Thread by @SiyandaWrites

One of western modernity’s greatest cruelties is the fact that couples are expected to raise newborns alone. I’ll never understand it and it really is an impossible thing

In other cultures you give birth and a flight of female relatives descends upon you to take care of you (make you food and do chores) and help with the baby. You don’t just soldier on in a two bedroom apartment with only a partner who works full time. It is totally absurd

What I’m trying to say is this is not normal. Humans have been giving birth for millennia and nobody was excepted to do it alone. It’s not normal to expect someone/a couple to raise an infant alone.

I don’t know who’s to blame. Obviously capitalism and it’s insistence that you can replace the functions of the extended family/community with products, gadgets and sheer will power. The lie that everything is a competition and that “good mothers” don’t need help.

Humans are herd animals because we need lots of help. It’s not just because we’re social and it’s fun to have bants and jokes. It’s because we literally need help to make it through this life cycle called being human.

I’m speaking as a person who used to spend weekends with newborn women in my family as the only daughter of the only son. I was 12-15, helping my cousins as best I could with newborn stuff. They also were staying with their mothers during the baby’s first few months.

When you think about it like that it’s truly a miracle that western marriages survive at the rate they do. A newborn can destroy a single persons psyche never mind a whole ass marriage. I can’t believe anyone makes it out alive raising a baby alone.

When I lived in a European city I used to hear my neighbor sobbing alone with her baby. I thought to myself, if this is “civilization” then I don’t want any part of it.

I’m working on a longer piece that will expand thinking on this to include the practice of Botsêtsi, Stoler’s theory of culture as a toolset + literary things. In the meantime I don’t know what organizations to point to, but if you wanna buy me coffee cash.app/$Siyandawrites

YouTube is succinct