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I think the thing that the ‘tradwife’ (almost always sitcom nuclear family tradwife, not how it actually was) memes don’t get is that many women don’t want to spend more than a decade without much adult company. Yeah, yeah, working for the man may be soulless or whatever, but you can make friends, you can gossip, you can go out for a drink after work or have lunch with your coworkers, you work together with other adults to achieve goals through the daytime hours.
I like children fine enough (and so did my mother) but to be the stereotypical suburban American SAHM you need to like children so much that you are fine only hanging out with them for a huge chunk of your life. Even on the weekend and in the evening mothers are primary parents. If you don’t have relatives nearby, then until the last kid goes to school, you’re mostly a 24/7/365 parent with the exception of times you pay for daycare (and while the kids are at school, at least for the first few years, much of your day is still going to be solo domestic chores or errands).
This means that, at least among smart or educated women who choose when or if they have kids, often only those most set on motherhood have children. People on the fence might like the idea of having children, might feel the biological imperative, but they override it because it seems like an impossible sacrifice.
Sometimes online SAHMs try to justify this lifestyle (I’m happy for those who enjoy it, by the way) by telling me how important it is to be around for every milestone, every development, to know everything about one’s children, to be deeply and thoroughly involved in every aspect of their education (maybe even homeschooling, which is especially popular on the right). But like, I don’t really care if I’m not around for a specific milestone. I’m sure I’ll love my children, but like my mother I doubt I’ll feel extreme pangs of jealousy if my kid sees their nanny as a maternal figure (as I did mine). And having accepted that most personality traits and intelligence are largely hereditary, pouring immense personal time into homeschooling seems redundant, as it’s unlikely to make a substantial difference to life outcomes (as Cochran etc have shown).
This idea of leaving one life and entering another (which again, if you like the company of other adults, is strictly worse in ways) is what scares many women about parenthood. Your social world goes from being huge to being yourself, your husband, some couples friends you see a few times a year and maybe another mother or two you see sometimes. Ideally the latter are pre-existing friends but often even this isn’t possible. The great majority of the time you’re alone with the kids (or just alone if they’re at school and you’re cleaning/cooking/shopping). You can see this even in the thread posted this week by someone asking where they could meet similar mothers, and where people were very excited by the idea some might live near each other. It’s clear this is a lonely business, and women are smart enough to realize it.
Many mothers don’t need to ‘work’ necessarily, but I think in many cases they need regular, consistent, significant time away from their children and/or in the company of other adults throughout their childhood. I think many women I know would be more willing to have children if they could be guaranteed this as an option. Currently it’s limited to the rich and to those people who still live in remaining tight-knit traditional communities.
You repeatedly call this a lack of adult company, but the problem you describe is not leaving the company of adults, but one of changing from socializing with non-parents to socializing with other parents. As a SAHM after the first year or so your free time is mostly during the workday, while non-SAHMs mostly have time to socialize after the work day ends (which for parents corresponds to mealtime and bedtime). To put it another way, motherhood comes with all the social detriments of a long-distance move. (But people still move all the time.)
Having experienced a modern society where SAHMs are normal, the first year of the first child is all about baby all the time, but the moms still socialize: they have support groups with other moms of their age group, call friends, use social media, and get a lot of emotional, logistical support, and time off via their parents and parents-in-law. Then once the kid socializes well with other kids they start meeting other moms almost daily, chatting while the kids play. The conversation is mostly centered on parenting, but that's mostly because, as you note, intellectuals aren't having kids.
As soon as the kids go to school (or usually preschool) then these SAHMs either gradually start working part-time or spend large portions of their days with their friends. I used to work in cafes a lot. There were many groups of SAHMs who would come into the cafe after lunch and spend roughly 1 PM to 5 PM hanging out. Book clubs, sports clubs, investment clubs. Of course, this society is almost invisible to non-SAHMs, because non-SAHMs are confined to the workplace during the day in places far away from where people live and where toddlers are raised. To the extent that non-mothers are ignorant of how much adult interaction SAHMs can get, I guess one might steelman your precise wording, but the true core of the issue here is that it's a change in social groups, not completely isolating. Unless you are in the top 5% of IQ, in which case you probably moved away from your parents and none of your friends who share your interests have had kids yet. Which I guess describes the average person in the Bay Area rational community as well as the average Mottizen.
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I think you're projecting an 80s PMC suburban lifestyle onto the 50s middle class. All the complaints you have (mother alone with two kids in a huge house, no adults) are only true for isolated people who moved repeatedly for their careers.
In the 1950s the TFR was 3+ and 80% of households were married with children. Kids were allowed to play unsupervised at 5 or 6. Nearly every house on your neighborhood was a family, and the streets were full of kids playing. Parents would visit with each other while the kids played. Most people lived in the city they grew up in, and thus near their extended family. Everyone went to church, even if they didn't believe.
In short, the ancient ties of kin, place, and faith were almost as strong in 1950 as they were in the deep past.
No, they didn’t. Everyone was a member of a church, but the actual attendance rate was mostly higher among Catholics. You are of course correct that fifties housewives visited with each other while their kids ran around like painted Indians, but the actual religiosity in practice of the fifties was a lot lower than you expect.
By the time I was 7, so in early 1990s at the height of the post-revolution crime waves, my parents were letting me roam the neighbourhood. I got up to some trouble, had to be slapped for stealing candy.
I didn't go very far at that age, maybe up to 1 km, but usually spent 2-3 hours outside playing. Pretty sure at 8 or 9 I sometimes roamed up to 2-3 km away and after 10 I frequently walked the 3.5 km home from school.
.. was something like this rare in the US cca 1990 ?
I legitimately don’t know, it was rare when I was growing up in the 2000’s(but not that rare) but I have no idea what 1990 was like.
Sounds like my childhood, so I'd say no.
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I agree, the idea that missing a "milestone" matter is insanity. I doubt I will remember 5 years later, and I know they won't. Why does it matter if you are not around 24/7 for your kids as long as they are ok?
People have an extreme investment in their children now, partially because they have fewer children but also because society strongly pushes parents into being helicopter parents.
I thought of putting this in, but one of the issues is that you can't even let your kid be a 'latchkey kid' in a regular city anymore because the only other parents who let their kids have that freedom at a young age are dysfunctional/divorced/broken homes/neglectful, so your kid will end up around the wrong crowd by default. Any 'respectable' PMC parent is helicoptering, so you have to too, you can't defect by yourself.
I mean, in my standard average working class neighborhood I can look out the front window and watch the neighborhood kids playing either unsupervised or indifferently ‘supervised’ by teenagers that are actually shooting hoops or gossiping about boys. These are owned single family homes where the kids are full time residents, too. This might be an exception, but I think it much more likely that the PMC is just neurotic and creates their own problems by being neurotic.
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The problem here isn't the city, it's the American PMC. Those people are neurotic.
You can give your ten year old a key and a bus pass in Singapore with no problems whatsoever. I had a key, a bike, and the run of the city at ten. Where I live right now, it looks like twelve is the age where kids roam free.
Of course, I'm neither PMC nor underclass.
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Good point. I think it's another example how different aspects of social atrophy form a vicious cycle. It's probably also safe to assume that you're likely to invite social disapproval and censure as a young PMC mother if you make too many obvious attempts to get away from your own children throughout the day one way or another.
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Seems to me to your post is the marshmallow test. Being a parent is hard for the first 5 or so years (but is also full of joy). The older the kids get the easier it is and you get the rich life of being a parent and hopefully a grandparent.
And then it becomes even harder when puberty hits.
Different kind.
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Maybe you can view modern parenting as a gauntlet that you have to suffer through to get the joy of a family in old age (and I'm sure some do). But that doesn't mean it has to be that way. Of course having kids is always going to be work, but in previous generations much more of the burden was shared between extended families and communities in ways that meant that individual mothers weren't carrying as much individual responsibility on their backs.
I’m not arguing that atomization is good. Just that there are still plenty of reasons to have kiddos.
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Suburbia is souless and atomizing conpared to traditional towns and cities. There aren't people on the streets, there are cars. There are no natural places to meet people, distances are vast and people are isolated in their fenced in homes. suburbia encourages loneliness. It is quite absurd that people are so isolated that they prefer being in a cubical just to have people around them.
I grew up in the suburbs. I played football in the street, and full court basketball across the street. I knocked on my friends doors to see if they could play, and then we rode our bikes to the supermarket to buy candy and soda.
Now I live in the suburbs. Back when the kids needed watching I'd sit on a folding chair in someone's driveway with the other dads, watching kids play in the street.
Just because you're a Billy no-mates doesn't mean the rest of us are.
"Suburbia" is extremely diverse, there are suburbs with widely spaced out McMansions with driveways leading off a an artery road that has no sidewalks such that it would be genuinely dangerous to send your kid over to a neighbor a couple of street away, and there are suburbs (particular older ones with smaller houses, or streetcar suburbs in older cities) that are denser, have sidewalks, very low speed limits on roads, and which are more conducive to community.
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What's funny about this is that my experience is largely the opposite: I recently visited some friends in the north Dallas metroplex, which is about as close to the platonic ideal of detached-house suburbia as you can get sprawling in all directions, and they know their neighbors on all sides by name (and which tools and skills they regularly trade), and live within a few hundred meters of an HOA-managed playscape where they regularly encounter the same few dozen children and parents. As far as I can tell, the folks I know in the NYC area have much more trouble meeting their neighbors behind closed apartment doors, with front yards replaced with dark interior hallways, and porches replaced with coffee shops and bars.
I'd buy that the experience varies a lot by personality, though: if you are looking for a particular niche interest friend group, the city is probably a better choice, and suburbia can be pretty underwhelming. But I do think suburbs are often undersold generally.
Indeed, when I lived in an apartment, I have not known a single person living in the same building. I asked my friends about, and this has been everyone else’s experience as well. Now, I know all the people on my SFH suburban street, and regularly hang out with some of them.
When people say things like suburbia being atomizing, I’m really dumbfounded — compared to what? Just because there are a lot of people walking down the street doesn’t mean that it’s easier to socialize, in fact it is the opposite. Humans enter different behavioral modes in different settings. When there are a lot of people around, we naturally tend to detach ourselves mentally, and treat everyone as an irrelevant blob. If, on the other hand, we get bunched together with only a couple of people at a time, it feels more natural to strike the conversation (in fact, sometimes it’s awkward not to). Go to a mass rock concert, and try to make new friends, and then go to a jam session in a hole-in-the-wall bar and try the same. Which is easier?
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Maybe I'm too dense, but at the end of the day, does this metroplex actually offer what sociologists call third places?
I don't find that suburbia has a shortage of parks (or churches). The example of the HOA playscape (small park) isn't gated, but is probably only used by local residents. I'd also count the grade-separated mixed use paths through the area.
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It does, but they are outdoors.
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You mean the playground he just referenced?
And I mean ‘talks to other moms while both their littles climb on the playground equipment’ basically is my mental image of what UMC stay at home moms do when they aren’t busy with housework/childcare/whatever. It’s not as if a park as a third space is difficult to imagine.
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As I've mentioned before, I think place hardly matters.
Take a sociable Puerto Rican from NYC and drop him in a Miami suburb, and he'll build up a social network quickly - or the other way around. Strong communities are found everywhere from Svalbard to the Amazon, and yes, in the Dallas suburbs.
The lonely PMC people in NYC were lonely in the suburbs they grew up in (and are rebelling against).
So much of the angst about suburbs specifically and place in general are driven by loveless and unlovable people moving from place to place because they don't realize that their problem isn't what's outside the, but what's inside them.
In previous generations these people mostly did completely fine. Denying that environment and culture has any impact on community is ridiculous. Sure, the NYC Puerto Rican will be fine in a Miami suburb, but will his kids raised there still have a social network as dense and as local as he had?
You really can force people to make friends by putting them in the same spaces frequently (and making them collaborate), and it's a good thing. The military does this, boarding schools do this, many traditional social institutions did and do this. Things start awkwardly, and then people get comfortable, and they become in many cases firm friends even if they are very different (and especially if they're similar).
Nobody's denying that a conscientious, outgoing, charming and confident individual with lots of time can build a big social circle anywhere, but most people aren't this. Most people need a little help. They're not broken, they want friends, it's just harder. If you go to "traditional" societies almost nobody has friends they deliberately made like an autistic tinder user. They have friends from childhood, friends who are their parents' friends children, or their grandparents' friends' grandchildren, or their cousins or cousins' childhood friends.
That what this actually means. In a traditional society your entire circle can be an organic web of friends and family that stay with you your entire life.
If they stay in Miami for as many generations as they did in New York, of course they would. There are plenty of older East Coast suburbs where families go back for generations. Any permanent settlement where people stay for generations is going to form communities.
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I think it depends where in NYC you live, but it's also about social circles, for sure. Manhattan is so dense, though, that your kids are very likely going to have classmates who live less than ten minutes from you by foot, if not much closer. I had friends growing up who had other kids their age in their co-op / apartment building who went to the same school that we did, so they could play and go in together.
People who raise parents in Manhattan and who don't tend to move out to the burbs also tend to be (regardless of their wealth, which is also a requirement for the most part) lifelong New Yorkers, often born and raised, and so often have much more extensive networks of friends and family in the city. Or they're expats, who have their own social circles.
Every detached single family home suburb I've lived in had classmates a lot closer than a 10 minute walk. There were always classmates on the same street even. And that's in various towns.
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The word "neighbour" is missing from your post. Stay at home mothers who live in houses next-door, could provide each other company. As I assume they did, when female workforce participation was lower.
This is one of those scenarios where it's easy to see a solution, but it lacks critical mass, much like walkable areas. You can't just decide to do it and hope the infastructure catches up.
If 60% of the houses in my neighborhood had stay-at-home moms in it with kids, and maybe a walkable park / swimclub within it, then you've lowered the barrier tremendously. Most women can find at least a few other people among dozens who they can get along with and their kids can play together. When 5-10% of the houses have this it's the same as not existing unless you win a lottery. Most importantly in the 60%+, you ahve the added diversity of the fact that the neighborhood with a lot of different priorities and levels of commitment to find your nitch amongst but likely all within a similar socio-economic class
On the other hand, intentional communities can only half-way bridge this. You will end up with a very particular selection effect that will almost necessarily require a much bigger dedication to the community and much deeper in-crowd vibes with a particular temperment and expectation. It's the difference between playing pick-up games with your neighbors and joining a club team.
In the absence of organic, SAHM friendly societies and neighborhoods, going at it alone and joining a Benedict Option style commune are two distantly inferior options. The families of GenX defected at too high a rate and broke the option.
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You trust your neighbours enough to interact with them? hahahahahahahahaha
Low effort and contentless, and you seem to only be here for comments like this.
I'm escalating this ban to a week on the grounds of you being purely obnoxious. Just go away if this is all you're here for.
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I bake my neighbors cookies and so far one of my neighbors has even returned the plate (along with a bottle of wine.)
Two doors down there is a single dad with two kids around the same age as mine. Across the street is a couple with three kids, slightly older. Next door on one side is a retiree who lost her cat when she moved in. On the other side is another family with small kids.
I have a play structure in my backyard which makes my house a good place to invite kids over. Excuses are easy to find if I'm willing to put in the effort.
Suburbia can be a soulless hell. I need to cross a highway to get to any commercial space - restaurant, grocery store, other kind of shop. But I know right off the bat that most of my neighbors are homeowners, have jobs that can pay for houses and cars, have kids and the responsibilities that go with that, can follow the most basic rules of the HOA (I don't like there is an HOA, but recognize it as a filter.) As a baseline they are more trustworthy than anyone I pass on the street. I am putting in the work to cultivate those relationships but I believe it is worthwhile.
I remember growing up in suburbia, I rode my bike in the neighborhood with the other kids. I would go to other kids' homes and knock on their front door and ask, "Is Heather home?" I would kick the ball in my backyard over the fence and have to go to the street one over and knock on a stranger's door and ask if I could retrieve my ball. My parent's mostly watched me through the kitchen window - I had a great deal of independence even by the time I was five years old.
My mom met with friends almost every day, either at a McDonalds with a play place, a park, or someone's home.
The change, as far as I perceive it, happened around 9/11. Same neighborhood, same kids, same families, but people stopped visiting as much. I wasn't allowed to go out by myself as much. A layer of optimism was stripped away.
I guess that's why I think it is mostly an attitude thing, not anything inherent to the suburbs. And why I stubbornly believe I can create a community if I keep pressing my neighbors to interact with me.
I just want to say thank you for doing this. Efforts like yours are the sort of thing that creates meaningful, appreciable change in the world that talking about problems on a forum does not.
The only time I've ever had community was when I did something similar, and it seems that most people are just waiting for someone to reach out. They aren't antisocial, just non-agentic. To everyone reading this who wants community: try and do the same. Report back on how it goes!
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