we need a village

A few weeks ago Michael and I had our youngest niece and nephew stay over for nearly a week while my sister (the kids’ mother) flew to New York to visit our mother as she continues to recover from all her treatments. The kids are number 8 and 9 in the roster of my nieces and nephews, and I’ve been changing family members’ diapers since my teen years, but this is the first time I’ve done anything nearly so ambitious as to offer full-time childcare for a whole week. I’m still sneezing from the germs they gave me, and there are still stray cheerios turning up under the couch cushions, but it was a wonderful experience.

It takes a village. How well-worn these words are, and how true. In our (especially white) society where families are typically isolated into nuclear units, we need more villages. White Americans have not yet escaped the myth of settler-colonialism, where a “family” is just a man and a woman and their kids setting off to create their own little kingdom on stolen land. This is a terribly dysfunctional model that robs us of the richness of multigenerational relationships and the beauty of a wide web of support. It also bankrupts parents who have to strive to meet all their children’s needs themselves – not just financially (a huge burden in this competitive economy) but also emotionally, as they suffer isolation, worry, and stress.

There are so many things we can do to make society friendlier for parents and especially mothers – from paid parental leave to affordable daycare and sensible healthcare reforms. Many of them need to go to City Hall – or to Sacramento or to Washington – but some of them can happen at your local church, and I see them happening. I saw three family units fold together for fellowship after church on Mother’s Day, a day that can be particularly difficult emotionally if your unit doesn’t match the settler-colonial-Hallmark model. I saw the youth of our youth group embrace and include the littlest kids. The youth of our church practically fought over the children who came on our last retreat, putting them right in the center of the community where they belong. At Sunday Celebration, by welcoming children into the service and not insisting they stay in the nursery, we all do our best to follow the call of Jesus. We remember that Jesus put a little child in the center of the crowd and said, “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” Caring for children is at the heart of the gospel, and this call is laid upon us all, no matter whether your “family unit” includes children or not. If your unit doesn’t include children, I’d like to challenge you to expand your unit. Think bigger. Include your neighbors; include nieces and nephews and niblings of any gender; include your church family. Extend some support to them, whether that be a game of tag, a tea party, or a favor done for their parents, or advocating for better parental support on a local or national level if you prefer the political approach. Whatever you choose to do, choose it as plain good sense; or as an act of resistance against the white-settler-colonial myth; or as an act of devotion in following Christ’s call.