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Stephanie H. Murray Profile picture
@stephmurrayyyy
Oct 15 • 17 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
As someone who very much does want a village and indeed has it (I currently have 4 neighborhood kids under 6 at my house joining us for dinner. Part of a baby swapping system I started in 2021), after having pretty painstakingly built it over years, I want to make two points...
First point is to just confirm that I think @CartoonsHateHer is basically right. I have been mulling an essay about my own village building experience, the main lesson of which is that intensive parenting is pretty much incompatible with village building.
@CartoonsHateHer Like you can micromanage your kid’s care (their exposure to high fructose corn syrup, screen time, whether or not someone problematically tells them “you’re okay” when they fall) or you can have reliable community help with childcare. Thems the options.
@CartoonsHateHer Everyone accepts that I’m a stickler about please & thank yous & will pretty much never serve their kids anything other than pasta (and whatever they find stuck between my couch cushions). I have to accept the fact that other people let my kids watch more TV than I would like.
@CartoonsHateHer (Interestingly, I find that people really into the whole attachment parenting “time spent away from mom is linearly harmful to the child” thing are basically impossible to rope into the whole village system. But I digress.)
@CartoonsHateHer All of this is to say that acceptance of others' parenting styles/systems/ideas about life differ is an essential part of sustaining the village I am in. BUT I think another, probably equally important component of sustaining village life is...living in a village...
@CartoonsHateHer I think it is EXTREMELY difficult to build a village in the manufactured isolation of a car dependent American suburb.
@CartoonsHateHer The other reason this years-long baby swapping village system has maintained itself over time is that we all live extremely close together in a dense walkable neighborhood.
@CartoonsHateHer Proximity is pretty much essential for maintaining systems of practical support. It’s not enough to have “community,” as in “knowing people willing to help you.” It must be a “place-based community” as @DrJonWinder calls it.
@CartoonsHateHer @DrJonWinder There are huge obstacles to building a “place-based community” basically everywhere that have taken over, including dense city neighborhoods, as I’ve written about. BUT...

theatlantic.com/family/archive…
@CartoonsHateHer @DrJonWinder It is a lot easier to find times that work for everyone when you all live very close together and to everything you need (grocery stores etc). And it is much easier to find people in want of a village (including people that you like!), when you are in a fairly dense area.
Sorry for the typos per usual! I meant "everywhere that *cars* have taken over."

Actually today I surprised the kids by making lemon chicken and rice in the crockpot rather than the usual pasta. But then when I offered to make some noodles for anyone who didn't want the chicken, they ...all (minus Jane) opted for the noodles lmao

Okay probs could have explained this better but basically on Tuesdays and Thursdays, one family takes all the kids from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. so that the other parents can go to dinner, catch up on laundry, run...whatever. Highly recommend!

Thank you to everyone for politely ignoring the typos in this sentence as well. Hopefully you got the gist of it. Gonna have to pull the "there were six children under the age of 8 in my house at the time of writing" card.

If you don't already know, it's best that I don't tell you.

Just fyi the reason there is no mention of grandparents/extended family in this thread is that I live in a different country than my family and thus had no choice but build up a village without them. Had to really start from scratch on this one.

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More from @stephmurrayyyy

Stephanie H. Murray Profile picture
Sep 26
Several books & articles published lately argue that the factors holding people back from having kids are not economic, but cultural, & thus low fertility can't be reversed through financial support. In my latest for @TheAtlantic I explain that that's not how culture works.
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First of all, I’m going to reiterate that there is little economically mysterious about the trend toward low fertility when you take stock of the degree to which the economics of child rearing have changed over a relatively short time span.
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But also, culture and economics are inextricably linked! Material conditions can and inevitably do shape cultural values (and vice versa). Image
Read 8 tweets
Stephanie H. Murray Profile picture
Jul 29
Today, kids are practically forbidden in the street. But a century ago, the street was the primary locus of kids' play. What happened? & did we lose anything by moving play from public streets into private yards & gated playgrounds? I tackle these Qs in my latest for @TheAtlantic Image
I’m hoping this piece will help clear up some misconceptions about the loss of children’s freedom to roam the streets around their homes. First, it did not begin in the 1980s/90s, but much earlier when cars first emerged on city roads in large numbers.

theatlantic.com/family/archive…
Second, the ousting of kids from the street did not occur as the natural result of changes in parents’ behaviors. It took deliberate effort to erode the once widespread belief that children are entitled to use the street like anyone else.
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Read 6 tweets
Stephanie H. Murray Profile picture
Sep 8, 2023
This by @moveincircles gets at something I've tried to articulate before: there's a subset of conservatives whose main worldview seems to be that liberalism/capitalism would've worked out just fine if only women hadn't started participating in it.

reactionaryfeminist.substack.com/p/everything-c…
It's sort of an interesting position to take. I get being pro-liberalism/capitalism--for all their faults, I do think I'd rather live in this era than any previous one. I also get having a problem liberalism and capitalism--for all their strengths and advantages...
...I do think there are some reasons to call into question their durability. Can liberal democratic capitalist societies reproduce themselves over the long hall--remains to be seen.
Read 5 tweets
Stephanie H. Murray Profile picture
Oct 4, 2022
I got an interesting email about my recent piece on family policy and education. She asks some interesting questions. Image
Here is the piece, ICYMI.

theatlantic.com/family/archive…
Regarding the first question, No, I'm not sure I would agree that instilling the value of education is the most important thing that parents can do to help their child succeed in school. I think all of their basic caregiving duties are probably more important.
Read 18 tweets
Stephanie H. Murray Profile picture
Mar 23, 2022
When one of my daughters hits the other, it's usually the hitter that cries loudest. And when I talk her through her feelings -- do you feel bad that you hit your sister? -- the hitter often loses her mind at the suggestion, insisting that they DO NOT feel bad, that they...
...are upset about something, anything, else: they are tired, they miss grandma or Dad or someone else. Even as the weep and kick and scream, they just can't tolerate acknowledging what they actually feel: guilt. That's what's going on here.

proteanmag.com/2022/03/22/mot…
The "left" in America got Orange Man Bad-ed into stripping kids of an essential public good for over a year, shrugging off the predictable consequences (lol at selective use of precautionary principle in this piece) and mocking anyone who complained. All while...
Read 6 tweets
Stephanie H. Murray Profile picture
Mar 21, 2022
Emily Oster should just move to Norway. They agree with her on everything.

regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/vac… ImageImage
*Obligatory (in the U.S.) I am vaxxed + boosted + happily mask + will vaccinate my kids when I am able to because it still seems worth it to me clarification tweet*
But there shouldn't be anything controversial about acknowledging the cost/benefit of vaxs is different for kids.
In an alternate universe, Emily Oster moves to Norway prior to the pandemic and lives a happy, quiet life freely expressing the same opinions she's espoused throughout the pandemic, and no one bothers her because everyone agrees. I want that peace for her.
Read 4 tweets

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