Our world has never been more connected – we can send messages to family and friends in the blink of an eye, and connect with people online, in an instant. Yet, the modern society in which we live, has lost the village that was once a staple in all our communities.
The push for individualism over collectivism in our society has resulted in family units becoming insular, smaller and more nuclear. Families raise children alone, mothers feeling distant from one another and despite the access to resources, information and freedom of choice… we are all adrift from the support we so vitaly need to raise our children.
I was recently introduced to a term called alloparenting which is used to describe the act of many caregivers being available in the care taking of children. Darcia Narvaez, founder of the Evolved Nest outreach programme, advocates for allomothering as one of her nine components to “re-nest” our children. She reflects on how our biology (the essence of who we are as human beings) is based on the premise of a collective being there to attend to and meet the needs of our young.
She speaks about how our ancestors used the women of the tribe as a micro-community to help raise everyone’s children. Historically we learned how to mother through the guidance of our village. We were guided and held generation by generation by those who had come before us.
Wisdom was passed from grandmother to mother to daughter. We grew up in societies where we witnessed babies and children being cared for from a young age; this watching and witnessing became our imprint when the time came for us to bear our own children.
Our society has changed at lightning speed, and our values and expectations have socially out-evolved our biology.
Women were naturally cared for in the postpartum period by a nurturing network of mother figures around them, until a time they fully recovered. If we were sick or needed to rest there were people on hand to care for our children.
Nowadays mothers more often than not have to carry on and pick themselves up. Bounce back. Lose the baby weight. Get back to “normal”. Mothers now so often feel they are failing their children and themselves by not being able to juggle it all and do it all.
We were never meant to do this alone.
© Kendra Blake. All Rights Reserved.
© Kendra Blake. All Rights Reserved.