Parents are often told it takes a village to raise a child. So, where is it?

If you’re a parent, you’ve likely heard or read some iteration of the proverb, “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Maybe you recall Hillary Clinton’s famous “It Takes a Village” speech and book of the same name, a quest to improve the lives of children which she often referred to throughout her political career. Or perhaps you’ve seen a Facebook “mom village,” chuckled at one of the 50,000+ TikTok videos tagged #ittakesavillage, or read many different stories about the village that should, theoretically, be helping to raise the children of sleep-deprived new parents hanging on by a thread.

This village concept sounds great! But if you’re a modern parent, you might also be wondering: Where, pray tell, is it?

“I keep hearing that it takes a village to raise a child. So … do they just show up? Or is there a number I call?” a TikTok user asks in a popular 2022 video.

“I’ve come to the realization there is no village,” writes another mom on TikTok

Experts say the concept of the traditional village that supported parents — where extended families, communities and neighbours all lend a hand — is outdated. Part of it is the nature of Western nuclear families living in individual households, people living further away from their relatives, and changing expectations for grandparents. 

Studies have also shown millennial parents are more likely to get advice online than from their parents, feel pressured to be more hands-on and intensely involved with their children, and often clash with their parents about child rearing. 

All this breeds isolation, experts have noted. Yet the idea of “the village” persists, as does the longing for it.

“The truth of the matter is the majority of parents are not feeling like they have that village of support. It’s probably almost daily that I speak to a parent who is feeling very alone in their journey and feeling really overwhelmed,” said Vanessa Lapointe, a registered psychologist and parenting consultant based in Surrey, B.C., and the author of Parenting Right From the Start. 

“We weren’t ever meant to have this experience of doing it on our own.”

The West’s emphasis on nuclear family

According to 2023 research on contemporary hunter-gatherer societies published in the journal Developmental Psychology, children may be psychologically wired to thrive with high levels of contact and care from multiple people.

Lead author Nikhil Chaudhary, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Cambridge in England, pointed out in a news release last year that “for the vast majority of our species’ evolutionary history, mothers probably had far more support than they currently do in Western countries.”

As part of his research, Chaudhary observed Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers in the Republic of Congo, where children often had 10 or more caregivers. In this population, at least 40 to 50 per cent of a child’s care-giving came from “allomothering,” or from caregivers who were not the child’s mother.

“Levels of closeness and close care were exceptionally high, children were virtually never alone and spent extensive amounts of time in physical contact, receiving close care and being held,” Chaudhary and his co-authors wrote in the research paper.

But that’s certainly not the norm. In Canada, just nine per cent of children age 0-14 in census families live in households with at least one grandparent, according to Statistics Canada. 

“Informal support has always been important, but in the West, a lot of emphasis has been put on nuclear family, while ignoring or downplaying the role of kinship,” said Yue Qian, an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia who specializes in family studies.

On top of that, there’s geography. Some international studies have shown a decline in intergenerational proximity — in other words, many adults don’t live as close to their parents, and others have found socioeconomic factors like affluence and education widen that gap.

The village is ‘dissipated and fragmented’

And while multigenerational households are actually on the rise, they have never been a dominant living arrangement here, according to Ottawa-based independent think-tank the Vanier Institute of the Family.

The institute noted that Indigenous and immigrant households — “two fast-growing population groups” — are more likely to live in multigenerational households. Part of that could be due to housing prices, the institute said in its 2024 Families Count report, which noted the arrangement allows grandparents to care for grandchildren.

Still, for the majority of Canadians, “the village does not exist,” said Rania Tfaily, an associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Carleton University.

Parents, especially mothers, are expected to be intensely devoted to their children and help them reach their maximum potential, all at a time when the rising cost of living has made parenting expensive. All of this “is often putting parents under enormous stress,” she said. 

A 2022 research paper published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health explains that “the village, in many countries today, is dissipated and fragmented and individuals are increasingly isolated and not eager to ask for help or provide it to others.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s August report on modern parenting stress recommends fostering that connection among parents to combat loneliness and isolation.

But that’s difficult when many families no longer live with extended families, and live in busy urban areas where they are always on the go and there’s an expectation to always be “on,” said Lapointe.

The result? “We don’t nurture the village, and it just kind of disappears into the mists of time.”

What about grandparents?

There is still an expectation in Canada that grandparents provide support to grandchildren, Tfaily says. But it’s not as strong as it used to be, and the extent of this support varies, she notes, depending on geographical proximity, the work and health status of the grandparents, and their relationship with their children.

“This is related to life getting busier, preoccupation with one’s own affairs, and the rise of individualism,” Tfaily said. 

Last year, Business Insider and the Daily Mail both reported that millennials say their parents would rather travel than help with the grandkids, while other articles have claimed boomers are “uninvolved” and have “abandoned” their children and grandchildren.

But, as some have noted, a lot has changed since millennials were children. Statistically, their own grandmothers were more likely to be homemakers, whereas boomers are not only more likely to have worked outside the home, but are also retiring later.

Plus, as more millennials have children later in life, grandparents are getting older than previous generations. In 2023, 26.5 per cent of mothers were 35 years and older, compared to 10.7 per cent in 1993, notes Statistics Canada.

But due to increasing longevity and improved health of older people, grandparents can help take care of grandchildren or assist parents, notes Qian of UBC.

“These forms of support from grandparents can be especially important when divorce rates are rising, single parent households are increasing, work-family policies are less friendly to combining work-family demands, job insecurity is high and income loss is unpredictable and common,” she said.

Still, the parents who don’t have help — from grandparents or otherwise — are often completely overwhelmed, says Lapointe, the psychologist and parenting consultant, noting that expectations are high, even as social supports are often lacking.

“It’s a really strange time to be raising children.”