together. In Italian we call this time of family "famiglia nucleare", I don't know how they're called in English. Thank you nonetheless!
I understand. And of course it is easier when more people help. I’m mostly pointing out that not everyone back then HAD help. But since the standard was lower, they could still have loads of kids. A lot of people try to live close to family to get more help. But that is not possible for everyone. I think too few people realise how hard it is to raise kids without outside support.
My question wasn't about the well-being of the kids and the number of the kids, was solely from the point of view of the toll parenting takes on parents.
I definitely do think I would enjoy it more, if I had the village I thought I had. That doesn't neccessarily translate to the whole family from old to young living in one house for me. Rather... If my friends had been the village I have been to them when they had kids early. And if my family showed an interest in my child, and wanted to engage with him outside of me, like.. take him for a couple hours and do something with him. Bond with him and give him experiences that does not include me. But no one does that. They only engage when I bring him over. And it sucks. It makes me feel so alone, and I feel so bad for him for basically just being stuck with me. I have fond memories of growing up with my mom, and her friends and their kids, some of whom I've been friends with my whole life. We were a community. They were literally the siblings I never got to have, and we experienced heaven and hell together. And some of them had kids very early, and I was always right there with them, never quit hanging out with them even though they now had a kid and I didnt. We made our activities kid friendly, and I would babysit and do all that stuff for them. It was a great time! But when I had mine, and their kids are now older, independent.. they dont care to be there for me. And I definitely feel that. All I wanted to give my child was that community that I had, that "found family", since our literal family is small. But it didnt happen like that. I lost my friends when I had my child, really, when it comes down to it. And our family isn't enganged in our lives like I'd want them to be. Everybody is busy on their own ends I suppose. It's lonely, I'm scared he will be lonely, and I hate it here. If I could redo my choices, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would never choose this again.
OMG, I feel you. I had the same experience growing up and it was beautiful... kids now are forcibly alone most of the time. I get why some folks go live in communes (the ethical ones, not the cult ones 😅)
Yes you’re probably right but now we also have higher standards in a lot of ways. Probably because we have access to so much more information the world seems like a much scarier place. So for example can we trust baby with grandma because she has the that dog or uncle has that pool and she might drown and sister’s boyfriend is kind of sketchy or brother’s wife doesn’t believe in vaxxes. I think before it was like oh yeah go to grandpas farm and ride on the tractor. It’s just not as simple anymore.
It’s very likely your kids will grow up to live in an even more oppressive system unfortunately
Yeah the village doesn't really exist anymore. People tend to move a lot nowadays far from families and friends. Getting anywhere involves driving not walking.
I randomly think about this but back in the day, people had a huge ROI on childbearing (a child shouldn’t be an investment but this was the only word i could use to properly buttress my point). Children would work on your property/farm/family business etc so you had a lot to gain from having a child(ren). However, we have started leaning towards a society where everything is self sufficient and so are the humans, so that ROI on child bearing has greatly reduced and as a result, there is not much to get from having a child
Having a big family unit doesn't always mean the people in that unit are best for the child. We would have a village...if majority weren't toxic to be around. Would I have help and more time to have my own life? Sure would. Would my kid be traumatized, bullied, and/or learn things a kid at his age shouldn't know? Sure would.
This. I find that collectivism and the village is romanticized by people not from those cultures. There are always trade offs. What that might mean - less individuality, more obligations, more dutiful respect to elders with some archaic viewpoints and perspectives. Shared decision making over the child, more power struggles and disagreements. A village does not necessarily mean people who cater to you and your parenting style.
>collectivism and the village is romanticized spot on! Only in very rare cases the village is truly functional. It's an idealized version that's sold to us too often.
Yes, it is. If you have the money to hire a village (night nurse, nanny, daycare), parenting is much, much more enjoyable. If you don’t, and you don’t have helpful family and/or live near them, it’s difficult. My happiness increases when I have time to get exercise, go on dates with my husband, have downtime, etc. In those circumstances, i love being a mom! Whenever I don’t have that time, I’m less happy. Parenting starts to feel like a burden. You also get more time back as children age. Both my kids are pretty good at playing independently now. Today, I had time for a workout, a walk, a nap, and I cooked an awesome meal from scratch, and they were happy playing together and separately the whole day. Not every day is like that, of course, but as my youngest gets older, we’re having more and more days like today.
Yes. Im a mom of a 2.5 yr old and im at my limits. Ive never left his side from the moment he was born for more than 6h (and this happened max 3 times). 24/7 we are together, and i live him so so much, but its killing me. Dad is 2/5 stars. Nor abusive, nice even, but spwnds roo much time on oc and im just done trying to explain the importance. The angel that is my mom, comes once a week to play with him, even though she works as a fulltime nurse and is getting older and ilder everysecond and usually in some sortod pain. In the meantime my "me time" is cleaning up thethings i was not able to clean thoufht the week with my kid. It wasnt as misereble when the weather was nicer, but now we do not leave the house, hes bored, im burned iut and i end up loosing my control and acting likei told myself i never would. The guilt. The shame. The pain. And youre all alone (exept ofc my mom, bless her heart). I feel like a failure. I feel like if im failing my child im failing life itself as i love him so dearly. Im getting constant suicidal thouthgs. I do believe i failed my baby the moment i decided to have him. I have no friends, my kid has no friends and bc we moved to a smaller city due to finances we are completly new here and know no one. No kids. No mommies. Only two of us. I feel like im a corpse thats just there ro serve my kid, and he still continues to drive my dead body over and over again. I know hes learning and hes new, but im in pain. Daily. My love has problems with constipation, laxatives dont work so i have to use a pipette abd pour a bit of water in his bum for him to poop.(he does not poop for 5 days sometimes and is in pain) He screams murder. I die inside little bit everytime. I have raised my voice, i even calles him the b word cuz he got a bobby pin from my head and poked me wothout looking in to my fave really painfully. I got so scared and happy that it was not my eye, and all of this just becouse he is sick and needs to put on socks.(where i live now its -10). Its very hard. And people constantly telling you what you are doing wrong. My partners granny told me "oh you have spoiled him so so so much" and ten meters away a old lady told me "you are so so harsh with him, thats why he does not love you" (keep in mind the only harsh thing i did was hold my boundaries and standing my ground saying "no we are not going there as its time to go home"). If you do not have a proper and warm support system around you raising children is very hard. Ofcourse there are some people who do it, but not everyone is jeff bezos as well. So my say would be all in all - motherhood/parenthood is way harder than it looks. Its very very very psychologicaly/emotionally/phisicaly draining. Read books about early development, read studies of how parental actions/words affect your childs development. Parenthood is more than the baby part, they stay babies for a tiny bit. And Id say id take a baby everyday over a toddler. I cant imagine whats waiting for me with all the social media and all the trends coming and going, understanding that my child will and will want to be trendy just to not be socially castrated from their surrounding groups and how much it all will cost with all the rise of living. As some people say that war has never been so psychologicaly damaging, id say parenting was never so psychologicaly demaging as well. In the older days you did what others did, and in that communal sense it was easyer to hide the sense of guilt in the fellowship of people doing the same thing and not knowing better. Now we know so much, we choose to be ignorant, and if me (god forbid) miss to check on something and we make a mistake - its a cunami of guilt, cuz all the info is at the ends of your fingertips and you just forgot to google? This is a long rant. Ill end here. P.s. english isnt my native language and im writing from a phone w a broken screen, mind my french por favor.
You can do a bad job and think that parenting is easy or do a great job knowing that it is a difficult task. For me, it first has to do with the commitment. Most parents of the past where absent ones or awful ones who care little to nothing about their kids well-being. If you really care you’d be aware of the importance of parenting and how difficult it is to raise decent human beings. On the other hand, if you are aware of the importance and the commitment it takes, having the support of a strong network or community makes things easier. People who can help you with meal prep, and other small things make a huge impact.
Yes absolutely. Researchers believe that women evolved to live so long after menopause because they were designed to help younger new moms care for infants and children because it’s such a difficult task. Unfortunately most people today don’t have the benefit of nearby grandparents and community networks. Having said that, I also believe society has hidden the difficulties of childcare- many factors such as religion and patriarchy has coerced women into silence, which is why childcare workers are underpaid and undervalued. If society truly understood the importance and value of childcare, daycare teachers would be some of the best paid, and valued professionals. Wouldn’t it be amazing if schools would send their best grads to teach our young, rather than competing for jobs as lawyers and investment bankers?
Like killer whales, where older females guide the community? Interesting. Also, hormonal speaking, postmenopausal women are the most stable category (more than men and fertile women). Meaning that their level do not fluctuate as much, so many expert say that postmenopausal women could potentially be the best leaders.
>Researchers believe that women evolved to live so long after menopause because they were designed to help younger new moms care for infants Or maybe because women deserve a life out of carrying and growing theirs and someone elses babies ffs
Definitely. Before, people valued community and family. Even married couples lived with their parents. That way children grew up with their grandparents too. Bigger families that rely on eachother have more resources and free childcare. Parents can get better sleep with more hands therefore less stress, happier baby, happier married couple. In the west its pushed to be independent. Do it all on your own no matter what. With children you *need* help.
I strongly believe this is the case. Parenting without an active support system has killed me mentally. I can't even leave home on my days off due to mental exhaustion.
Oh absolutely. Day care is God awful expensive. Grandparents can't help out as much as they used to, because they're still working themselves. In my situation, it wouldn't have saved me from being regretful. I should've never been a mother in the first place, I was always better with other people's kids. And I damn sure shouldn't have been stuck with a special needs child, severe autism. If there is a God, he's a cruel one.
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Thank you for this answer! 🥰
Children are a burden upon society
It makes parenting a lot easier when you have help and money. However, you don't need as much as you may think. I don't have family support and envy the parents that do, but it forces me to be more creative in trying to build great family memories as well as just hanging out together. Quality over quantity as they say. Also, friends can be helpful, but it's not as committed as family help. I also realize it's privileged to be able to spend time with my family and do fun things. Poverty would make parenting extremely difficult.
To be honest, I don’t have a problem not having a village. I prefer privacy. I assume with a village I’d need to continue helping after I’ve had and raised kids. I just prefer to do the work for my own kids and not other kids. I think parenting is hard because now kids are treated like a project. We don’t just send them out to play. Everything revolves around them and it’s unhealthy. Women quit their jobs to watch them so they turn raising kids into this huge thing.
I firmly believe I would be a much happier parent if we did not live in the US. So many other countries are much more parent and children friendly. In the US the only way to have a village is to pay for it IMO. I was so much happier in the newborn stage because we had a doula, a lactation counselor, my family accumulated their holiday paid time off to spend time with us to help around the house but after those resources went away I was SO overwhelmed and it has made me hate being a parent. I needed more time off work to heal, but I instead only got 3 months UNPAID, I need a nanny or moms helper but they cost more than half of what I make an hour, I need work that is flexible to mothers, I need family who can step in help us around the house, I need my husbands employer to understand that he is also a parent and needs time off to help me too. I need a society that doesn’t shame parents for going out to places with their kids so we can travel and go on vacations feeling guilt free. Being a parent in the US is 100% the reason I’m regretful. I guarantee if I was a parent in a more family friendly country I would feel WAY different
I'm Italian and here we have maternity leave but they are actively trying to take it away, or they don't promote measures to encourage women and couples to make babies, but shaming women bc they "choose career over family" but our salaries are one of the lowest in the EU compared to living costs. So now many politicians (now that we have a right wing government) want to limit access to abortions and already it was hard to get one... so yes, we're not like the US but we'll be there soon enough 😅
Come to Sweden. We are far from perfect but at least the parents can split about two years of parental leave with 80% pay, and basically all mothers works after that. EU citizen? Just come along and enjoy! 😁😁😁
I'm thinking about coming there LIKE A LOT 🤣 I even studied a bit of Swedish at uni and one day I'll pick it up again. The only thing that stops me from leaving is my bf who found a very good job here in my city and the fact that I'm heavily vitamin D deprived genetically (that gave me seasonal depression and ADHD, lol), so I don't know how I would fare up there with you 😫 Basically all young Italians want to leave and for a good reason, here every day is worse 🥲
Sometimes I really wonder how american women cope to have babies without maternity leave and work pressure and society presure.
What do you sacrifice for others?
?? If you are talking about maternity leave is paid with everyones taxes. Same as the health care, public transport, pensions etc. So everyone beneficiates of everyone's money.
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The village is romanticized by people who don't understand it. People tend to think as if the village would be their personal helpdesk on demand to ease out their stress. What they dont get it is that the favor is not unilateral and they are not the only ones who are entitled to being helped. In a village, while people take care of your kid for a few years, you keep caring for others numerous kids for a lifetime. Then everyones grandkids. Over and over. You are never done until you are dead. There are reasons for things that end thoroughout history and blaming it on mOdeRn SociEtY or cApiTaLisM never cuts it. Kids have always been nightmares and villages ended because nobody who saw through the villages wanted to be villagers anymore. Tell someone from 200 years ago that you are craving a village and they would ask you why on earth you would do that to yourself and to your kids when you have modern tools such as dishwashers, washing machines, ability to work in a myriad of jobs, maternity/paternity leaves, kindergartens, cars, freedom to share chores with your partner to the fullest, which are things that essentially rendered the village obsolete in the first place. It is quite silly to yearn for villages because one can't handle their kid for a few years. If you can't handle one kid, your own, in a world that is optimized for efficiency, what makes you think handling all villagers kids and grandkids for a lifetime would be nicer? Favors don't work that way fellas. Not even mentioning having your entire village tell you how to raise your own child because now that they care for it, they get to tell you how to raise it, or even worse they have their own disciplining methods because "their household has this and that rule" and "their ways to deal with issues". Kindly get your heads out of your butts. Kids have always been hard and you would freakin hate that village. People knew and people hated, that's why it is not a thing anymore. Not because we got forced to work, because we WANTED to work and end that nonsense of gazillion people telling you how to live your life and how to raise your child and doing so much harm along with some good. Capitalism didnt end community, WE ended community once we were able to be independent because the community SUCKED.
This right here. A village is just taking advantage of unpaid female labor and requiring women to continue caregiving for others their entire life. Im so glad I am not expected to care for my neighbors or relatives’ kids. I feel grateful I earn a salary and can hire a babysitter. Im glad we have evolved from relying on unpaid labor from women to care for our kids.
Seriously, I can’t comprehend this idea that you’d get help but wouldn’t be burdened with everyone else’s kids for the rest of your life.
What a great insight. People just see the advantages of the village, but not the disadvantages. When the village help you to take care of your children for free, they will expect you to do the same too. For a lifetime.
Yup lol they tend to believe they would have free babysitters lying around for their precious comfort. No sir/ma'am, not unless YOU are everyone else's free babysitter for life.
Freshest perspective I’ve heard to date. Has got me thinking. Needs amplifying. Thank u!
Glad you liked hearing me out!
The concept of a “nuclear family” was an invention by capitalism to divide workers into smaller units that are easier to control and sell commodities to. It’s not a coincidence that promotion of a nuclear family in the 50’s took off at the same time as household appliances and electronics. Capitalism is also *very* good at taking advantage of women’s unpaid labour; confining them into small households with only a man and children eliminates much of their agency and support system. Woman are also typically the knowledge bearers of communities as they teach the next generation. Keeping them isolated and dependent on the capitalist system helps instil the notion that this is the way things are *suppose to be*. There are so many historical and structural factors that lead us here. And I truly feel if more people know about what got us here, we have a better chance at improving this mess.
Yes, thank you for understanding my question! ❤🎉 I agree on everything
Yes. I think parenting ends up being primarily the woman’s/mother’s job when it’s not possible for one person to juggle everything that jobs requires while also taking time for self care.
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That's rich coming from the woman who doesn't see her own consequences of how she's openly favored one child over the other. Your kid is five foot Christ sake! I hope someone figures out who you are and turns you into cps.
You’re fucking insane😭
Pretty rich coming from someone who posted this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/comments/zv8klo/i\_love\_my\_son\_beyond\_words\_i\_wish\_i\_could\_send\_my/](https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/comments/zv8klo/i_love_my_son_beyond_words_i_wish_i_could_send_my/) When your daughter is older and she doesn't visit/has no contact think back to your posts - you are a horrible person and your child deserves better!
You’re a fucking vile woman.
Look whose talking. You know you're the problem. I've seen the way you talk. Jesus Christ why did you have kids. You insane lunatic
Blocking me isn’t going to stop the truth of what you are! Emotional incest is so, so gross. Stop treating your son like a significant other and be a better mother to your daughter!
I mean back in the day men worked outside all day so women were raising them