Let's talk about the village

It takes a village to raise a child - and to withstand technology, too.

Apr 10, 2025

My parents, like my grandparents before them (and perhaps like many of yours), showed me by their words and actions how to build a village around our family — and how valuable they felt that village was.

For Rob and Beth, it looked like their church, a place to be seen, known, and loved — and where they were constantly recruited to some sort of committee. It was their street, including the house who hosted swim lessons in a backyard pool and the neighbor who had a key to our house and would let me in after school when I inevitably forgot mine. It was the Coast Guard classmates who gathered for dinner and organized playdates. It was our town’s Women’s Club and the babysitting co-op and my best friend two streets over and the family that watched me when my sister was born and the college softball team my Dad coached and our island in Maine and my grandparents twenty minutes away and our teachers all through grade school — seemingly endless rings of support given and support extended. For my entire life, my parents have spent countless hours caring for others, leading others, and simply being with others.

And so as I began my own adult life, this instinct to build a village — to reach out to others, to care for them, to weave lines of dependency — was, thanks to my parents’ example, strong. As an introvert who prides herself on self-sufficiency, however, it did not always feel natural. It still does not always feel natural. In fact, if I linger on my performance too long, it’s easy to feel as though I’m failing constantly — not reaching out when I should, taking too much when I shouldn’t, and disappointing others left and right.

And yet, 16 years out from graduating college — and an interstate move, a marriage, and three children later — my family feels tightly wrapped in community:

There are our parents, an outpost of our village, who live states away but drop everything to care for our children when needed, who send loving encouragement from afar.

There’s our church family and particularly our community group, who spend hours together each month: sharing meals, swapping stories, caring for each other’s children, celebrating, mourning, praying.

There is Articles Club, the most precious group of 12 who could meet any need at any time of day. Seeing us run toward each other in grief and triumph over the last eight years has been a sight to behold.

There is our babysitter, the most fun angel on Earth, who cares for our young and keeps us young.

Our neighbors, who gather for potlucks, keep lawn tools in common, and allow kids to roam freely through their backyards.

Our children’s schools, with teachers who care deeply for our kids and that give us a place to pour out our resources.

And so many friendships in so many seasons, one-offs and little groups and concentric circles, who meet needs and allow me to meet needs, mentoring and being mentored in turn.

I could go on.

I did not set out to build a village to insulate my family from the ravages of technology. 16 years ago, I just did what it seemed like adults do, like I had seen all the adults before me do. In 2025, however, protection from the ravages of technology seems to be one of the most important riches a village can offer.

Without a village, adults, feeling stressed and overwhelmed, turn to their phones for comfort, ease, and answers — but often find only anxiety, more reasons to be depressed, and more causes for outrage, further fueling their feelings of inadequacy and helplessness.

Without a village, kids have fewer playmates, no circle of likeminded family friends, no mentors, and no sticky communities to give them a sense of belonging, identity, and purpose. These kids often get the short end of the stick — which might look like irritability, lack of patience, or an unwillingness to discipline — from the adults in their lives who are suffering from loneliness, exhaustion, and hopelessness.

Technology makes us think we don’t need a village. We have Uber to drive us to the airport and DoorDash to deliver food when we are sick. We have Facebook mom groups to answer our fearful nighttime questions, iPads to quiet our children, social media influencers to commiserate with and cheer on throughout the day.

But those things are not enough, are they? In the end, we may have gotten what we need, but we are left feeling hollow. No tie was strengthened, no human heartstring was plucked.

Still, for some parents, this technological solution feels like the only option, as the scrum of comments on a recent Jon Haidt post surfaced for me:

Our world is complex. Life is hard for many people, incredibly hard for still more. Structural changes to society are needed and worth fighting for.

And yet.

Our children are here today — right now. Their childhood is right now, and they don’t get another one. They can’t wait for the “capitalist hellscape” to be fixed. They can’t wait for society to be healed. They need us — their adults — to do the hard thing, and to do it day after day after day.

That hard thing might be laying down our own phone to look into their eyes, and talk about nothing much, and laugh. It might be inviting a neighbor over for dinner, even though it feels nerve-wracking and awkward. It might be saying no to an overfull slate of extracurriculars so that we can attend church or a civic organization.

All of the hard is made harder by technology’s value system, which rewards everything that makes building a village challenging and nothing that makes it easier. The skills rewarded on social media and our phones are the opposite of the skills needed to build a village: an attention span that accommodates meandering conversation. Compassion for differences. A generous perspective. An acceptance of our weakness and lack of control. Patience for the slow build of intimacy over time. The ability to trust others and be vulnerable in turn.

Building a village asks us to trust our best instincts, that people are generally kind and good. Social media preys on our worst instincts, that we live in a world of scarcity and judgment and harm around every corner.

So yes, technology’s pernicious algorithms and rewards, and the way it’s laced itself into our work and our play, have made it harder than ever to build a village, raise a child, and thrive as a person. But they’ve also made it more vital than ever.

Where technology gives us loneliness, a village gives us community.
Where technology makes us fearful, a village brings comfort and reassurance.
Where technology makes us feel like we’re not doing enough, a village allows us to do for others.
Where technology makes us feel like we’re less-than, a village reminds us that we’re actually kind of average, and that’s okay.
Where technology leaves us feeling exhausted, a village gives us tangible relief.
Where technology makes us feel like the only one, a village gives us solidarity — other parents who will make doing the next right thing for our children easier.
Where technology leaves us feeling weak, brittle, and on-the-brink, a village empowers us to make strong decisions — countercultural decisions.
Where technology rewards our worst impulses, a village asks us to flex our best ones, growing in character and virtue one tiny action at a time.

If you are waiting for a cultural sea change that will make it easier to build a village that stands as a bulwark against technology’s horrors — to have the time and space to devote to others, and to receive from them in return — this is what I have to say: you are it. You can be the sea change, the shift, the healing. There is no time to lose: your family needs this now, not when you’ve hit a financial milestone or a project is complete or things feel a little more under control.

And the families around you need it, too, need someone willing to go first, to show them that it can be done, that it’s possible to rely on each other instead of mostly on technology. We hurt ourselves, our children, and the people around us when we freeze, scared to act. If we won’t do it, who will?

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about village building from a few different angles, and I hope it’s encouraging. Today, I want to leave you with a few prompts — perhaps they’ll be good food for thought around the dinner table or on a walk.

1. Define who is already in your village.

What is a village, anyway? I suspect some of us have only enough of a definition to make us feel bad, and more clarity is helpful when we’re looking to build.

If you define your “village” as those you would call at 2am, I would say that’s a part but not the whole. Just like a brick-and-mortar village, your proverbial village should be varied and specialized. Taken together, I’d say it’s the people in your family’s life who you care for, and who care for you. The care doesn’t have to look the same going both ways — for example, our teachers care for our kids by educating them and we care for our teachers by supporting their authority, volunteering in their classrooms, and providing supplies — but it’s best when it’s reciprocal.

Big or small, new or old, make a list of who is already in your circle of care.

2. Name one need you have and one need you could meet.

Is it afterschool playmates on your street? Is it another family who feels similarly about technology? It is some hours of childcare this summer? Is is a friend to walk with? Is it a last-minute school pickup when there’s traffic on the way home? Is it a meal to a family with a newborn? Is it information about the teachers in the next grade up or the vibe at the middle school or the details of that new school board policy?

Anything on this list might be something you could offer, or something that you need. Make your own list, then choose just one of each to focus on right now.

3. Name one of your barriers to building a village.

If I had to guess, I’d say for most of us it’s fear. Time, yes, but mostly fear. If that resonates, let’s make it smaller: fear of what? Of rejection? Of falling behind? Of you or your child doing something embarrassing? Of letting someone down? Of your child getting hurt?

Whatever it is, make the problem small, and then make it smaller still. You don’t have to have the perfect solution, but the smaller you make the problem, the more likely you’ll be to find a solution, and to act on it. You may want to make bigger changes over time — tending to our village was one reason I stepped down to part-time hours at work, and one reason why we’ve stayed in our “starter home” for so long — but you don’t have to make them all at once. Just start, and then continue.

The Connected Family

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