Wishing kids came with parenting manuals?

They used to... in the form of our community

I know it’s often said that parenting is so hard because kids don’t come with a manual. But they used to.

For most of human history we lived in tribal groups of around 100 people that worked together to take care of one another. They gathered and cooked food together, shared the tasks of maintaining structures, and raised their children collectively.

In this way, parenting was a shared activity of most, if not all, members of the community. Children played in multi-aged groups and took care of younger kids. Adults were nearby if anything was needed, but most of their day the children spent time together.

Adults in those tribal communities had two things working in their favor that we don’t always have anymore. One is, that they had lots of previous experience with children because they were part of those multi-aged groups when they were younger. Folks of different ages were not separated into cohorts the way they are today.
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Second, they had other adults to turn to if they needed help. The how-to-care-for-a-kid-manual existed in the many available people in the group who had parented before them. No one was left to deal with situations in isolation. Help was available.

This is the resource that’s missing these days. And it used to be contained inside of multi-age communities that we don’t really have anymore. There is a continuity of care missing from our family units. And in that continuity was the lived knowledge and experience of the community.

This is why we feel like we’re parenting alone and doing it by the seat of our (exhausted) pants!

Since we’re unlikely to restore the multi-age familial unit in a big way anytime soon (it would require so much more repair than just moving us all in together again), I think we start by looking to systems we do have access to in order to find someone who has navigated this territory before. I hope you already have that in your life; other mamas who are parenting kids a little older than yours, or a wise grandmother, or a friendly neighbor. I wish that for you, and I wish I’d had that when I was a young parent.

We may not have the ideal community, but I do think we are often still more connected than we think. We don’t have to have the whole thing to have elements of it. Maybe it’s worth considering the imperfect ways that these resources do exist?

What about the friends you call, the other mom’s you talk to, or even the other exhausted moms you pass in the grocery store that give soothing and knowing looks at your screaming toddler or your sleeping baby?
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We need solidarity. Give it. Receive it when you get it. Let it in.

And if that still isn’t cutting it, you can find a professional mentor. Think of it as a rent-a-grandmother. I have thought a great deal about parenting in the 35+ years since I had my first baby. I’ve raised my kids, all wildly different human beings who have taught me the value of care, of being seen, and of the impact that seemingly small things can have on us all.

I am a resource for working through the kind of parent you want to be and how to pull it off. I have a lot of skills from all of the repair I’ve done with my children over large and small things. I’ve learned (and still am learning) what it takes to have relationships with my children based on love, support, and shared humanity. I’ve learned how to listen deeply, have good boundaries, and love wholly.

Please do reach out if you’re feeling lonely, isolated, and overwhelmed. Whether you hire me or not, knowing that you’re not alone is often a large piece of the puzzle. I care how your parenting is going. I care how under-resourced you are. Parenting doesn’t have to be this big of a struggle.