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This excellent piece on age segregation has got me thinking about how serious and pervasive this problem is. As the author states:
As discussed in @2rafa's post downthread, a major issue of the fertility crisis is a lack of time. Another issue it seems is a lack of even interacting with children unless you have some yourself, or have some in your family. I wonder if the lack of time among young adults in the West is causative of this age segregation?
Regardless, it likely has its roots in the K-12 education system. It's profoundly unnatural from a cultural standpoint to only be in the same peer group as people right around your age. I'm convinced it's unhealthy, and it predisposes us in a massive way to only socialize with people close to our age.
Do you think age segregation is an issue as well? If not, why not?
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.
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.
You trust your neighbours enough to interact with them? hahahahahahahahaha
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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