When I had my first baby in April, my family stayed with us for three months.
While our small house felt like a hostel at times with at least six adults and a baby filling its rooms—my sister-in-law sleeping on the couch, my mother-in-law on a pallet on the living room floor, and two bathrooms to share—we made it work.
Although some gawked at the prospect of extended family staying at our home for months at a time, we more often heard something along the lines of: “I wish I had that kind of help when I had little ones…”
My mother-in-law is from India, where they treat new mothers with great care; daily coconut oil massages, hot baths, home-cooked food, and required rest for 40 days are all part of the postpartum experience there. I experienced the blessing of these traditions firsthand as she took off three months of her life to pass them down to me.
Having family support greatly helped me adjust to life as a new mom. The grandmas helped with cooking and cleaning the house, my sisters-in-law held my son when I needed to shower, work, or get my eyebrows done, and the grandpas helped with mowing the yard, dusting, and even fixing pipe leaks while my husband was at work.
The house was definitely still messy despite the many hands to help clean it, and the stove was on 24/7 with lots of mouths to feed. My son always had someone to hold him, and he quickly learned to sleep anywhere, no matter how noisy.
It felt a little like “The Waltons” without the farm. Yes, we did get tired of each other on occasion, but I’m thankful to have experienced this blessing of support that I recognize many new mothers lack.
Since our family returned to their home state 12 hours away, I have seen why women feel pushed to be either a “girl boss” or a “trad wife.” In isolation and without workplace flexibility, navigating motherhood and keeping a foot in the workforce feels impossible.
While declining birth rates and family policy reform are the subject of endless discussion by reporters, podcasters, and decision-makers in Washington, cultural shifts are also necessary for efforts to strengthen family formation and encourage childbearing to truly take root.
For those who don’t want children to begin with, our society’s age stratification structure shields young adults from organically witnessing motherhood and fatherhood—depriving them of the opportunity to even visualize what a life with kids would look like.
For those who do want kids, the same issue of age stratification and atomized nuclear families in our society deprives parents of the support they need to either have more kids or enjoy parenthood to the fullest.
The solution to the birth rate and family crisis in our country requires cultural renewal alongside sound public policy, and that cultural renewal is twofold: we need a society that embraces children again, and this can only be accomplished in a society that values intergenerational overlap.
The first part of the solution to support flourishing families in the U.S. is restoring the value we place in raising and caring for the next generation. Older generations have an important role to play in passing along the wisdom, experience, and support that help younger families thrive.
Recent studies suggest that smartphones have been a driving force behind declining birth rates since 2007. While I think there are many other factors at play—including declining marriage rates and growing uncertainty among young Americans about whether they’d make good parents—the smartphone did restructure human relationships. We now have constant access to entertainment, and the rise of social media gives us the illusion of connection to others, so isolation can now be easily numbed, and we’ve resorted to apps to help us find love. Additionally, the comparison traps of social media decrease fertility as aspiring parents feel the investments required to raise successful children are out of reach as they hold themselves to unrealistic expectations from picture-perfect influencers.
We’ve become more disconnected and detached from our communities, friends, and our own families, and we’ve gotten used to the comforts and conveniences of the atomized life. It may be free of conflict, but it’s also free of true connection.
Unfortunately, the “no contact” movement widely praised on social media has been devastating for families, and an estimated 27% of Americans 18 years and older have gone “no contact” with a family member. Rather than working through disagreements and valuing the wisdom that our parents and older generations can give us, young people are encouraged to simply cut off communication with their families, even for simple political disagreements.
While our family stayed with us, we had our fair share of arguments and frustrations over sharing such a small space, but it’s still much better than navigating motherhood alone.
My grandmother, mother, and mother-in-law have all been anchors for me as older, wiser women with experience and insight that friends my age simply cannot give me. And then my younger sister and sisters-in-law helped me to laugh and stay lighthearted in the difficult moments of caring for a newborn.
While the individualism of the West has led to great prosperity, it has pushed women to attempt to do it all, all at once, and alone. Without community and family support or flexible work and childcare options, navigating both family and career feels out of reach for many women, who then feel pressured to either choose family or career, to be a “girlboss” or a “tradwife.”
It doesn’t help that most childcare policy solutions and paid family leave programs are designed for full-time working moms, while most moms would prefer part-time or flexible work. While most parents prefer to rely on relatives for childcare, daycare centers are the second most utilized childcare option for parents, which often operate on full time hours and do not come with the flexibility of in-home care options.
Downstream from this, young women are also spending time in the dating season for a decade on average, delaying moving into the next phase of their lives. Without the wisdom of family and friends to give advice and introduce eligible, vetted partners, young women are turning toward dating apps with less success, or opting out of dating altogether, hindered from taking the first step toward starting a family.
Isolation, along with social media echo chambers that praise the childfree life, has blinded my generation to the joys of raising children. As a Gen Zer, I know many women my age who have little to no connections or friendships with older people or families outside of their own. If we are only surrounded by those in our same stage of life, we lack the vision from those who have gone before us to raise families and who can encourage us to start one of our own. Now, only 49% of Gen Zers say that they want children—much lower than past generations at the same age.
The antidote to this is clear, as studies show that women are more likely to have a baby when someone in their social circle has a young child and, additionally, that couples who have higher social support networks have additional children sooner than those who do not.
Thankfully, while I was in college, a young mom in my community invited me in to help take care of her son. She showed me the joy of raising children, and that it could even be done with a foot still in the workforce, as she managed her business from home. I saw a world of opportunity my own mother didn’t have before the rise of remote work and independent contracting. It showed me that women can do it all, and sometimes all at once—but only with support.
When we are around others who are raising kids with joy, it gives us the confidence we need to start families of our own, and to do it within the support of a community so that we embrace having even more children over time, and so that motherhood can be enjoyed and not simply endured.
Since our family has left, we’ve leaned on our church community and friendships for help. For parents who don’t have supportive relatives nearby, strong community institutions, like churches or schools, can help develop friendships and intergenerational support. My husband and I spend a lot of time with the college students at our church, who are always eager to help take care of our son when we need help.
We’ve also found support in other parents in our community, older couples whose children have left the nest, and next door neighbors. We’ve found that people of all ages and walks of life enjoy supporting young families, but sometimes it just requires humility on our part to take the first step and ask for help.
While pro-family policies like flexible work arrangements, reduced childcare regulations, and affordable housing are a start to reviving the American family, we also need to embrace cultural shifts that make starting a family seem not only achievable, but desirable. The best way to do that is to hear it firsthand from those who have done it before, and to accept their help as we raise up the next generation.