The Village 2.0

“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.”

Does everyone remember how it used to “take a village” to raise a child? That idea always conjured a vision in my mind of a fictional suburb, existing out of space and time. This was a place with perfect lighting, where children were always happy and bouncing between the smiling faces of trusted adults. My childhood experience was far from this charming fever dream, but it never stopped me from fantasizing about living there someday.

The village is a metaphor for the family and friendships that could be called a community. That village doesn’t actually exist for the majority of us anymore. Against all advice from the loudest people in the room, this has been mostly replaced by screens, specifically the ever-controversial tablet.

Fresh-ish Air

It used to be the norm for a parent to simply ask their child to go outside and play. This was the only way they could accomplish basic chores or sit alone quietly for fifteen minutes without being needed by a smaller and needier version of themselves. In today’s world, that’s a luxury afforded by very few. It’s close to only 35% of my generation, the millennials, who can call themselves homeowners. What percentage of these homes include a safe area outside, like a back or front yard, to allow a child play by themselves? The generations who came before us always come across as embarrassingly ignorant when they ask why children no longer go outside and play. Where exactly is this outside that they still believe exists?

There are more than a few times a day I find myself suggesting the tablet to my toddler. Sometimes it’s justifiable, like when I need to get the dishes and laundry done and put away. Other times I simply need fifteen minutes without being touched (which may sound trivial, but quickly becomes an urgency.)

It’s far-fetched to imagine the previous generations not seizing the tablet as some God-given excuse to focus more time on themselves. Finding new reasons to criticize the people you already look down on for their percieved self-indulgence comes across as hypocritical. This is the generation who let their children leave in the morning, insisting only that they come back before the street lights turned on. How many of these nomadic children experienced horrors beyond their parent’s wildest dreams out on these open-world adventures? For every Goonies situation, there had to be more than a handful of River’s Edge scenarios.

It Didn’t Start With You

When asking the older generations, they often share about family connections meant to lean on in times of need. It helped of course that a lot of the older relatives were entering retirement, something which has become basically unattainable in our current society. If you’re lucky enough to retain any close family connections right now, the odds they’re ready and willing to lend a hand in any part of raising your child is just too much to ask.

If exploring alone outside wasn’t an option, the generations before us had an inner circle of mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles who were invested and entwined in their lives. It wasn’t a perfect system, just ask everyone carrying generational trauma. These were imperfect people who felt a societal push to be around, even if they shouldn’t have been. This left whole communities of damaged people with implied trust and too much time on their hands. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, it turns out a lot. The advent of the internet brought people who were able to finally share more than they ever thought possible. True crime exploded a world of evidence that couldn’t have been predicted. It seemed like every third person had some horrible secret trauma they are more than willing to imbue onto the unsuspecting children they were trusted with. The bigger the family, the more fucked-up shit there is to uncover, or so it seemed.

The child care institutions that have so-far adopted surveillance have already supplied us with a wealth of evidence that even the professionals who are paid to care for our kids have been causing them long-term damage all this time. In contrast, consider the screens and apps popular with kids today. The content may be silly, loud, and in many other ways unpleasant to the people it’s not targeted for, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to physically, sexually, or mentally abuse my child. Even if I was unsure, I can research, review and block anything I have even the most superficial problem with.

Work-Life-Guilt Balance

Maybe it was true at one time, but parents today aren’t afforded the legend of the village. One person’s income rarely exceeds the cost of day-care, so why work? If the privatized village costs equal or less than a paycheck, when does it become worth it? Being a stay-at-home parent might as well be an extended vacation, or so a lot of people want to believe. The privileged few who are able to afford child-care know it serves to either free up time to work or to be a full human being for a few hours. Parents who, for whatever reason, can’t go this route are in for at least 18 years as a full-time caretaker, which no one wants to recognize as work until they are thrust into it themselves. Is it better to have had the paycheck and spent it than to never have had the paycheck at all?

Planting a child in front of a screen costs nothing but the internalized guilt of allowing (encouraging?) their brain to turn to mush. It’s never a confident position to stand against the experts, but experts have been wrong about a lot of things. In a day-care setting, there is engagement and learning, but there are also unpredictable distractions. There are people who don’t know what they’re doing. There are adults who have no one to push back on the things they’re saying because it’s a room full of small children who want to trust.

While the tablet doesn’t provide complete freedom for the adult in the room, it does offer a sense of knowing what the child is learning and when. Whereas a parent from another generation was relegated to asking “what did you learn in school today?” a parent these days who has even a passive watch over their child’s content is already that much further into the conversation with them.

Are these excuses? Sure, but they’re good ones.

In our current state of reality, things are bad and getting worse. Unspoken judgements that used to exist alongside being a parent are now editorialized. Expectations of limited screen time are the hottest way to micro-manage an already devastated fleet of moms and dads. It’s not enough that we feel the urgent need to instill values that will serve our kids well in their upcoming Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome era, but we’re pressured to look at the tablet as something to be ashamed of using. The bygone era of parental mistakes have left these fading generations with anxiety and guilt they’re desperate to unload. Our new village may exist behind a screen, but it’s one we would be wrong to view through the lens they are asking us to. Instead, I’m choosing to see this village as the one I promised myself so long ago:

Fake, happy, and safe.