The Isolation of the Modern Housewife and Mother

I just read Jennifer Fulwiler's recent article at The National Catholic Register, and this really resonated with me:

There are some advantages to moms blogging about their kids. The isolation issues that many stay-at-home moms face is no joke. As we've discussed before, it's unnatural for people to live utterly cut off from any real community, as is the case with moms who are outside of the workforce. Blogs give women in these situations a way to share stories and feel close to one another

There was a link within that sentence to an older article of hers, and there I found this second gem:

When I studied anthropology in college, one of the things that stood out to me the most was the element of community: In pretty much every time and place outside of modern Western culture, people lived around family all their lives. The average person was surrounded by brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. For women, the work of raising children was not done alone: Younger nieces and cousins would help with the little kids, the women would socialize as they gathered water or washed clothes, all the children playing together around them. This is the kind of life we were designed for.

In contrast, the average modern woman who is out of the workforce lives her life on a suburban desert island. The nearest family member lives miles (if not thousands of miles) away. She doesn’t know all the people on her street, and not many of them have kids anyway. If she’s like many Americans, she’s moved within the past few years, losing any sense of community she’d built in the last place she lived. Any opportunities for socializing with other women involve the herculean effort of packing up all the kids in the car to drive somewhere. She doesn’t even have the age-old mother’s release valve of banishing the kids outside and telling them to come back at mealtime, since safety concerns mean she has to keep them within sight at all times.

This is an incredibly unnatural way to live.

I have to say that I totally agree.  When there are no other stay-at-home moms around you, life can be lonely for the woman trying to go it alone at home all day.  And when there aren't moms home, there aren't going to be kids around for your own kids to play with.  In fact, the whole sense of community and neighborliness is compromised.

Quoting myself from a previous post:

In a neighborhood where all the moms stay home, they get to know each other.  They see each other around.  Their kids play together.  It builds community.  When moms are at work all day, kids are either away at some sort of daycare of after-school program, or under orders to stay in the house.  Kids don't go outside anymore, because there's no one to watch over them if they do.  Kids don't play with other kids on their street.  Moms don't know each other.  So their husbands don't know each other.  Suddenly, everyone's a stranger, and no one feels safe letting their kids out to wander anyways.  So kids stay inside playing video games and watching TV all day, because that's "safe."  Kids work out their strong need for socialization at home with texting, twitter, the internet...which are all poor substitutes for real human contact.

 Also, see the excellent blog Free-Range Kids for more thoughts on this and similar issues.