So another place I think you might poke around and find this myth: the debate between childfree people and people with children.
I was on Instagram (I know, that's a me problem) the other day and a creator I usually love posted a meme about how parents get to just go home early whenever because "kids" and the comment section was FROTHING. The usual stuff — parents doing the Rodney Dangerfield dance about how they get no respect (we don't!) or systemic support (also we don't!) and that American culture generally seems invested in making more babies and then screwing the people who need to raise them (also true!)
The child-free folks argued that it wasn't their job to pick up the slack because little Timmy has a tummy ache (fair!) and that having a kid is the only vaguely acceptable reason for needing to leave the office unexpectedly (also true!). But then it got mean.
"No one made you have a kid — that's your problem." — people mad at parents for having kids
I see this a lot (mostly with younger single folks) on the internet — the feeling that someone else having a child is an imposition on their comfort, and I think it has everything to do with the kind of frankensteining of Individualism and the Cult of Convenience that our phones and 2-day shipping has brought us. This vibe of "we have to share this planet but we don't have to like it — you clean up your own mess and I'll clean up mine." (I 100% used to be this person, and then I had a kid! Sorry to the moms and dads who I disregarded in my youth!)
There was a great On Being episode recently where Sarah Hendren talks about disability as this anti-american idea, like self-reliance is the most important personal value you can hold, even though every single one of us will at some point be dependent on someone else — even if just for a few days when we have the flu. She points out the ableist nature of this ideology, but also the incredible beauty of dependence. The humility it gives us. To know that we can't always take care of ourselves is a gift. Anyway, I loved this piece and I thought you might enjoy that thought thread for your book!
I agree with all of this and, as a childless person who has lots of friends with kids, I see the lack of care cutting both ways. Some childfree people feel that parents aren’t entitled to community support or empathy because they made an individual decision, and some people with kids tend to retreat into their nuclear family and stop engaging with their child-free friends (who have their own set of life challenges that are also worthy of community support!). In both cases the individual choice to have or not have kids can really limit one’s community connections in this country, which is a shame.
YES! We alllllll need support. And we each have different things we are able to give one another. I think with my child-free friends, it's just structurally harder for us to be together because the schedules are so different. I hate that. I miss them, and I feel strongly that my kid would benefit from having them as a more constant presence. Is it car culture? Work culture? I wish I had a better sense for where the bridge gets broken off.
As a child-free person who now spends loads of time with her parent friends, there was a journey I (and my friends) had to go on -- especially me, as a privileged white woman who is definitely steeped in the tea of individualism -- of understanding that there are seasons that require more relative "sacrifice" from me, like shifting my schedule to accommodate others', if I want to maintain those friendships. It wasn't easy for me to accept and I still feel moments of frustration years in. In those moments, though, I've learned to remind myself that these people matter to me (and so do their children), and it will not be like this forever.
In some of my most important relationships, I've stopped shifting my schedule altogether and have opted into being in their child-filled worlds (mind you, my friends had to go through their own journey of letting me into what they believed to be their messy, disorganized, chaotic homes and worlds). I go over to my best friends' homes and get snacks for the kids, clean up after them, play with them, get the Motrin if one of them has a headache, lightly scold where needed, etc. And there's been no greater joy in this season of my life than hearing that my friends' kiddos have been asking when Aunt Teresa is coming over again. I didn't expect it, and it took a lot of work setting aside that individualism, including choosing to move closer to them and my family. I think this shows, though, how deeply embedded individualism can be, and how it's woven itself so tightly into our choices to bear children. As someone who has been mostly ambivalent about my decision not to have kids, I grasped onto that individualism to help soothe (heck, bury) the hurt that will forever exist within my choice. I think we've really flattened the narrative around choosing to have or not have kids, like we've flattened so many values-charged narratives.
Teresa this makes me tear up!!! Everyone needs an Aunt Teresa.
I literally just bought two books to send to my non-biological niece and nephew — and I have no idea why I haven't been doing more of that, other than my own individualism.
Yes, we parents have to be willing to let our non-parent friends into the chaos and not be ashamed of it. I feel so guilty when I have child-free friends over, like I need to turn my kid into Christopher Robin so they won't be bothered by the noise and the mess and the sometimes shocking PURE ID of a 5-year-old demanding things. I worry I'll be judged — they won't "get it." But I've never even let them try.
How lovely to be in our messes together, how humbling, how real. Maybe this is the true cost of the instigramification — the internalized belief that everything should smell like a hotel lobby and if it doesn't, it's a personalized failure.
If I can offer some encouragement, few things have made me feel more loved than my parenting friends who welcome me into their homes as they are, without apologizing or explaining. To be a part of their family for an afternoon or evening is such a gift! Yes, sometimes it's loud and chaotic but who cares? It's a chance to see my friends in parenting mode and to get to know their kids better and to simply be a part of something for a while.
One of the wonderful things about giving your child-free friends a chance is that they will start to get it in their own ways. That doesn't mean everyone will want the chance, but you know your friend group and can seed the opportunity and see who lights up. The empathy and understanding I have for my parent friends now, after finally experiencing that pure Id myself (lolz face melt why are Dino nuggets and yogurt pouches the only food you'll eat and why did you drop that Lego in your training potty?!), would never have developed without being given those experiences.
It's hard to let down our guards but doing so is the path to greater compassion and an increased willingness (and desire!) to experience the mess together rather than on our own. Because hey, sometimes, the silence of a child-free home can be as suffocating as it can be freeing.
It took time and distance -- relational and physical -- for my parent friends and I to find our way back into deep friendship, but it happened. Have faith that you've got a few Aunt Teresas in the mix; I'm sure they're there even if you and they don't know it yet. <3
I feel this. I've been going back and forth with an extremely independent friend of mine, who has a new baby and a 4 year old. She canceled a hang out because "I have to pick up Leo from school and with everything going on I have no idea how he's going to be." And I said, "I'm here for the messy bits." She still canceled. But I got to see her the next week and asked her to show me how to change a diaper. I think I'll have to keep on reiterating that I'm here for the messy bits. For the last-minute babysitting and tantrums and all that stuff. Especially since neither her nor her in-laws are nearby or helping – they have to pay for all their help.
You're a good friend Alden. And you are reminding me that people do love to help — not allowing them and keeping all of our problems to ourselves isn't necessarily a kindness. I always just wanted someone to show up and play with the baby for a few minutes — the nicest thing anyone ever did for me in my early days of parenthood was to show up with two bags of no-cook groceries and hold the baby for an hour. I ate the rotisserie chicken she brought standing over the sink like an animal because I hadn't bothered to feed myself that day. I will never forget it.
Child-free adult who has also gone through everything you've mentioned. I also had to do a lot of grieving for the way things used to be when it was easier, which I did not see coming at all. Reminding myself that this is a season in all of our lives' has helped and trying to find ways to be present in whatever ways I can be (and some reciprocation on their parts) has kept several friendships alive, but woo boy has it been tough. But I acknowledge it's tough on everyone -- parents or not.
As a childfree person at the age where many, many of my friends have very young kids (mid-30s but live in a big city), I have recently been struggling with both wanting to be in my friends’ kids lives, but also dreading the inevitability of that looking like me doing most of the heavy lifting: driving 10-40 miles to the suburbs, committing a half day or more of my weekend, listening to mostly child-related conversation (I get it! Having kids is a huge life-changing thing but there are also other things, and maybe ask about my life too?), having to work around nap time/tantrum/etc., and then still feel like I didn’t get the full friend experience has been draining, demoralizing, and detrimental to the health of those friendships. There’s are different seasons in life, but as someone who has always relied heavily on the strength of friendships, this is a hard one.
It sucks when someone you love gets swallowed up by parenthood. I'm sorry you are feeling the loss of the transition — it is a grief for sure, and parents do need to be better about not always centering everything around being a parent. It sucks to put the work in and still leave without feeling like you actually got to visit with someone you love. I've been there. Once the kids get a bit bigger, it gets much better for everyone. Keep the hope alive and keep being such an awesome friend!
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment, Melissa. I will indeed keep the hope alive and try to maintain the advice for romantic relationships that it’s not ALWAYS 50/50. This is a season I need to give more than I get in these friendships.
Erin, I relate to this so much. My friends still care about me as much, but the emotional support I receive from them is nowhere near the same as it was pre-kids (and as a childfree person who is also single, their support is still nowhere near meeting my needs). I hear you--it's a grieving process. My solutions have been to lower my expectations, still prioritize quality time with them on their schedule, and honestly, look for new friends who are actually available and have emotional capacity for you.
Oof, yes lowering expectations feels so fatalistic, when I’ve always had exacting expectations (no small part of why I’m single). It’s so sad to think about needing to make new friends when I feel like I don’t have the capacity to hang out with the ones I’ve had (that have been my friends for decade/s!) but I think that’s right. We all deserve support from our various circles and that’s hit hard as I’ve felt unsure who to turn to when dealing with some mobility limitations from an injury, etc. in the past.
I am so incredibly grateful for my group of (majority male) child-free friends embracing me and my almost 5 year old daughter (and by extension, my husband). I call them "the godparents" and I love that they are welcome to her as a kid being a kid and things being different because of that. There's a wide range of interactivity between them all - some of them my daughter calls titles or has special nicknames while other friends are just there and do little more than acknowledge her presence.
What's extra weird about us is that we aren't geographically close at all. We live in MD and the closest godparent emotionally lives in NY. But we do a lot of video calls and have a long running group chat on Messenger (as well as individual chats) and are intentional about meeting up in person at least a few times a year. Last weekend we drove to NY to do a live YouTube show with one small group of them and then to MA for a 40th birthday party for another (the groups overlapped slightly). We are planning another meetup in PA in May. We all initially met each other online through a niche hobby and are mostly neurodivergent.
I think its key is that my daughter is super friendly and easygoing and that there's open invitations for all age activities (going out to eat, visiting historical sites) as well as kid ones (playground! swimming!) Their houses are typical adult houses but they usually have something "special" that my daughter plays with only there (like trains or their childhood stuffies) so she isn't bored. The adults are hanging out and drinking and she's playing under the table with the stuffies and pulling one of them to spin her around and asking another one to help her with the train set. Last weekend everyone was taking turns pulling her around the yard in her wagon, playing with stuffies, eating snacks with her.
One of them got married last year and she was the only young child invited to the wedding. We did not know this until the day-of. It was really special to me that she was included. She sat still for the entire ceremony (big deal at age 4)!
I think a big thing is that I don't compare parenthood to being harder and still listen to everyone's problems and try to be there for them when I can. I remember what things like being tired was like before being a parent and it still sucks. No pain Olympics here.
The “childfree” movement that has risen on social media is kind of a hellscape. As someone who has opted out of motherhood, I was excited to discover it during the pandemic, only to realize it’s not a group of likeminded women who made a choice (or had a choice made for them) but a group that is constantly offended by others choice to have children. I 100% agree the individualism mindset in this country is hardest on parents, single women in particular, but I think a lot of us non parents have experience with trying to provide community for our friends with kids, and not receiving the same support in return when we have needed it.
Oh, God this resonates. I went to a child free by choice brunch once, and it was the worst decision I made in a long time. I was hoping it was women who wanted to support other women, but it was women who had a lot of pent-up vitriol against women who had had children (by choice or not).
I still return to the Culture Study thread for childless people from time to time when I want to feel part of a community but don't want to go anywhere near the toxic weirdness of a lot of forums on this topic. And I'll take this opportunity to say thank you to AHP and everyone for that thread, I found it so comforting and positive.
I grew up where I had to (and liked to!) take care of the gazillion children in my extended family so I don't feel this resentment toward parents but I do see it everywhere! I *like* that my taxes go to schools. I *want* children growing up educated--they really are the future, and I think it's myopic to not acknowledge that. I see how much my siblings struggle here with their kids and the lack of community and it is *rough.*
Related to this - my dad is a boomer and resents paying taxes for the local schools because "his children aren't in school anymore".
But dad, who paid the majority of the taxes when I was in school and you were in the beginning of your career? Who will be the nurse/banker/politician/etc in 10 years that you like/loathe that is in school today benefitting from public education?
It is bonkers to me that he doesn't see this. Very much a symptom of hyper individualism.
We’re dealing with this right now. The laws in the state where I live require district referendums to fund schools. Our area is growing exponentially and without a referendum there will be a $5 million shortage next year. But there are also a ton of retirement communities and the first vote for the referendum failed last year because of that. We have another vote coming up and I’m really nervous. When my husband and I went to vote last time I knew it would lose just by seeing the other people voting.
When I was in high school, to help raise money for the marching band we had to go around door-to-door in the summer in our full wool band uniform (Ohio summer- it was brutal) and ask for donations. I remember at least one person tell me, to my face, that they dont support the schools because they don’t have kids/have kids there.
Thanks, lady. What a thing to say to a high school student you’ve never met before, standing on your front porch.
Dude - it gets even worse. My brother's family is going through some challenges right now, and my husband I are thinking of ways we could step in and materially support their three kids (hosting for the summer, summer camps, free housing while they attend community college, SOMETHING!). My husband's father (so, no blood relation to my nieces/nephews) commented that was all good for us to help as long as it did not detract from our children's opportunities.
So, here is the rugged individualism + nuclear family logic cannibalizing even within blood family relations. Like, wouldn't it be better to lift up ALL the children in our family (and by extension OUR COMMUNITY) as opposed to hoarding our resources to make sure only MY children have resources. It shouldn't be surprising, but it baffled me in the moment. Such a scarcity mentality with such dire impacts on innocent children.
absolutely — I am even trying to shift my thinking away from what someone can do for me to what is my responsibility as a member of this group, to make the group as healthy as it can be. that is HARD in our culture. (PS where you grew up sounds so lovely :) )
I feel the same way, except I was an only child and didn't have to take care of kids growing up. Happier, healthier, more educated and curious kids make for a better society for everyone.
I included the data below in my most recent post. The data shows how shamefully low our support of families is.
"We live in the richest country in the world and spend a paltry amount on support for families. The countries other than America that make up the G-7––Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.K.––spend an average of 2.1% of their GDP on family benefits. The U.S. spends 0.7%. 4
That gap is a political choice, one I feel ashamed of. Because between those sterile numbers of 0.7% and 2.1% lies a multitude of human misery, sadness, and the doom of parental hope."
4. Based on data from the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD).
Kirsten Powers wrote a recent post about Denmark’s success as a capitalist country with a much more robust social safety net and higher taxes. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Denmark spends 3.3% of its GDP on family support."
In case you're interested in the entire post, it's at
God these numbers are sobering — nothing for our own families here, and yet the defense budget goes up and up.
I saw this piece from Kirsten! It is very informative — as someone with a ticket out if I need it (my husband has UK citizenship) I have spent a lot of time fantasizing about a better life in a country where the idea of prioritizing quality of life isn't seen as a weakness!! And I then I feel guilty because the people who need this kind of support are not able to leave — but also stuck, because the whole thing feels a bit of a monolith.
I saw another Instagram post (I know, I know… cesspool!) on the schools in Finland. The comment section was also frothing with people indignant that the Finnish people's schools couldn't be better than ours because they hadn't invented anything… accidentally proving the point about the poor quality of our own education.
Appreciate you sharing this! We must insist our government supports the people who pay for it, not the wealthy who capitalize on us all.
I'm glad the essay resonated :-) Setting aside that Finland has invented things (as you note) that's really a bad argument b/c ppl are comparing a country with that has slightly more people than Oklahoma to a country with 300 million+ people. It's not that surprising that the country with 300 million would invent more things and of course who cares anyway...how did someone inventing Facebook better any Americans life?
GAWD. Right? Well, it's on me for looking in the comments on Instagram!! That's where you're bound to find staunch defenders of our national motto: America is The Best — which means Most Innovative, which means Has The Most Money and is The Smartest and by the way We Have Lots of Guns.
I'm just finishing up a piece about the achievement to workism pipeline, and I found this utterly shattering piece of data from a 2014 study from The Harvard Graduate School of Education:
"Almost 80% of youth picked high achievement or happiness as their top choice, while roughly 20% selected caring for others."
Basically seems like we are shoveling our kids through school without a second to figure out who they are and then tech jobs are like YUM — no need to have friends, we'll be your friend.
Cue crippling loss of identity. Give me Finland any day.
yes, the defense budget has nothing to do with why we don't have a more robust social safety net, even if it could still stand some more cutting. We could easily afford to provide people more support since after all we actually spend MORE on healthcare per capita and get worse outcomes than our peer countries who don't treat health care as a for profit business.
Such good insights, Melissa, about parenting and disability being seen in opposition to this idea of self-reliance. And I love your point that we are all dependent at some point. I mean, we were all once children at the very least.
Kids are dependent on others, by nature. And so they’re always outside the definition of an “individual”—they can never, as long as they’re kids, achieve that most important American value of self-reliance and so they are seen and treated as “less-than.” It feels like parents get some of that “less-than” by association.
One of my jobs is as a playworker, where respect for kids’s as individuals is at the center of the work. Even after several years, it still surprises me how little respect and rights kids get. Because of their dependence, they are not considered full citizens and often not even seen as valuable members of the community.
I was just reflecting on this thread today and I had a realization that is basically the same as what you've written here.
Before I became a parent, I tended to believe that a child was not my equal. Their needs and wants were irrational or whatever, and so inferior, and so fine to deprioritize. They can conform to the adult situation vs all of us finding a situation that works for the group, with the needs of the child (to be able to run around, make some noise, touch random stuff, etc) seen as valid and reasonable.
As a parent I am always looking for places where we will be welcome — and most of the time, those are not places I would choose to go as a single adult. That means that if I want to bring a child-free friend along, they usually have to suck it up and deal with it and I hate trampoline parks so I'm not making anyone else do that 😂
I read a piece recently about how the car-centricity of American city design has caused us to no longer have these spaces that meet the needs of several different citizen groups. In Spain, the playgrounds are surrounded by cafes and bars and they are within neighborhoods so families gather there and the adults can enjoy themselves while the children play. Up near me, there's a german style beer hall that has a similar vibe — and that place is PACKED with people on the weekend. Thank you for sharing this! I do hope we can connect.
Yes! Not having public spaces where all are welcome is a huge disadvantage to community, relationships and people of all ages. Cars and air conditioners keep people off the sidewalk and stoop, but privately designed parks and public spaces often don’t even allow certain folks, teens in particular.
STACY this is so so cool — I interview people about their work and how they landed in it for my substack and I would just love to hear more about what you do and how you got started!
I think about individualism all the time in terms of housing. I grew up driving past Co-Op City in the Bronx to the suburbs of Westchester and thinking snootily: "how can people live all squished up in those big ugly buildings?" Cheaply, sustainably, and in community for along time, is how! But I was taught not to want that, and I think we've wasted a lot of time idealizing living apart when we could have been figuring out how to live together.
YESSSS so appreciate you sharing your internal monologue. I was just reading In Walking Distance by Philip Langdon (https://islandpress.org/books/within-walking-distance#desc) and he talks about this experience of looking at the narrow streets in Philly, many of them one way, and having a primal reaction of "wow it must be so hard to get around here" because he had come from a more sprawling, car-centric suburbia in Pennsylvania.
It instantly blew my mind and made me conscious of how much I read as "hard" or "unpleasant" or "chaotic" because of my upbringing in a car-centric, non-dense neighborhood.
Housing is where it comes up most for me, too, especially a single 30-something. I am on multiple waitlists for co-housing communities, but they are so rare (partially because it goes against the cultural norm of individuality and the single-family-home, and partially because most US cities have zoning or permitting regulations that make many forms of multi-family housing literally illegal).
And THANK YOU, AHP, AGAIN for somehow giving both my heart and brain exactly what they need when they need it! This is so great, and the book will be FIRE.
I have so many thoughts on this topic personally and professionally! I was raised by a collectivist mother in a fairly WASPy, individualistic suburb in the 80s. My childhood best friend and I were recently discussing how we met and how it would never happen today. When I was 9, my mother informed me that new people had moved into a house about 25 houses away (1 mile down the road) and that I needed to go organize the other neighborhood kids and welcome the new kid. We rode our bikes over to introduce ourselves and she's been my best friend every since. The idea of sending my 9 year old on a mission to a stranger's house a mile away down a busy road is inconceivable to me.
Personally, I am obsessed (might be too strong a word) with creating community and collective care. I am a deeply disorganized person and a crappy cook but I have been hosting friend potlucks weekly for 15 years and creating informal mutual aid networks with other parents for snow days and childcare. I feel very lucky to have the community that we do. I also feel burned out and isolated by all of the factors AHP mentioned.
Professionally, I work remotely from home, which is pretty isolating. However, my job is focused on supporting communities in building collective resilience to climate change. Climate change is an outcome of colonization, extraction, and individualism. Nurturing communities that can thrive everyday and during climate disruptions depends on collectivism and community care. During the deadly heatwave in the Northwest in 2021, social isolation was a contributing factor in heat related deaths. Getting to know your neighbors can be life saving in many ways.
I’m also prioritizing creating community. I started hosting very lightweight two hour gatherings once a week for small groups of moms in my town. The only rule is that after we introduce ourselves we’re not allowed to talk about our children. I have a hot water boiler so everyone can make themselves tea or cocoa, and serve a few simple snacks. We sit around my dining room table and just talk and get to know each other. I’m loving it and the response has been great!
I made a list of moms I know and started inviting a subset each week. I have three kids so I started with approximate age groupings of their kids so they’d at least be likely to recognize each other. Inviting 8-10 I’d usually get 3-5 attending. Two hours, bring nothing and don’t dress up. Have everyone intro themselves (life resume sort of thing) and see where the conversation goes. Try to make sure you have as many or more extroverts as introverts. :)
Em this is so cool!! I would love to learn more about your efforts.
I was talking the other day about my favorite aspect of my community being our kids elementary school bus stop — all the moms and dads come to wait with the kids in the morning and it’s become this little organic touchstone of community. Babysitters and neighborhood parties have all grown from this 15 minute ritual in the morning with people I wouldn’t have self selected into knowing.
My kid also benefits from knowing other grownups in the neighborhood and having playdates when kids wander over if they see one another in the yard. It feels… right. Not so orchestrated. I need more of this!
Love your share! I fully believe the answer is in the community too. We are seeing the limits of individualism; time to choose community. When we see that what’s best for the community is also best for ourselves… then we’ll make the shift. The isolation of individualism today is spurring this on but we are only at the beginning of it becoming prevalent. Thanks for sharing your experience.
This was perhaps one of the most EPIC articles I’ve read on Substack to date. You deserve a standing ovation.
My native culture is very community-oriented and for me to come to the US at a very young age means I’ve grappled with this dichotomy of two very different cultures my whole life.
I think there’s a balance to be struck between the two but the sheer level of individualism in this country is just unsustainable. What ends up happening when you become so individualistic is that you have no energy left to make real change happen. You’re so busy just surviving (because it truly is survival of the fittest here) that you barely have the energy to dream something better let alone make it actually happen.
Oh man. I feel this. I would love to be more involved and I’ve contemplated many times going to meet the new neighbors (or insert whatever other community building activity here) but I just cannot add one more thing to my list. I’m exhausted. All the time.
I'm going to get in huge trouble for this, but I'm thinking a lot lately about how "parenting" as a verb contributes to the perpetuation of individualism--both for ourselves and for our kids. There are a lot of times when we can either go to church/supper at our friends' house/a political action or we can keep the baby's nap/eating/general crankiness schedule. For me it's actually much easier to feel guilty about skipping the baby's nap than about skipping a community event because it's been so firmly impressed upon me that any discomfort on his part will be a Trauma that I am Responsible For Inflicting. Also, it's just easier for *me* in every way if the baby sleeps his full perfect cozy nap, and much harder to immediately quantify the benefits to me of going to XYZ gathering. But the more we feel into the kid-having life, the more I realize I want my kid to feel like a part of a family and a community, which he actually can't do if I act like these things revolve around him.
Amen. I skipped the kids sports teams and do community charity runs with my Son in an attempt to connect child “enrichment” with community engagement. Raising money for a local cause and running with diverse people of all ages (babies in joggers to 84), shapes and sizes cheering each other on feels so much more “enriching” to me and, admittedly, for me as well.
I think about this same sort of thing as a mother of young kids regularly. I also think maybe if we ever decided the nuclear family didn’t work, maybe most of all for the mothers (or parents in general but as a mother I’m being self-focused here) and it wasn’t a choice between you ALONE caring about the baby getting their nap or going elsewhere, but also the choice to have have another caring adult hold down the fort… it wouldn’t maybe always have to be an either/or choice all the time. Maybe it’s entitlement but I just have dreams of what multigenerational living (with all its messiness) would enable for everyone, but maybe especially parents of young kids facing choices like this.
I am always hassling my brother and sister-in-law to live together! So far everyone I have brought this up with is adamant that their family needs their own space - while, to me, that just sounds like we're all duplicating efforts in terms of cleaning, tidying/owning things, etc.
There's a self-perpetuating quality to so much about whiteness and neoliberal capitalism in that it takes on the form of hazing. Lately my husband and I have been talking about this because we had a really traumatic birth and zero parental leave. Once you are in the position in a large company to make decisions about parental leave, you're usually in your late 40s or 50s, and you can't fathom why you should "give" people something you didn't have. You make up your own little mini-myth about how your own lonely, panicky years made you the person [...economic unit?] you are today! The more you contort your life and your psyche to accommodate individualism, the less you can even really see any alternative.
I am playing with the idea that the world can be divided into two: those who want to give what they never enjoyed and those who can't fathom why they should. Maybe there's a third category: those who would deprive others of what they enjoyed
I think about this a lot... it is my job as a human being, mother, VP etc. to make things less crummy for the next generation, my kids and my employees. I get into these conversations all the time with people who's default is " well we did it so they can to" and then I remind them that yeah maybe we did but let's remember that is sucked and why would we want to perpetuate that??? What good does it do?
My favorite version of this is "kids today have it so easy, these kids have never even <insert challenge here>, that's why they have no work ethic!"
Um, yes? Good job? All your hard work made things easier for the next generation, just as you set out to do? Now you are mad they have the privileges you gave them, I guess? Why?!
this is so so true. the lack of a sense of mentorship is so prevalent in every place I've worked in--it's more like everyone is competition, why should this person get extra parental leave when I had to scrap my way through it and made it? Or why should I give away the tools that helped me for free? Why should I actually HELP anyone when I had to do it myself? Ugh. Smacks of narcissistic ways that we're conditioned to expect everyone to find our own life jacket. Hazing is so so it.
Because happy , supported. mentored employees stay and do better work. Which in turn helps revenue and the bottom line ( to my executives this is what resonates) Because kids who feel like they have a soft place to land do better in school, talk to their parents more and get help potentially making better decisions...
Yes! And also the expectation that paid leave should come from individual companies instead of a systemic, nationwide solution like every other wealthy country does.
In a recent episode of "If Books Could Kill" Michael made a seemingly throwaway comment about "individualizing structural problems" and I really appreciated such a pithy way of summing up what we didn't properly account for when building this democracy. Maybe part of what we thought would serve as some kind of interstitial fluid between the individual and the government was churches and charities, but that is an unregulated marketplace of inefficiency that feels teed up for some kind of reckoning. I'm thinking particularly of the intensifying ire against higher education from all directions, the way NGO's compete with each other for the same pot of funding, the way the pressures on the individual to donate to charity expanded beyond churches and local efforts to every single problem in the world, and also decisions like that of the 11th circuit in the Fearless Fund case, questioning the liberties of charities.
I have no real insights, it's just a topic I think about frequently. Between 2016 and now, I've become deeply burned out on giving, which is sad! But it feels like the individual isn't just responsible for the individual, but also for faraway conflicts and the failures of capitalism and the ideas in other people's minds that need changing and what's broken in journalism etc etc Could I be more available to my community if I didn't feel like I somehow needed to help out in Gaza? Is it selfish to focus on my community if my community's needs pale to nothingness compared to the needs of other communities?
Regarding your book: I would love it if you could interview some of the families in my extremely weird neighborhood about adult friendship dynamics in a community defined by the boundaries of your neighborhood. I've never lived anywhere like this before and it is baffling and also fascinating from an anthropological perspective.
God Heather I really feel this. I am both deeply burned out by what seems like the ever increasing need for me to participate in our world to keep it from just flaming out AND absolutely sure that we all need it more. FWIW, I'm also trying to be more local with my focus in terms of creating community. It's the only thing that feels sustainable to me, and honestly I think if we can do more of it, we'll see bigger shifts in these other areas that are so important because we won't feel so alone and hopeless.
Maybe I'm naive in thinking this is a modern problem. I was just reminded in reading these comments about Millay's poem Renascence (which she wrote when she was a teenager! living in an isolated community! in 1917!!), and it's reflections on the crushing pressure of feeling responsible for the pain of the world, and our human inability to have any real understanding of our actual sphere of influence:
oh I love this!!! Thank you so much! Isn't it funny how many of the things we think are distinct in our age are just new manifestations of the same human problems.
Re: giving burnout- in recent years my partner and I have been transitioning to direct action as opposed to donations to large organizations. Not that charities are bad, just we're figuring out how to be more direct with some of our giving. So, instead of sending donations to Ukraine, we sponsored refugees and bought plane tickets for people trying to leave the war zone. I don't know if that makes any impact on the war effort, but I know with absolute certainty that the health, safety, and education of two small children was impacted in a life-changing way. They are safe. They are healthy. They are happy.
Last year a friend lost his job and was struggling to make ends meet. We started having him over for dinner twice a week and dropping off groceries at his place any time we went to the store. Eventually we also covered his mortgage for a couple months with no expectation of ever being paid back. I felt better about this than "rounding up" my grocery bill or dropping off canned goods at the food bank.
Nothing solves all the world's problems, but I've been much happier taking a more active role in the disbursement of my charitable giving.
Love that podcast and YES -- iffy making structural problems seem like individual problems, social issues become character flaws, and we don't even want to admit them, much less fix them.
UGH, yes. Because the individual should also somehow be responsible for the SOLUTIONS to all the structural problems caused by individualism! But it seems insurmountable to try to rally enough people for collective action to actually create some kind of sea change--because of inherent exhaustion and limited attention spans and bifurcated media sources, etc. Not to be cynical, but I think things will need to get a lot worse before enough people deem the solutions as worthy of prioritizing over their individual needs.
Your recent piece on being "in the portal" was so painfully resonant I found it hard to read the comments. I think my discomfort with how much suddenly changed at precisely the moment I expected things to settle is still too tender to examine. I look forward to eventually going back and re-reading it, and all the wisdom from your readers that surely follows. I also look forward to eventually feeling some kind of harmony/clarity around this period in my life.
Anyway, this question of individualism comes up for me in processing what it means to be "in the portal" because part of it, for me, is having the tables flipped on all of my assumptions around what I can reasonably expect from my friends (the nearby ones, the "closer" ones who are far away, the ones with kids, the ones without kids), from my aging parents (and from my parents when they were young, as I reflect on my own childhood), from my husband, from my sisters, from my kids, from myself, you get it. I feel like I've moved from a place of just being disappointed in absolutely everyone, to expecting nothing from anyone (also not good!), to assuming a space of observation of what people are actually capable of in different moments and having some compassion about it and also creating some softness around whether or not that's good enough for me right now. Still very much in this portal, still in the swirl.
This is what made raising a family so difficult for me and really impacted relationships. My kids are older now (19 and 16) but I will never forget being a full time working mom with sick young kids and reaching out to my mother in law for help. She was single, 'retired' (she never really worked for pay) and talked a big game about wanting to help but when push came to shove she never did. There was always excuses ( I have a hair cut appointment, lunch with friends, laundry etc...) and it got so frustrating that I just flat out stopped asking but also just stopped wanting to interact with her because I was so disappointed in her
My mom has been an uneven source of support. Both she and my MIL were amazing when my kids were babies. Truly amazing. SO helpful. But when my kids were older and care involved more than pushing them in a stroller and feeding them their interest in being involved plummeted. I think maybe this is where 80's parenting and modern parenting deeply divide, because she probably paid about as much attention to me at age 7 as she does my kids at the same age. My kids just expect way more engagement. And 2/3 of them are neurodivergent and struggle with actions resembling "listening to adults." I will never forget one time I asked her to watch them while I was working from home during the pandemic and I heard her downstairs roar: "YOU GUYS ARE EXHAUSTING!! I'M LEAVING!!" And then she left! I heard the door slam downstairs and her car start and she was gone! I still think about this all the time and it was years ago. If there were a 4th wall we'd all laugh about it. Haha grandma doesn't suffer any fools! And part of me feels vindicated like, YES, they are EXHAUSTING. And part of me feels like, What the hell, mom??
That is so hard. I cannot even imagine what the pandemic was like with young kids. I remember telling colleagues with young kids that I was amazed they got anything done . My kids were 15 and 12 so could handle online school on their own and they even made lunch for all of us! Hugs to you
Oh wow--so helpful to hear someone articulate exactly what I have been feeling. So if it helps--you aren't alone in the tables feeling flipped and figuring out how to feel about it.
This was so excellent, AHP! The opening description was so spot on it was chilling - I have friends who fit this characterization perfectly.
In terms of rejecting individualism, I have written here a number of times about how my husband and I live in the upstairs apartment of a two-flat, above my brother and sister-in-law, who are my best friends and who own the house. My husband and I are currently going through IVF, with the intention of having a baby hopefully soon. Instead of moving out to a single-family home, we decided there's no better situation than built-in family help and social support during what we know will be a challenging transition into parenthood. So, we spent a few thousand dollars putting up drywall in our mudroom and redoing the floors, turning it into a functional fourth room. This new room will eventually become my husband's home office, so his current home office can become a nursery.
This situation will still likely not last forever, as the public schools in our neighborhood suck, but we're pretty proud of ourselves for telling people that no, we do not plan to move once a baby enters the picture, as we've chosen family proximity over home ownership and more space. It feels so right to us, and yet I'm still so self-conscious telling people that growing our family does not make us take more seriously the cultural expectation that we buy a single-family home if we can afford it.
We live in a townhome community with a lot of families and so many times people ask us when we’re going to move to a SFH and I’m baffled by that. There’s the assumption you need more of everything when you have a kid. The only thing I think you truly need more of is community. Babies and kids have thrived on a whole lot less than physical space. Really great that you recognized what was important to you and stuck to it!
Yes! When I ask myself, "which will impact my future child more: a big house/big yard, or having additional loving supportive adults readily available to them and to their parents?" the answer feels very, very clear.
I am jealous of your decision. We are the typical educated, young couple that moved away from family before having kids (without a single moment of consideration). We own a single family home blah, blah - but I LOOOOOONG for my family at times. They live in an incredibly high cost of living area - so ultimately, I think we made the right choice to leave for a lower cost of living. But damn - what I would give to stumble downstairs in my pajamas to have coffee with my sister and bitch about life on a weekend morning while our kids do literally anything other than talk to us (you know, play independently...).
Fuck the cultural expectation. Do your life on your own terms!
We're in a high cost of living city (Chicago) and could not afford to buy our own home in any neighborhood we'd actually want to live in! The house we're currently in, which my brother owns, would barely be affordable for me and my husband to buy (my brother and sister in law make, as a couple, about twice what we do) and we actually would never want to own in this neighborhood anyway because of the schools. So it is really, really tough!! There are so many compromises most people have to make when it comes to choosing where they live. For now, I just try really hard to remind myself that there's a big difference between the question of, "are there things that would be nicer about owning your own, larger home with a yard, etc." and the question of "would you be happier if you were currently living in your own, larger home with a yard, etc.".
I admire you taking the time /finding the courage to address a cultural expectations goes unspoken. I and perhaps others "believe things we don't believe" and it takes someone saying something like " No, I chose family over property" for us to notice.
My husband and I just moved to a neighborhood entirely based on how close the houses were to each other and how dense the pedestrian population was - young families and old walking everywhere, stopping to chat and hang out with each other's dogs, being regulars at the corner diner, children walking together to the school at the top of the hill. We can't wait to get to know everyone in meaningful ways so that we can start to build a network where everyone can look out for one another and everyone's kiddos, in the spirit of Jane Jacobs.
I'm always actively trying to combat the myth of individualism in academia in my day-to-day work life, as well. There's a nefarious insistence that we get ahead, do our research, get tenure, all alone and I think that's extremely dangerous especially for early-career people of color. You don't have to and you shouldn't have to do it alone and finding your support ecosystem is vital to surviving and thriving in spaces that were never intentionally built for you.
I am currently house-hunting and "houses close to each other" is one of my non-negotiables. I think my real estate agent might be slightly puzzled. I have told her I want to run into people accidentally all the time, and that my metric for whether a house is close enough to the neighbors is "can I talk to them in my normal voice without shouting, while they're in their front yard and I'm in mine." It's nice to know I'm not the only one.
I watched a talk Tyson Yunkaporta gave some time back (not online anymore that I can find) where he talked about having been doing decolonization work for going on 30 years. "But nobody," he said, "is giving back their real estate." I think about this constantly (obviously, to the point where I can barely talk about it coherently anymore because my head's so full of it), but the question of private ownership of land and what Yunkaporta and Nick Estes have talked about as "turning land into capital" feels completely foundational to maintaining these myths and hierarchies.
My parents worked their whole lives for Puerto Rican independence and we are actually less close to that than we've ever been, which makes their life's work (and activism) feel... pointless? That is not the lesson, I know activism is important and has caused great and needed changes but it's so discouraging (which I know is what power structures want/need--for us to feel hopeless). No real insights just general... blergh.
This is not at all the same thing, but one of my cousins in Russia founded a humanitarian organization that she ran for years before Putin shut it down in ... 2011 I think? Maybe a bit later. But it was his invasion of Ukraine that did her in. She has multiple sclerosis and all kinds of health issues, but what has made her absolutely hopeless was watching that invasion, having to stop commenting openly online (because it was illegal to criticize the war) for fear of getting arrested, and feeling like her life's work all came to nothing. Truly, not the same as the dedication you're talking about but I get the discouragement and insights. Two years on, I still don't know what to say to my cousin about it. 🧡
I think because I'm a wry, sarcastic person people think I'm a pessimist but really deep down I'm a wide-eyed optimist and this world crushes me all the time. I keep thinking, humanity has GOT to get it together. We've been at this for how long? Empires have risen and fallen and we are STILL just killing each other over land and power and religion? WTF. I want us to be better than this!!
I feel this hard. Because I research deep history (on walking, community, capitalism, ownership, ...), seeing how humanity falls into this over and over can be incredibly disheartening. I read a history of the Black Sea region recently that brought this home more forcefully than ever. Thousands of years of history there that's beautiful and fascinating and also a lot of the same crap over and over. Or, as you put it, "Empires have risen and fallen and we are STILL just killing each other over land and power and religion? WTF."
"Black Sea," by Neal Ascherson. It might be out of print but if you're into that kind of history it's really good. I find myself referring to it a lot.
I always wonder about this when I think about women who worked for women's rights in the US... how bloody tired, mad and exhausted they must feel right now
Yes--the Dobbs case overturning Roe was/is devastating, as are the continued efforts to stop not only abortion but also the use of birth control. And the general evangelical/right wing desire to control women and their bodies at all costs. People called us feminists hysterical when we warned of this before HRC lost but we knew this was coming down the pike if she didn't win. While it's a shame that the US system is so binary with candidates (I know a lot of people could not get with HRC, some for valid and some for not-so-valid reasons), the judiciary and abortion rights were on the ballot (as well as the dismantling of our immigration system, etc.) and that was more important than the candidate, imho. (Egads I do not want to be re-litigating the 2016 election LOL.) The depressing fact is that the work of liberation is the work of several lifetimes and a lot of steps forward, and a lot of steps back and that just makes me want to scream into the void forever!
And there is also the idea that all people can go back from where their ancestors came from (look at the Middle East right now) in order to right the current mess our species is in. Great idea but nobody’s giving up their ill-gotten gains. The notion seems to be: if I killed, raped, and tortured for it, now it’s mine and you can’t make me give it back. What a mess!!
I come from two cultures, the one I was born into and the US-ian one I was brought into, on and off, as a child and young adult. My culture (Puerto Rican) is very community-based, despite (or maybe because of!) the colonialism that has left the island in such poverty throughout the years. My parents live in a very rural area and yet everyone cares for each other. (It does help that most people are related, LOL, but even so, they are good neighbors to each other.) My parents bring people in town extra produce from their farm, and others do the same for them. My parents take elderly people to church. Nobody starves in our hometown unless they really work at it. There is a lot of poverty, to be sure, and addiction too, though crime is minimal due to how rural it is (which is not to say that crime doesn't occur, but at much lower rates than in the bigger towns). My parents when living in the US created this same type of community for themselves through their church, but it was much harder because of the individualism built in to the US-ian system. When I see how much my parents do for their community, I'm honestly embarrassed at myself. I could do so much more but I don't (introversion is real), and COVID (and still being COVID-cautious) makes it even worse. It's hard to build a big community when most people don't have those concerns anymore. Not to go off on a tangent... Anyway, both of these sides (community vs. individualism) war inside of me, despite the fact that I *know* and can clearly see the benefit to the community-based life. Living in NYC, I'm very much participating in the "I don't know you, you don't know me, we leave each other alone" type of existence in my daily life. I would say, though, that my work colleagues do provide a lot of community for me and vice versa, given that it's non-profit, values-based work. But I'd also like to build more community in my personal life and find that very hard to do here.
That awkward moment when you go community style in a "go your own way" big city and people stare at you like you sprouted horns. It is just not the norm to help out in certain places, go easy on yourself. I helped a senior with her groceries once and she tried to pay me. Blame instacart!
I had the privilege of enjoying the community my parents had. There were neighbors' homes to wander into, other adults to teach you skills ranging from baking to changing a flat tire, heck, family & friends even came together to provide financial support for major milestones (going to university, getting married, planning a funeral). BUT this community orientation has a cost and comes with risks. As noted in the essay (but maybe in a different sense), some power has to be given up. If you cannot trust that other people care about you, it is probably unwise to operate from a community standpoint while others in your network are being individualistic. It is maybe the prisoner's dilemma? My experience has been that I have been unable to replicate the community life that many in my parents' generation had. Maybe trust is in decline or people don't want to give up power or we are just self absorbed.
One thing about this I find so challenging is that, in my parents' case (very similar to what you described), they are able to find this community while at the same time overlooking/ignoring/pretending that their neighbors aren't doing Big Harm at the same time (my folks' neighbors happen to be extremely anti-LGBTQ/racist/etc and actively participate in hate-mongering actions - to be fair maybe they are also ignoring/pretending regarding my parents' views and actions which are oppositional to theirs). I just do not know how I can pretend that my neighbors aren't actively campaigning for the hateful shit their so-called church spews out! I can't understand how to trust them when that's the foundation they've built their lives on. Is it possible to build trust in this situation without pretending that they're not actively harming me, people I love, and other people who are just as valuable? (I sincerely would love to know if anyone has ideas!)
I would love to see a discussion about this. I've seen it mentioned here and there, especially where "community" comes up (and I'm really big on community!), but not seen it talked about in a really open and robust way. I am in a tiny Discord channel where I once asked people's thoughts on boundaries of trust and it was a diverse and deeply thought out set of responses that came up (this is a group that is very into mutual aid and such, so it's a subject natural for conversation there).
I live in a Southern city that is left leaning (D+10), but still has a lot of conservative folks, churches with right wing ideas, and hateful people. I may be a coward, but I try really hard not to investigate my neighbors’ politics too closely. Our HOA has a no political signs rule, and there seems to be a tacit agreement not to talk about politics.
There is a sense of community in the little street I live on though. People watch out for each others’ kids, have neighborhood parties in the cul de sac, and are surprisingly generous with their time. I don’t think any of this would work if we didn’t have the truce on politics though. Also, for what it’s worth, the community is pretty diverse in terms of race and sexuality, and no one seems to feel excluded from the community (at least as far as I can tell).
I don’t think I am doing something wrong by not fighting with my probably conservative neighbors, but I might be? Sorry for the rambling response--trying to work through some feelings on this.
I think this is it for my folks and their neighbors - they see it as discussing politics, which is something they can choose not to do. But I don't know how to do that when our neighbors think I and people like me should not be allowed to exist - it's not politics to me, it's my very personhood! I would truly love to figure out how to handle this without feeling like I'm saying it's okay to think I'm less than human. Maybe those who are being discriminated against are supposed to just take it, pretending it's not happening for the peace of the neighborhood? (sort of what I'm doing right now, smiling and waving but never going any deeper for fear of them deciding to target me in particular - as opposed to the general LGBTQ community they spout hate at generally speaking). I'm also rambling and trying to work through this - so glad we have this space!
Sometimes you just can’t with the neighbors. If they think you shouldn’t exist, then they are probably not going to provide much of a sense of community in any event. I definitely would not tell anyone to just grin and bear it if someone in their neighborhood is making them feel unwelcome or threatened. In that situation, I think any sense of neighborliness has already broken down.
I think good neighbors keep their judgments to themselves, and that has to be reciprocal. I am sure there are some people on my street who are sure I’m going to hell because I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, but as long as they keep it to themselves and treat me with dignity and kindness, we can be good neighbors. But if they told my kid that we were bad people who are going to hell, I think things would stop being neighborly right quick.
Personally, I cannot: I struggled years ago when a friend's husband voted against . . . I forget what: gay rights. Women's autonomy. (So many "some pigs are more equal than others" measures to choose from.) I decided not to invite them over. I wanted my home to be safe, a place I could let my guard down. Clearly, this is an individualistic move. Clearly, community calls for greater tolerance. And yet.
To be clear, I think that is right. I would have a hard time being friends with someone whose views I abhor.
I wouldn’t think of my neighbors as friends--we didn’t choose each other--but I appreciate that they are being, for lack of a better word, neighborly, and try to reciprocate. It is a shallower version of community in a lot of ways, but I think there is room for that too.
I wonder if shallowness is the key here? I would like to figure out how to be in community with our neighbors in a meaningful way, but maybe there's not room for meaning? Like, I want to do more than smile and wave but I don't know that there's room for that? So challenging!
When we bought our house, one of our next door neighbors was pregnant (they had lived there for a year) and they were happy to see another young couple (the neighborhood had a lot of older folks in it). We became friendly and our kids played together constantly in our backyards and they were great neighbors. They were also very conservative Catholics, so our politics were not aligned and we figured out pretty quickly that we wouldn’t talk politics. In 2004 or so a local news channel stoked by and interviewed my wife and the neighbor woman because they noticed we had competing political signs in our yard and wanted to see how we managed that difference. It was a pretty good interview that was mostly about how we like each other and don’t talk politics. They moved to a different part of town a few years ago so we don’t see them much but it was an interesting lesson is getting along with people who have different beliefs (it helped that they were friendly, parented in a similar style and were considerate).
I was brought up to understand that it is best not to talk about Politics, Religion, & Money. Especially with extended family and in social situations. Of course, I have rebelled against this at times, but still in selective situations.
This is such a good point - I realized a few years ago that, while I was longing for the type of community that my parents had (and that I grew up in), I didn't see the work that they put in, or the risks they took, or the friction that must have inevitably come up, or the times things didn't work out. To me, as a child (and rightfully so, because none of that should have been my business / my problem as a kid), there was just this group of loving adults around all the time seemingly by magic. And then, when that didn't materialize for me as a young adult (into now), it felt like I had missed out or done something wrong.
I crave this, and even to a smaller degree I want to be able to let my kids go to sleepovers, bike around the neighborhood, hang out at friends houses. But now I'm so worried about abuse, about something terrible happening to my child at the hands of an adult - because all of the stories are coming out now, that our communities we thought were safe were actually not. People I thought were safe in my own childhood who harmed my friends. I don't want to be this person living in distrust and fear, but it is hard to escape it.
This is such an interesting discussion and I’m still mulling over the prompt, but I was really struck by how accurately you were describing the two bookends of my parenting-kids-under-18 life. My husband and I moved to a place where we didn’t know anyone when I was 20 weeks pregnant and didn’t make any friends. It was awful, but we left the day our daughter turned one and moved a state away, where, after some time, we did make friends. Then, as we approached our kids (16 and 14) going into HS, we moved again. It’s been two years and zero friends.
My youngest sister just found out she’s pregnant with her second. She and her husband met in HS and moved from GA to IL for him to go to graduate school. He finished in 2020 and got an offer to come back to our hometown, which is a decent sized city and where our mother and his mother both live. They both also have tons of friends from HS who settled there. My sister has a good community around her—a lot of friends with babies the same age as her first, my mom and her MIL watch her child every day (which allows her to do her job, which involves extensive travel), etc. But she hates living there and it looks like my BIL may have an opportunity to leave his current position and find something else if they want. And a big part of me understands this—I wouldn’t choose to live there, either—but the part of me that has raised my kids far from family and was desperate for connection when they were young is resisting offering any unsolicited advice about moving just for the sake of leaving (it’d also be conflicting with my other sister’s advice, which is inevitably centered around her feelings of superiority related to her choices).
I think a lot of the staying power of individualism comes from propaganda surrounding the fiscal requirements of a more collective society but also, at least in my experience, in this feeling that “I struggled, so should you.” I work in an industry that has few women, and was disappointed to find that many of the women who came before me were not supportive or helpful to the next generation. They came up through the school of hard knocks and if we are going to learn, then so should we. Similarly, during the pandemic many of us were almost furloughed from my company, and the attitude of the older generation was “well I was furloughed too.” This from older men and women who have the benefit of a really strong collective bargaining agreement and union representation. I am forever confused by the individualist nature of union members, but thats a different topic. I think the key to moving toward collectivism is not only our personal attitudes but the general belief that we need to make things better for the next generation. Also a full revamp of our untethered capitalist system, but that one will be harder.
The "If Books Could Kill" podcast episode about "Lean In" mentions some interesting statistics about this - If I recall correctly, getting *one* woman into a position of authority can actually have a deleterious effect on the promotion of other women, but if you have something approaching parity, the hiring outcomes are very equal between men and women. (Apologies, I might be misrepresenting this a bit - it's a great ep, I do recommend checking it out).
It makes a certain amount of sense that a woman on her own might be hesitant to risk her position by packing the ranks with more women and upsetting the existing dynamics of the workplace. But if you've already got a lot of women everywhere, you just keep hiring the best qualified person, and about half the time that's a woman. The problem is bridging the gap between the one token woman and the truly diverse workforce.
Another incredible read. However, I am bristling at something in this last paragraph:
~~
Millions of people — and white people in particular — would rather endure physical isolation, generalized loneliness, caregiving exhaustion, and financial precarity than relinquish some of their societal power. That’s a far less optimistic foundational myth than individualism. But it’s a far more honest one.
~~
My personal bugaboo these days is the pushing of environmental/societal problems created and upheld by the ultra-wealthy and powerful onto the individual. Massive corporations and huge power structures get off scot-free on the destruction of our environment and the gutting of any remaining social safety nets while our society implores individuals to make up the difference (recycling, gofundme, donations and volunteering)
This may not have been the intent of your last paragraph but I see this message frequently, that it is the fault of white/privileged people that we hold on to our privilege rather than relinquish our social power for the greater good.
There is a vast spectrum of what people are willing to risk to protect their privilege and certainly many do nothing. But what exactly is being suggested here that would result in meaningful societal change? Should people stop taking mortgage interest deductions? Donate their homes to charity? Clear out bank accounts to redistribute wealth? Give up steady jobs to make room for others?
There is no clear line from an individual giving up their privilege to them achieving relief from physical isolation, generalized loneliness, caregiving exhaustion, and financial precarity. There is no clear line from an individual giving up their privilege to creating a more just and equal society. There is not even a fuzzy line. We can not solve macro issues with micro actions (micro actions en masse is another story!). To be honest it feels cruel to imply that individuals are choosing to preserve their privilege out of selfishness, racism, etc even though that is certainly a part of the mix.
In my opinion these issues are not caused by "millions of white people" but rather - mostly - a quite small number of extremely wealthy, almost entirely white people. Yes those people are supported by a millions of people who give them their votes and therefore power but I feel that is a different conversation than one about giving up societal privilege at an individual level.
I am not saying it is right for people to hold on to privilege. But to me it is irrational to ask individuals to give up privilege to dismantle a horribly unfair system without providing a better system as an alternative, or at least coordinated effort that ties these sacrifices to a legitimate potential outcome. And shaming individuals for not making individual sacrifices to solve systematic problems in society - I can't see the path to systematic change with this narrative.
I'm sure I've grossly misinterpreted the intent and sentiment of the last paragraph but I find the language and constant implication that societal problems are the responsibility of individuals so pervasive that I wanted to say something. I'm reading all the comments with so much interest. Thanks AHP!
I appreciate the other commenters working through this below — I feel like we are very lucky here at Culture Study to have a community that can engage in this sort of conversation with itself (and not just with me, as the author of the post). From my perspective — like you, I am also very against privatizing and individualizing these big systemic problems; I now feel rage pretty much every time I have to rinse something gross to recycle, which is not how I should feel about recycling. But I also think there's a halfway between understanding the sheer power of systems (and those in power) and how we begin to change them. As I'm going to explore in the weeks to come, I think we're in a real period of backlash to individualism as a founding or guiding myth, and that backlash manifests in everything from hope to rage. But the only way we start trying to find other ways of living, other guiding understandings of how to be, is by beginning to do some of the work on and with ourselves.
Thanks so much for your response and I look forward to the continuing conversations! I hope you are right about a backlash to individualism and feel both hope and rage at the prospect. And I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence.
I feel very out of touch with societal shifts, and I’d like to think you’re right about people being over individualism. My workplace launched some “culture of care” change which I think is reflective of that shift. But also this at a workplace so any actual need to access a culture of care is going to be responded to with “we’re so glad you reached out. Our culture of care engages with practices that create belonging so we have a broad range of initiatives you can contribute to”.
I think I have very much been where you are - I am a big problem solver and I can become impatient with vague "solutions" when it seems like there should be a straightforward lever to pull.
I also can't help thinking that by your logic there might never have been a year-long bus boycott or long, hungry labor strikes. Which points to -
My journey from where you are now to where I've now found myself is long and complicated, but it mostly hinges on a belief (a practical/strategic, but yes, also a spiritual) belief in the power of solidarity. I do think there is a line and it runs through the reclamation of solidarity, a practice and an attitude we've largely lost. Our elders, especially our white elders, have failed to pass it down and in many ways we will have to reinvent it for ourselves, without knowing when we start how exactly we will end.
The really hard part is, yes, all the actions you describe would be experiments and formative practices for re-tying our fates to one anothers'. As for the billionaires, we will never just take some stuff away from these incredibly powerful people without giving up some capital, comfort, and security in the fight they will bring to our doorsteps.
I agree with you completely and knew I was probably not articulating my thought entirely correctly. I love your framing of solidarity - but that is by definition not individualistic.. if that makes sense? And I agree so many movements start with individual action that then takes hold into something larger. I wasn't suggesting that nothing should be done without a straightforward lever but also I don't think we'll make progress if we aren't more empathetic and thoughtful how we talk about the individual's role in societal change.
I also want to say, what I wrote isn't necessarily where I am now (I am very much personally aligned with what you've said here) but how we make this place more accessible to others so that we can activate more people to come to this place. I would happily give up capital, comfort and security (and do although I won't get into that here) ... but how do we get others to do this at scale? Maybe it's conversations like this :)
It think you're right! I think it's both! Like we have to find a place to name what AHP is naming on a societal level *and* name the difficulties of breaking out of that - a thing that has ultimately mostly been done *to* us at this point through the legacies and myths of whiteness. So far we've put a lot of onus on privileged people to parse all those nuances out on their own (which, yes! Individualism!) and that simply is not working. Especially when people are so under-resourced, it's not a winning strategy. I think we are still fumbling toward the language and metaphors we need to be able to be clear-eyed about the macro level and compassionate and patient on the micro.
But ultimately I don't disagree with AHP's framing. I think, for instance, we've watched millions of people around the world make the deliberate choice to risk death from Covid rather than admit their own life was bound to their neighbor's. (And if that's not you, then it's not about you!)
I agree to an extent. In some ways that paragraph includes the very individualism the rest of the post is about, albeit in reverse.
However, policy can’t fix everything, right? At some point, our individual dollars/attention/time/votes need to be spent in a different way for societal change to occur. So it’s a both/and proposition.
Danika, I didn't bristle, but I sure appreciate you saying that you did, and eloquently filling in the details. In my version of The Good we each feel free to speak up in the service of our beliefs but even more, in the service of thinking clearly.
Thanks so much Nan, I was quite nervous to share my thoughts and was worried they would be misinterpreted. Every other word in this incredibly smart and thoughtful essay resonated so strongly with me and I didn't want that to get lost. Obviously individual choices/actions and large societal structures are deeply interrelated but it does feel like the balance of responsibility in the narrative has shifted too far towards individuals which - not coincidentally - is quite beneficial to those power structures.
I'm still thinking about this a few days later, because I guess the impulse for individual solutions is so deep that it's really hard to parse out how to change it that doesn't eventually come down to some individual action? Like, I feel that my imagination is failing me?
More usefully, I'm thinking about existing (but weakened) institutions built on collectivism as opposed to individualism. Like labor unions! I work in manufacturing which is a place that laborers have *greatly* benefited from unions in the past, but also where unions are practically non-existent in right-to-work states and even the workers who might benefit most from a union are vocally and staunchly anti-union. How much power imbalance has to occur before the people are ready to admit they are being exploited? Or unfairly compensated? Or just, aren't in a strong enough negotiating position to actually negotiate?
I don't know. Supposedly we have a government "of the people" so we can vote for folks that are more collective-minded, but when you live in a deep red state that feels quite hopeless. Thanks for giving me something really challenging to wrestle with the last couple days!
I too have been thinking about this conversation for days. Change won't come without a LOT of individual action but how can we as people who care about creating a just and equitable system prioritize individual actions that are feasible, sustainable and impactful? Because there is a risk here of folks burning out on individual actions that are ultimately futile - another desired outcome from the powers that be (imo).
DAMN this was a good one.
So another place I think you might poke around and find this myth: the debate between childfree people and people with children.
I was on Instagram (I know, that's a me problem) the other day and a creator I usually love posted a meme about how parents get to just go home early whenever because "kids" and the comment section was FROTHING. The usual stuff — parents doing the Rodney Dangerfield dance about how they get no respect (we don't!) or systemic support (also we don't!) and that American culture generally seems invested in making more babies and then screwing the people who need to raise them (also true!)
The child-free folks argued that it wasn't their job to pick up the slack because little Timmy has a tummy ache (fair!) and that having a kid is the only vaguely acceptable reason for needing to leave the office unexpectedly (also true!). But then it got mean.
"No one made you have a kid — that's your problem." — people mad at parents for having kids
I see this a lot (mostly with younger single folks) on the internet — the feeling that someone else having a child is an imposition on their comfort, and I think it has everything to do with the kind of frankensteining of Individualism and the Cult of Convenience that our phones and 2-day shipping has brought us. This vibe of "we have to share this planet but we don't have to like it — you clean up your own mess and I'll clean up mine." (I 100% used to be this person, and then I had a kid! Sorry to the moms and dads who I disregarded in my youth!)
There was a great On Being episode recently where Sarah Hendren talks about disability as this anti-american idea, like self-reliance is the most important personal value you can hold, even though every single one of us will at some point be dependent on someone else — even if just for a few days when we have the flu. She points out the ableist nature of this ideology, but also the incredible beauty of dependence. The humility it gives us. To know that we can't always take care of ourselves is a gift. Anyway, I loved this piece and I thought you might enjoy that thought thread for your book!
https://onbeing.org/programs/sara-hendren-our-bodies-aliveness-and-the-built-world/
I agree with all of this and, as a childless person who has lots of friends with kids, I see the lack of care cutting both ways. Some childfree people feel that parents aren’t entitled to community support or empathy because they made an individual decision, and some people with kids tend to retreat into their nuclear family and stop engaging with their child-free friends (who have their own set of life challenges that are also worthy of community support!). In both cases the individual choice to have or not have kids can really limit one’s community connections in this country, which is a shame.
YES! We alllllll need support. And we each have different things we are able to give one another. I think with my child-free friends, it's just structurally harder for us to be together because the schedules are so different. I hate that. I miss them, and I feel strongly that my kid would benefit from having them as a more constant presence. Is it car culture? Work culture? I wish I had a better sense for where the bridge gets broken off.
As a child-free person who now spends loads of time with her parent friends, there was a journey I (and my friends) had to go on -- especially me, as a privileged white woman who is definitely steeped in the tea of individualism -- of understanding that there are seasons that require more relative "sacrifice" from me, like shifting my schedule to accommodate others', if I want to maintain those friendships. It wasn't easy for me to accept and I still feel moments of frustration years in. In those moments, though, I've learned to remind myself that these people matter to me (and so do their children), and it will not be like this forever.
In some of my most important relationships, I've stopped shifting my schedule altogether and have opted into being in their child-filled worlds (mind you, my friends had to go through their own journey of letting me into what they believed to be their messy, disorganized, chaotic homes and worlds). I go over to my best friends' homes and get snacks for the kids, clean up after them, play with them, get the Motrin if one of them has a headache, lightly scold where needed, etc. And there's been no greater joy in this season of my life than hearing that my friends' kiddos have been asking when Aunt Teresa is coming over again. I didn't expect it, and it took a lot of work setting aside that individualism, including choosing to move closer to them and my family. I think this shows, though, how deeply embedded individualism can be, and how it's woven itself so tightly into our choices to bear children. As someone who has been mostly ambivalent about my decision not to have kids, I grasped onto that individualism to help soothe (heck, bury) the hurt that will forever exist within my choice. I think we've really flattened the narrative around choosing to have or not have kids, like we've flattened so many values-charged narratives.
Teresa this makes me tear up!!! Everyone needs an Aunt Teresa.
I literally just bought two books to send to my non-biological niece and nephew — and I have no idea why I haven't been doing more of that, other than my own individualism.
Yes, we parents have to be willing to let our non-parent friends into the chaos and not be ashamed of it. I feel so guilty when I have child-free friends over, like I need to turn my kid into Christopher Robin so they won't be bothered by the noise and the mess and the sometimes shocking PURE ID of a 5-year-old demanding things. I worry I'll be judged — they won't "get it." But I've never even let them try.
How lovely to be in our messes together, how humbling, how real. Maybe this is the true cost of the instigramification — the internalized belief that everything should smell like a hotel lobby and if it doesn't, it's a personalized failure.
If I can offer some encouragement, few things have made me feel more loved than my parenting friends who welcome me into their homes as they are, without apologizing or explaining. To be a part of their family for an afternoon or evening is such a gift! Yes, sometimes it's loud and chaotic but who cares? It's a chance to see my friends in parenting mode and to get to know their kids better and to simply be a part of something for a while.
Yes yes yes. 💜
🫶🏻
One of the wonderful things about giving your child-free friends a chance is that they will start to get it in their own ways. That doesn't mean everyone will want the chance, but you know your friend group and can seed the opportunity and see who lights up. The empathy and understanding I have for my parent friends now, after finally experiencing that pure Id myself (lolz face melt why are Dino nuggets and yogurt pouches the only food you'll eat and why did you drop that Lego in your training potty?!), would never have developed without being given those experiences.
It's hard to let down our guards but doing so is the path to greater compassion and an increased willingness (and desire!) to experience the mess together rather than on our own. Because hey, sometimes, the silence of a child-free home can be as suffocating as it can be freeing.
It took time and distance -- relational and physical -- for my parent friends and I to find our way back into deep friendship, but it happened. Have faith that you've got a few Aunt Teresas in the mix; I'm sure they're there even if you and they don't know it yet. <3
I feel this. I've been going back and forth with an extremely independent friend of mine, who has a new baby and a 4 year old. She canceled a hang out because "I have to pick up Leo from school and with everything going on I have no idea how he's going to be." And I said, "I'm here for the messy bits." She still canceled. But I got to see her the next week and asked her to show me how to change a diaper. I think I'll have to keep on reiterating that I'm here for the messy bits. For the last-minute babysitting and tantrums and all that stuff. Especially since neither her nor her in-laws are nearby or helping – they have to pay for all their help.
You're a good friend Alden. And you are reminding me that people do love to help — not allowing them and keeping all of our problems to ourselves isn't necessarily a kindness. I always just wanted someone to show up and play with the baby for a few minutes — the nicest thing anyone ever did for me in my early days of parenthood was to show up with two bags of no-cook groceries and hold the baby for an hour. I ate the rotisserie chicken she brought standing over the sink like an animal because I hadn't bothered to feed myself that day. I will never forget it.
Child-free adult who has also gone through everything you've mentioned. I also had to do a lot of grieving for the way things used to be when it was easier, which I did not see coming at all. Reminding myself that this is a season in all of our lives' has helped and trying to find ways to be present in whatever ways I can be (and some reciprocation on their parts) has kept several friendships alive, but woo boy has it been tough. But I acknowledge it's tough on everyone -- parents or not.
As a childfree person at the age where many, many of my friends have very young kids (mid-30s but live in a big city), I have recently been struggling with both wanting to be in my friends’ kids lives, but also dreading the inevitability of that looking like me doing most of the heavy lifting: driving 10-40 miles to the suburbs, committing a half day or more of my weekend, listening to mostly child-related conversation (I get it! Having kids is a huge life-changing thing but there are also other things, and maybe ask about my life too?), having to work around nap time/tantrum/etc., and then still feel like I didn’t get the full friend experience has been draining, demoralizing, and detrimental to the health of those friendships. There’s are different seasons in life, but as someone who has always relied heavily on the strength of friendships, this is a hard one.
It sucks when someone you love gets swallowed up by parenthood. I'm sorry you are feeling the loss of the transition — it is a grief for sure, and parents do need to be better about not always centering everything around being a parent. It sucks to put the work in and still leave without feeling like you actually got to visit with someone you love. I've been there. Once the kids get a bit bigger, it gets much better for everyone. Keep the hope alive and keep being such an awesome friend!
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment, Melissa. I will indeed keep the hope alive and try to maintain the advice for romantic relationships that it’s not ALWAYS 50/50. This is a season I need to give more than I get in these friendships.
Erin, I relate to this so much. My friends still care about me as much, but the emotional support I receive from them is nowhere near the same as it was pre-kids (and as a childfree person who is also single, their support is still nowhere near meeting my needs). I hear you--it's a grieving process. My solutions have been to lower my expectations, still prioritize quality time with them on their schedule, and honestly, look for new friends who are actually available and have emotional capacity for you.
Oof, yes lowering expectations feels so fatalistic, when I’ve always had exacting expectations (no small part of why I’m single). It’s so sad to think about needing to make new friends when I feel like I don’t have the capacity to hang out with the ones I’ve had (that have been my friends for decade/s!) but I think that’s right. We all deserve support from our various circles and that’s hit hard as I’ve felt unsure who to turn to when dealing with some mobility limitations from an injury, etc. in the past.
I am so incredibly grateful for my group of (majority male) child-free friends embracing me and my almost 5 year old daughter (and by extension, my husband). I call them "the godparents" and I love that they are welcome to her as a kid being a kid and things being different because of that. There's a wide range of interactivity between them all - some of them my daughter calls titles or has special nicknames while other friends are just there and do little more than acknowledge her presence.
What's extra weird about us is that we aren't geographically close at all. We live in MD and the closest godparent emotionally lives in NY. But we do a lot of video calls and have a long running group chat on Messenger (as well as individual chats) and are intentional about meeting up in person at least a few times a year. Last weekend we drove to NY to do a live YouTube show with one small group of them and then to MA for a 40th birthday party for another (the groups overlapped slightly). We are planning another meetup in PA in May. We all initially met each other online through a niche hobby and are mostly neurodivergent.
I think its key is that my daughter is super friendly and easygoing and that there's open invitations for all age activities (going out to eat, visiting historical sites) as well as kid ones (playground! swimming!) Their houses are typical adult houses but they usually have something "special" that my daughter plays with only there (like trains or their childhood stuffies) so she isn't bored. The adults are hanging out and drinking and she's playing under the table with the stuffies and pulling one of them to spin her around and asking another one to help her with the train set. Last weekend everyone was taking turns pulling her around the yard in her wagon, playing with stuffies, eating snacks with her.
One of them got married last year and she was the only young child invited to the wedding. We did not know this until the day-of. It was really special to me that she was included. She sat still for the entire ceremony (big deal at age 4)!
I think a big thing is that I don't compare parenthood to being harder and still listen to everyone's problems and try to be there for them when I can. I remember what things like being tired was like before being a parent and it still sucks. No pain Olympics here.
The “childfree” movement that has risen on social media is kind of a hellscape. As someone who has opted out of motherhood, I was excited to discover it during the pandemic, only to realize it’s not a group of likeminded women who made a choice (or had a choice made for them) but a group that is constantly offended by others choice to have children. I 100% agree the individualism mindset in this country is hardest on parents, single women in particular, but I think a lot of us non parents have experience with trying to provide community for our friends with kids, and not receiving the same support in return when we have needed it.
Oh, God this resonates. I went to a child free by choice brunch once, and it was the worst decision I made in a long time. I was hoping it was women who wanted to support other women, but it was women who had a lot of pent-up vitriol against women who had had children (by choice or not).
I still return to the Culture Study thread for childless people from time to time when I want to feel part of a community but don't want to go anywhere near the toxic weirdness of a lot of forums on this topic. And I'll take this opportunity to say thank you to AHP and everyone for that thread, I found it so comforting and positive.
Yes Kru — it has to go both ways. I think there are real benefits we can offer one another!
Agree to this completely, well said.
I grew up where I had to (and liked to!) take care of the gazillion children in my extended family so I don't feel this resentment toward parents but I do see it everywhere! I *like* that my taxes go to schools. I *want* children growing up educated--they really are the future, and I think it's myopic to not acknowledge that. I see how much my siblings struggle here with their kids and the lack of community and it is *rough.*
Related to this - my dad is a boomer and resents paying taxes for the local schools because "his children aren't in school anymore".
But dad, who paid the majority of the taxes when I was in school and you were in the beginning of your career? Who will be the nurse/banker/politician/etc in 10 years that you like/loathe that is in school today benefitting from public education?
It is bonkers to me that he doesn't see this. Very much a symptom of hyper individualism.
We’re dealing with this right now. The laws in the state where I live require district referendums to fund schools. Our area is growing exponentially and without a referendum there will be a $5 million shortage next year. But there are also a ton of retirement communities and the first vote for the referendum failed last year because of that. We have another vote coming up and I’m really nervous. When my husband and I went to vote last time I knew it would lose just by seeing the other people voting.
When I was in high school, to help raise money for the marching band we had to go around door-to-door in the summer in our full wool band uniform (Ohio summer- it was brutal) and ask for donations. I remember at least one person tell me, to my face, that they dont support the schools because they don’t have kids/have kids there.
Thanks, lady. What a thing to say to a high school student you’ve never met before, standing on your front porch.
Dude - it gets even worse. My brother's family is going through some challenges right now, and my husband I are thinking of ways we could step in and materially support their three kids (hosting for the summer, summer camps, free housing while they attend community college, SOMETHING!). My husband's father (so, no blood relation to my nieces/nephews) commented that was all good for us to help as long as it did not detract from our children's opportunities.
So, here is the rugged individualism + nuclear family logic cannibalizing even within blood family relations. Like, wouldn't it be better to lift up ALL the children in our family (and by extension OUR COMMUNITY) as opposed to hoarding our resources to make sure only MY children have resources. It shouldn't be surprising, but it baffled me in the moment. Such a scarcity mentality with such dire impacts on innocent children.
absolutely — I am even trying to shift my thinking away from what someone can do for me to what is my responsibility as a member of this group, to make the group as healthy as it can be. that is HARD in our culture. (PS where you grew up sounds so lovely :) )
I love this! What a beautiful reframing.
I feel the same way, except I was an only child and didn't have to take care of kids growing up. Happier, healthier, more educated and curious kids make for a better society for everyone.
Melissa,
I included the data below in my most recent post. The data shows how shamefully low our support of families is.
"We live in the richest country in the world and spend a paltry amount on support for families. The countries other than America that make up the G-7––Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.K.––spend an average of 2.1% of their GDP on family benefits. The U.S. spends 0.7%. 4
That gap is a political choice, one I feel ashamed of. Because between those sterile numbers of 0.7% and 2.1% lies a multitude of human misery, sadness, and the doom of parental hope."
4. Based on data from the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD).
Kirsten Powers wrote a recent post about Denmark’s success as a capitalist country with a much more robust social safety net and higher taxes. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Denmark spends 3.3% of its GDP on family support."
In case you're interested in the entire post, it's at
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/my-candor-writing-about-wealth-comes
Thank you so much David!
God these numbers are sobering — nothing for our own families here, and yet the defense budget goes up and up.
I saw this piece from Kirsten! It is very informative — as someone with a ticket out if I need it (my husband has UK citizenship) I have spent a lot of time fantasizing about a better life in a country where the idea of prioritizing quality of life isn't seen as a weakness!! And I then I feel guilty because the people who need this kind of support are not able to leave — but also stuck, because the whole thing feels a bit of a monolith.
I saw another Instagram post (I know, I know… cesspool!) on the schools in Finland. The comment section was also frothing with people indignant that the Finnish people's schools couldn't be better than ours because they hadn't invented anything… accidentally proving the point about the poor quality of our own education.
Appreciate you sharing this! We must insist our government supports the people who pay for it, not the wealthy who capitalize on us all.
I'm glad the essay resonated :-) Setting aside that Finland has invented things (as you note) that's really a bad argument b/c ppl are comparing a country with that has slightly more people than Oklahoma to a country with 300 million+ people. It's not that surprising that the country with 300 million would invent more things and of course who cares anyway...how did someone inventing Facebook better any Americans life?
GAWD. Right? Well, it's on me for looking in the comments on Instagram!! That's where you're bound to find staunch defenders of our national motto: America is The Best — which means Most Innovative, which means Has The Most Money and is The Smartest and by the way We Have Lots of Guns.
I'm just finishing up a piece about the achievement to workism pipeline, and I found this utterly shattering piece of data from a 2014 study from The Harvard Graduate School of Education:
"Almost 80% of youth picked high achievement or happiness as their top choice, while roughly 20% selected caring for others."
Basically seems like we are shoveling our kids through school without a second to figure out who they are and then tech jobs are like YUM — no need to have friends, we'll be your friend.
Cue crippling loss of identity. Give me Finland any day.
yes, the defense budget has nothing to do with why we don't have a more robust social safety net, even if it could still stand some more cutting. We could easily afford to provide people more support since after all we actually spend MORE on healthcare per capita and get worse outcomes than our peer countries who don't treat health care as a for profit business.
Such good insights, Melissa, about parenting and disability being seen in opposition to this idea of self-reliance. And I love your point that we are all dependent at some point. I mean, we were all once children at the very least.
Kids are dependent on others, by nature. And so they’re always outside the definition of an “individual”—they can never, as long as they’re kids, achieve that most important American value of self-reliance and so they are seen and treated as “less-than.” It feels like parents get some of that “less-than” by association.
One of my jobs is as a playworker, where respect for kids’s as individuals is at the center of the work. Even after several years, it still surprises me how little respect and rights kids get. Because of their dependence, they are not considered full citizens and often not even seen as valuable members of the community.
I was just reflecting on this thread today and I had a realization that is basically the same as what you've written here.
Before I became a parent, I tended to believe that a child was not my equal. Their needs and wants were irrational or whatever, and so inferior, and so fine to deprioritize. They can conform to the adult situation vs all of us finding a situation that works for the group, with the needs of the child (to be able to run around, make some noise, touch random stuff, etc) seen as valid and reasonable.
As a parent I am always looking for places where we will be welcome — and most of the time, those are not places I would choose to go as a single adult. That means that if I want to bring a child-free friend along, they usually have to suck it up and deal with it and I hate trampoline parks so I'm not making anyone else do that 😂
I read a piece recently about how the car-centricity of American city design has caused us to no longer have these spaces that meet the needs of several different citizen groups. In Spain, the playgrounds are surrounded by cafes and bars and they are within neighborhoods so families gather there and the adults can enjoy themselves while the children play. Up near me, there's a german style beer hall that has a similar vibe — and that place is PACKED with people on the weekend. Thank you for sharing this! I do hope we can connect.
Yes! Not having public spaces where all are welcome is a huge disadvantage to community, relationships and people of all ages. Cars and air conditioners keep people off the sidewalk and stoop, but privately designed parks and public spaces often don’t even allow certain folks, teens in particular.
STACY this is so so cool — I interview people about their work and how they landed in it for my substack and I would just love to hear more about what you do and how you got started!
Sounds fun! I’m at Stacy at BkWild dot com.
+💯. Sara's book, What Can a Body Do? should be required reading. Totally changed the way I see the world.
I think about individualism all the time in terms of housing. I grew up driving past Co-Op City in the Bronx to the suburbs of Westchester and thinking snootily: "how can people live all squished up in those big ugly buildings?" Cheaply, sustainably, and in community for along time, is how! But I was taught not to want that, and I think we've wasted a lot of time idealizing living apart when we could have been figuring out how to live together.
"we've wasted a lot of time idealizing living apart when we could have been figuring out how to live together" ... THIS.
YESSSS so appreciate you sharing your internal monologue. I was just reading In Walking Distance by Philip Langdon (https://islandpress.org/books/within-walking-distance#desc) and he talks about this experience of looking at the narrow streets in Philly, many of them one way, and having a primal reaction of "wow it must be so hard to get around here" because he had come from a more sprawling, car-centric suburbia in Pennsylvania.
It instantly blew my mind and made me conscious of how much I read as "hard" or "unpleasant" or "chaotic" because of my upbringing in a car-centric, non-dense neighborhood.
Housing is where it comes up most for me, too, especially a single 30-something. I am on multiple waitlists for co-housing communities, but they are so rare (partially because it goes against the cultural norm of individuality and the single-family-home, and partially because most US cities have zoning or permitting regulations that make many forms of multi-family housing literally illegal).
I’ve also found that some of these co-housing communities are incredibly expensive. At least in the PNW. You need a lot of wealth to live there.
We are taught to want a lot of nonsense things — a lot of things that turn out to be narcissism or sociopathy I think!
And THANK YOU, AHP, AGAIN for somehow giving both my heart and brain exactly what they need when they need it! This is so great, and the book will be FIRE.
I have so many thoughts on this topic personally and professionally! I was raised by a collectivist mother in a fairly WASPy, individualistic suburb in the 80s. My childhood best friend and I were recently discussing how we met and how it would never happen today. When I was 9, my mother informed me that new people had moved into a house about 25 houses away (1 mile down the road) and that I needed to go organize the other neighborhood kids and welcome the new kid. We rode our bikes over to introduce ourselves and she's been my best friend every since. The idea of sending my 9 year old on a mission to a stranger's house a mile away down a busy road is inconceivable to me.
Personally, I am obsessed (might be too strong a word) with creating community and collective care. I am a deeply disorganized person and a crappy cook but I have been hosting friend potlucks weekly for 15 years and creating informal mutual aid networks with other parents for snow days and childcare. I feel very lucky to have the community that we do. I also feel burned out and isolated by all of the factors AHP mentioned.
Professionally, I work remotely from home, which is pretty isolating. However, my job is focused on supporting communities in building collective resilience to climate change. Climate change is an outcome of colonization, extraction, and individualism. Nurturing communities that can thrive everyday and during climate disruptions depends on collectivism and community care. During the deadly heatwave in the Northwest in 2021, social isolation was a contributing factor in heat related deaths. Getting to know your neighbors can be life saving in many ways.
I’m also prioritizing creating community. I started hosting very lightweight two hour gatherings once a week for small groups of moms in my town. The only rule is that after we introduce ourselves we’re not allowed to talk about our children. I have a hot water boiler so everyone can make themselves tea or cocoa, and serve a few simple snacks. We sit around my dining room table and just talk and get to know each other. I’m loving it and the response has been great!
AH I love this!!
This sounds so cool. Curious how you advertised or started this or just more details in general if you’re willing to share!
I made a list of moms I know and started inviting a subset each week. I have three kids so I started with approximate age groupings of their kids so they’d at least be likely to recognize each other. Inviting 8-10 I’d usually get 3-5 attending. Two hours, bring nothing and don’t dress up. Have everyone intro themselves (life resume sort of thing) and see where the conversation goes. Try to make sure you have as many or more extroverts as introverts. :)
Em this is so cool!! I would love to learn more about your efforts.
I was talking the other day about my favorite aspect of my community being our kids elementary school bus stop — all the moms and dads come to wait with the kids in the morning and it’s become this little organic touchstone of community. Babysitters and neighborhood parties have all grown from this 15 minute ritual in the morning with people I wouldn’t have self selected into knowing.
My kid also benefits from knowing other grownups in the neighborhood and having playdates when kids wander over if they see one another in the yard. It feels… right. Not so orchestrated. I need more of this!
Love your share! I fully believe the answer is in the community too. We are seeing the limits of individualism; time to choose community. When we see that what’s best for the community is also best for ourselves… then we’ll make the shift. The isolation of individualism today is spurring this on but we are only at the beginning of it becoming prevalent. Thanks for sharing your experience.
This was perhaps one of the most EPIC articles I’ve read on Substack to date. You deserve a standing ovation.
My native culture is very community-oriented and for me to come to the US at a very young age means I’ve grappled with this dichotomy of two very different cultures my whole life.
I think there’s a balance to be struck between the two but the sheer level of individualism in this country is just unsustainable. What ends up happening when you become so individualistic is that you have no energy left to make real change happen. You’re so busy just surviving (because it truly is survival of the fittest here) that you barely have the energy to dream something better let alone make it actually happen.
Yes, this is it. The exhaustion is so real.
Oh man. I feel this. I would love to be more involved and I’ve contemplated many times going to meet the new neighbors (or insert whatever other community building activity here) but I just cannot add one more thing to my list. I’m exhausted. All the time.
I'm going to get in huge trouble for this, but I'm thinking a lot lately about how "parenting" as a verb contributes to the perpetuation of individualism--both for ourselves and for our kids. There are a lot of times when we can either go to church/supper at our friends' house/a political action or we can keep the baby's nap/eating/general crankiness schedule. For me it's actually much easier to feel guilty about skipping the baby's nap than about skipping a community event because it's been so firmly impressed upon me that any discomfort on his part will be a Trauma that I am Responsible For Inflicting. Also, it's just easier for *me* in every way if the baby sleeps his full perfect cozy nap, and much harder to immediately quantify the benefits to me of going to XYZ gathering. But the more we feel into the kid-having life, the more I realize I want my kid to feel like a part of a family and a community, which he actually can't do if I act like these things revolve around him.
Oh I think this is *very* real — and extends to a lot of thinking about schools and the necessity of "enrichment," too
Amen. I skipped the kids sports teams and do community charity runs with my Son in an attempt to connect child “enrichment” with community engagement. Raising money for a local cause and running with diverse people of all ages (babies in joggers to 84), shapes and sizes cheering each other on feels so much more “enriching” to me and, admittedly, for me as well.
I think about this same sort of thing as a mother of young kids regularly. I also think maybe if we ever decided the nuclear family didn’t work, maybe most of all for the mothers (or parents in general but as a mother I’m being self-focused here) and it wasn’t a choice between you ALONE caring about the baby getting their nap or going elsewhere, but also the choice to have have another caring adult hold down the fort… it wouldn’t maybe always have to be an either/or choice all the time. Maybe it’s entitlement but I just have dreams of what multigenerational living (with all its messiness) would enable for everyone, but maybe especially parents of young kids facing choices like this.
I am always hassling my brother and sister-in-law to live together! So far everyone I have brought this up with is adamant that their family needs their own space - while, to me, that just sounds like we're all duplicating efforts in terms of cleaning, tidying/owning things, etc.
There's a self-perpetuating quality to so much about whiteness and neoliberal capitalism in that it takes on the form of hazing. Lately my husband and I have been talking about this because we had a really traumatic birth and zero parental leave. Once you are in the position in a large company to make decisions about parental leave, you're usually in your late 40s or 50s, and you can't fathom why you should "give" people something you didn't have. You make up your own little mini-myth about how your own lonely, panicky years made you the person [...economic unit?] you are today! The more you contort your life and your psyche to accommodate individualism, the less you can even really see any alternative.
Hazing is absolutely the way to put it
I am playing with the idea that the world can be divided into two: those who want to give what they never enjoyed and those who can't fathom why they should. Maybe there's a third category: those who would deprive others of what they enjoyed
I think about this a lot... it is my job as a human being, mother, VP etc. to make things less crummy for the next generation, my kids and my employees. I get into these conversations all the time with people who's default is " well we did it so they can to" and then I remind them that yeah maybe we did but let's remember that is sucked and why would we want to perpetuate that??? What good does it do?
My favorite version of this is "kids today have it so easy, these kids have never even <insert challenge here>, that's why they have no work ethic!"
Um, yes? Good job? All your hard work made things easier for the next generation, just as you set out to do? Now you are mad they have the privileges you gave them, I guess? Why?!
Such a great observation!
... it also socks to be elderly in this county so, like, nor out of the woods yet!
this is so so true. the lack of a sense of mentorship is so prevalent in every place I've worked in--it's more like everyone is competition, why should this person get extra parental leave when I had to scrap my way through it and made it? Or why should I give away the tools that helped me for free? Why should I actually HELP anyone when I had to do it myself? Ugh. Smacks of narcissistic ways that we're conditioned to expect everyone to find our own life jacket. Hazing is so so it.
Because happy , supported. mentored employees stay and do better work. Which in turn helps revenue and the bottom line ( to my executives this is what resonates) Because kids who feel like they have a soft place to land do better in school, talk to their parents more and get help potentially making better decisions...
Yes! And also the expectation that paid leave should come from individual companies instead of a systemic, nationwide solution like every other wealthy country does.
In a recent episode of "If Books Could Kill" Michael made a seemingly throwaway comment about "individualizing structural problems" and I really appreciated such a pithy way of summing up what we didn't properly account for when building this democracy. Maybe part of what we thought would serve as some kind of interstitial fluid between the individual and the government was churches and charities, but that is an unregulated marketplace of inefficiency that feels teed up for some kind of reckoning. I'm thinking particularly of the intensifying ire against higher education from all directions, the way NGO's compete with each other for the same pot of funding, the way the pressures on the individual to donate to charity expanded beyond churches and local efforts to every single problem in the world, and also decisions like that of the 11th circuit in the Fearless Fund case, questioning the liberties of charities.
I have no real insights, it's just a topic I think about frequently. Between 2016 and now, I've become deeply burned out on giving, which is sad! But it feels like the individual isn't just responsible for the individual, but also for faraway conflicts and the failures of capitalism and the ideas in other people's minds that need changing and what's broken in journalism etc etc Could I be more available to my community if I didn't feel like I somehow needed to help out in Gaza? Is it selfish to focus on my community if my community's needs pale to nothingness compared to the needs of other communities?
Regarding your book: I would love it if you could interview some of the families in my extremely weird neighborhood about adult friendship dynamics in a community defined by the boundaries of your neighborhood. I've never lived anywhere like this before and it is baffling and also fascinating from an anthropological perspective.
God Heather I really feel this. I am both deeply burned out by what seems like the ever increasing need for me to participate in our world to keep it from just flaming out AND absolutely sure that we all need it more. FWIW, I'm also trying to be more local with my focus in terms of creating community. It's the only thing that feels sustainable to me, and honestly I think if we can do more of it, we'll see bigger shifts in these other areas that are so important because we won't feel so alone and hopeless.
Maybe I'm naive in thinking this is a modern problem. I was just reminded in reading these comments about Millay's poem Renascence (which she wrote when she was a teenager! living in an isolated community! in 1917!!), and it's reflections on the crushing pressure of feeling responsible for the pain of the world, and our human inability to have any real understanding of our actual sphere of influence:
"The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high."
Here's the whole poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55993/renascence
oh I love this!!! Thank you so much! Isn't it funny how many of the things we think are distinct in our age are just new manifestations of the same human problems.
Re: giving burnout- in recent years my partner and I have been transitioning to direct action as opposed to donations to large organizations. Not that charities are bad, just we're figuring out how to be more direct with some of our giving. So, instead of sending donations to Ukraine, we sponsored refugees and bought plane tickets for people trying to leave the war zone. I don't know if that makes any impact on the war effort, but I know with absolute certainty that the health, safety, and education of two small children was impacted in a life-changing way. They are safe. They are healthy. They are happy.
Last year a friend lost his job and was struggling to make ends meet. We started having him over for dinner twice a week and dropping off groceries at his place any time we went to the store. Eventually we also covered his mortgage for a couple months with no expectation of ever being paid back. I felt better about this than "rounding up" my grocery bill or dropping off canned goods at the food bank.
Nothing solves all the world's problems, but I've been much happier taking a more active role in the disbursement of my charitable giving.
This is inspiring! Thanks for sharing!
Love that podcast and YES -- iffy making structural problems seem like individual problems, social issues become character flaws, and we don't even want to admit them, much less fix them.
UGH, yes. Because the individual should also somehow be responsible for the SOLUTIONS to all the structural problems caused by individualism! But it seems insurmountable to try to rally enough people for collective action to actually create some kind of sea change--because of inherent exhaustion and limited attention spans and bifurcated media sources, etc. Not to be cynical, but I think things will need to get a lot worse before enough people deem the solutions as worthy of prioritizing over their individual needs.
Your recent piece on being "in the portal" was so painfully resonant I found it hard to read the comments. I think my discomfort with how much suddenly changed at precisely the moment I expected things to settle is still too tender to examine. I look forward to eventually going back and re-reading it, and all the wisdom from your readers that surely follows. I also look forward to eventually feeling some kind of harmony/clarity around this period in my life.
Anyway, this question of individualism comes up for me in processing what it means to be "in the portal" because part of it, for me, is having the tables flipped on all of my assumptions around what I can reasonably expect from my friends (the nearby ones, the "closer" ones who are far away, the ones with kids, the ones without kids), from my aging parents (and from my parents when they were young, as I reflect on my own childhood), from my husband, from my sisters, from my kids, from myself, you get it. I feel like I've moved from a place of just being disappointed in absolutely everyone, to expecting nothing from anyone (also not good!), to assuming a space of observation of what people are actually capable of in different moments and having some compassion about it and also creating some softness around whether or not that's good enough for me right now. Still very much in this portal, still in the swirl.
This is what made raising a family so difficult for me and really impacted relationships. My kids are older now (19 and 16) but I will never forget being a full time working mom with sick young kids and reaching out to my mother in law for help. She was single, 'retired' (she never really worked for pay) and talked a big game about wanting to help but when push came to shove she never did. There was always excuses ( I have a hair cut appointment, lunch with friends, laundry etc...) and it got so frustrating that I just flat out stopped asking but also just stopped wanting to interact with her because I was so disappointed in her
My mom has been an uneven source of support. Both she and my MIL were amazing when my kids were babies. Truly amazing. SO helpful. But when my kids were older and care involved more than pushing them in a stroller and feeding them their interest in being involved plummeted. I think maybe this is where 80's parenting and modern parenting deeply divide, because she probably paid about as much attention to me at age 7 as she does my kids at the same age. My kids just expect way more engagement. And 2/3 of them are neurodivergent and struggle with actions resembling "listening to adults." I will never forget one time I asked her to watch them while I was working from home during the pandemic and I heard her downstairs roar: "YOU GUYS ARE EXHAUSTING!! I'M LEAVING!!" And then she left! I heard the door slam downstairs and her car start and she was gone! I still think about this all the time and it was years ago. If there were a 4th wall we'd all laugh about it. Haha grandma doesn't suffer any fools! And part of me feels vindicated like, YES, they are EXHAUSTING. And part of me feels like, What the hell, mom??
This really resonates with me, especially thinking about the difference between 80s parenting and parenting today.
That is so hard. I cannot even imagine what the pandemic was like with young kids. I remember telling colleagues with young kids that I was amazed they got anything done . My kids were 15 and 12 so could handle online school on their own and they even made lunch for all of us! Hugs to you
It's okay to be angry at people for not fulfilling your emotional needs. Be good to yourself.
Oh wow--so helpful to hear someone articulate exactly what I have been feeling. So if it helps--you aren't alone in the tables feeling flipped and figuring out how to feel about it.
This was so excellent, AHP! The opening description was so spot on it was chilling - I have friends who fit this characterization perfectly.
In terms of rejecting individualism, I have written here a number of times about how my husband and I live in the upstairs apartment of a two-flat, above my brother and sister-in-law, who are my best friends and who own the house. My husband and I are currently going through IVF, with the intention of having a baby hopefully soon. Instead of moving out to a single-family home, we decided there's no better situation than built-in family help and social support during what we know will be a challenging transition into parenthood. So, we spent a few thousand dollars putting up drywall in our mudroom and redoing the floors, turning it into a functional fourth room. This new room will eventually become my husband's home office, so his current home office can become a nursery.
This situation will still likely not last forever, as the public schools in our neighborhood suck, but we're pretty proud of ourselves for telling people that no, we do not plan to move once a baby enters the picture, as we've chosen family proximity over home ownership and more space. It feels so right to us, and yet I'm still so self-conscious telling people that growing our family does not make us take more seriously the cultural expectation that we buy a single-family home if we can afford it.
We live in a townhome community with a lot of families and so many times people ask us when we’re going to move to a SFH and I’m baffled by that. There’s the assumption you need more of everything when you have a kid. The only thing I think you truly need more of is community. Babies and kids have thrived on a whole lot less than physical space. Really great that you recognized what was important to you and stuck to it!
Yes! When I ask myself, "which will impact my future child more: a big house/big yard, or having additional loving supportive adults readily available to them and to their parents?" the answer feels very, very clear.
I am jealous of your decision. We are the typical educated, young couple that moved away from family before having kids (without a single moment of consideration). We own a single family home blah, blah - but I LOOOOOONG for my family at times. They live in an incredibly high cost of living area - so ultimately, I think we made the right choice to leave for a lower cost of living. But damn - what I would give to stumble downstairs in my pajamas to have coffee with my sister and bitch about life on a weekend morning while our kids do literally anything other than talk to us (you know, play independently...).
Fuck the cultural expectation. Do your life on your own terms!
We're in a high cost of living city (Chicago) and could not afford to buy our own home in any neighborhood we'd actually want to live in! The house we're currently in, which my brother owns, would barely be affordable for me and my husband to buy (my brother and sister in law make, as a couple, about twice what we do) and we actually would never want to own in this neighborhood anyway because of the schools. So it is really, really tough!! There are so many compromises most people have to make when it comes to choosing where they live. For now, I just try really hard to remind myself that there's a big difference between the question of, "are there things that would be nicer about owning your own, larger home with a yard, etc." and the question of "would you be happier if you were currently living in your own, larger home with a yard, etc.".
I admire you taking the time /finding the courage to address a cultural expectations goes unspoken. I and perhaps others "believe things we don't believe" and it takes someone saying something like " No, I chose family over property" for us to notice.
My husband and I just moved to a neighborhood entirely based on how close the houses were to each other and how dense the pedestrian population was - young families and old walking everywhere, stopping to chat and hang out with each other's dogs, being regulars at the corner diner, children walking together to the school at the top of the hill. We can't wait to get to know everyone in meaningful ways so that we can start to build a network where everyone can look out for one another and everyone's kiddos, in the spirit of Jane Jacobs.
I'm always actively trying to combat the myth of individualism in academia in my day-to-day work life, as well. There's a nefarious insistence that we get ahead, do our research, get tenure, all alone and I think that's extremely dangerous especially for early-career people of color. You don't have to and you shouldn't have to do it alone and finding your support ecosystem is vital to surviving and thriving in spaces that were never intentionally built for you.
I am currently house-hunting and "houses close to each other" is one of my non-negotiables. I think my real estate agent might be slightly puzzled. I have told her I want to run into people accidentally all the time, and that my metric for whether a house is close enough to the neighbors is "can I talk to them in my normal voice without shouting, while they're in their front yard and I'm in mine." It's nice to know I'm not the only one.
I watched a talk Tyson Yunkaporta gave some time back (not online anymore that I can find) where he talked about having been doing decolonization work for going on 30 years. "But nobody," he said, "is giving back their real estate." I think about this constantly (obviously, to the point where I can barely talk about it coherently anymore because my head's so full of it), but the question of private ownership of land and what Yunkaporta and Nick Estes have talked about as "turning land into capital" feels completely foundational to maintaining these myths and hierarchies.
My parents worked their whole lives for Puerto Rican independence and we are actually less close to that than we've ever been, which makes their life's work (and activism) feel... pointless? That is not the lesson, I know activism is important and has caused great and needed changes but it's so discouraging (which I know is what power structures want/need--for us to feel hopeless). No real insights just general... blergh.
This is not at all the same thing, but one of my cousins in Russia founded a humanitarian organization that she ran for years before Putin shut it down in ... 2011 I think? Maybe a bit later. But it was his invasion of Ukraine that did her in. She has multiple sclerosis and all kinds of health issues, but what has made her absolutely hopeless was watching that invasion, having to stop commenting openly online (because it was illegal to criticize the war) for fear of getting arrested, and feeling like her life's work all came to nothing. Truly, not the same as the dedication you're talking about but I get the discouragement and insights. Two years on, I still don't know what to say to my cousin about it. 🧡
I think because I'm a wry, sarcastic person people think I'm a pessimist but really deep down I'm a wide-eyed optimist and this world crushes me all the time. I keep thinking, humanity has GOT to get it together. We've been at this for how long? Empires have risen and fallen and we are STILL just killing each other over land and power and religion? WTF. I want us to be better than this!!
I feel this hard. Because I research deep history (on walking, community, capitalism, ownership, ...), seeing how humanity falls into this over and over can be incredibly disheartening. I read a history of the Black Sea region recently that brought this home more forcefully than ever. Thousands of years of history there that's beautiful and fascinating and also a lot of the same crap over and over. Or, as you put it, "Empires have risen and fallen and we are STILL just killing each other over land and power and religion? WTF."
That sounds like a book I’d be interested in reading- could you share the title, please?
It's still in print in the UK, so hopefully available online in your region
"Black Sea," by Neal Ascherson. It might be out of print but if you're into that kind of history it's really good. I find myself referring to it a lot.
I always wonder about this when I think about women who worked for women's rights in the US... how bloody tired, mad and exhausted they must feel right now
Yes--the Dobbs case overturning Roe was/is devastating, as are the continued efforts to stop not only abortion but also the use of birth control. And the general evangelical/right wing desire to control women and their bodies at all costs. People called us feminists hysterical when we warned of this before HRC lost but we knew this was coming down the pike if she didn't win. While it's a shame that the US system is so binary with candidates (I know a lot of people could not get with HRC, some for valid and some for not-so-valid reasons), the judiciary and abortion rights were on the ballot (as well as the dismantling of our immigration system, etc.) and that was more important than the candidate, imho. (Egads I do not want to be re-litigating the 2016 election LOL.) The depressing fact is that the work of liberation is the work of several lifetimes and a lot of steps forward, and a lot of steps back and that just makes me want to scream into the void forever!
And there is also the idea that all people can go back from where their ancestors came from (look at the Middle East right now) in order to right the current mess our species is in. Great idea but nobody’s giving up their ill-gotten gains. The notion seems to be: if I killed, raped, and tortured for it, now it’s mine and you can’t make me give it back. What a mess!!
The line I always say about ownership, land ownership in particular: "I took it; now it's mine." It is an incredible mess!
Absolutely!
I come from two cultures, the one I was born into and the US-ian one I was brought into, on and off, as a child and young adult. My culture (Puerto Rican) is very community-based, despite (or maybe because of!) the colonialism that has left the island in such poverty throughout the years. My parents live in a very rural area and yet everyone cares for each other. (It does help that most people are related, LOL, but even so, they are good neighbors to each other.) My parents bring people in town extra produce from their farm, and others do the same for them. My parents take elderly people to church. Nobody starves in our hometown unless they really work at it. There is a lot of poverty, to be sure, and addiction too, though crime is minimal due to how rural it is (which is not to say that crime doesn't occur, but at much lower rates than in the bigger towns). My parents when living in the US created this same type of community for themselves through their church, but it was much harder because of the individualism built in to the US-ian system. When I see how much my parents do for their community, I'm honestly embarrassed at myself. I could do so much more but I don't (introversion is real), and COVID (and still being COVID-cautious) makes it even worse. It's hard to build a big community when most people don't have those concerns anymore. Not to go off on a tangent... Anyway, both of these sides (community vs. individualism) war inside of me, despite the fact that I *know* and can clearly see the benefit to the community-based life. Living in NYC, I'm very much participating in the "I don't know you, you don't know me, we leave each other alone" type of existence in my daily life. I would say, though, that my work colleagues do provide a lot of community for me and vice versa, given that it's non-profit, values-based work. But I'd also like to build more community in my personal life and find that very hard to do here.
That awkward moment when you go community style in a "go your own way" big city and people stare at you like you sprouted horns. It is just not the norm to help out in certain places, go easy on yourself. I helped a senior with her groceries once and she tried to pay me. Blame instacart!
I had the privilege of enjoying the community my parents had. There were neighbors' homes to wander into, other adults to teach you skills ranging from baking to changing a flat tire, heck, family & friends even came together to provide financial support for major milestones (going to university, getting married, planning a funeral). BUT this community orientation has a cost and comes with risks. As noted in the essay (but maybe in a different sense), some power has to be given up. If you cannot trust that other people care about you, it is probably unwise to operate from a community standpoint while others in your network are being individualistic. It is maybe the prisoner's dilemma? My experience has been that I have been unable to replicate the community life that many in my parents' generation had. Maybe trust is in decline or people don't want to give up power or we are just self absorbed.
One thing about this I find so challenging is that, in my parents' case (very similar to what you described), they are able to find this community while at the same time overlooking/ignoring/pretending that their neighbors aren't doing Big Harm at the same time (my folks' neighbors happen to be extremely anti-LGBTQ/racist/etc and actively participate in hate-mongering actions - to be fair maybe they are also ignoring/pretending regarding my parents' views and actions which are oppositional to theirs). I just do not know how I can pretend that my neighbors aren't actively campaigning for the hateful shit their so-called church spews out! I can't understand how to trust them when that's the foundation they've built their lives on. Is it possible to build trust in this situation without pretending that they're not actively harming me, people I love, and other people who are just as valuable? (I sincerely would love to know if anyone has ideas!)
I would love to see a discussion about this. I've seen it mentioned here and there, especially where "community" comes up (and I'm really big on community!), but not seen it talked about in a really open and robust way. I am in a tiny Discord channel where I once asked people's thoughts on boundaries of trust and it was a diverse and deeply thought out set of responses that came up (this is a group that is very into mutual aid and such, so it's a subject natural for conversation there).
This is a great idea for a thread, Antonia
I would love to delve into this in a thread as well. I live in a Cohousing community and this comes up a lot.
💯
I live in a Southern city that is left leaning (D+10), but still has a lot of conservative folks, churches with right wing ideas, and hateful people. I may be a coward, but I try really hard not to investigate my neighbors’ politics too closely. Our HOA has a no political signs rule, and there seems to be a tacit agreement not to talk about politics.
There is a sense of community in the little street I live on though. People watch out for each others’ kids, have neighborhood parties in the cul de sac, and are surprisingly generous with their time. I don’t think any of this would work if we didn’t have the truce on politics though. Also, for what it’s worth, the community is pretty diverse in terms of race and sexuality, and no one seems to feel excluded from the community (at least as far as I can tell).
I don’t think I am doing something wrong by not fighting with my probably conservative neighbors, but I might be? Sorry for the rambling response--trying to work through some feelings on this.
I think this is it for my folks and their neighbors - they see it as discussing politics, which is something they can choose not to do. But I don't know how to do that when our neighbors think I and people like me should not be allowed to exist - it's not politics to me, it's my very personhood! I would truly love to figure out how to handle this without feeling like I'm saying it's okay to think I'm less than human. Maybe those who are being discriminated against are supposed to just take it, pretending it's not happening for the peace of the neighborhood? (sort of what I'm doing right now, smiling and waving but never going any deeper for fear of them deciding to target me in particular - as opposed to the general LGBTQ community they spout hate at generally speaking). I'm also rambling and trying to work through this - so glad we have this space!
Sometimes you just can’t with the neighbors. If they think you shouldn’t exist, then they are probably not going to provide much of a sense of community in any event. I definitely would not tell anyone to just grin and bear it if someone in their neighborhood is making them feel unwelcome or threatened. In that situation, I think any sense of neighborliness has already broken down.
I think good neighbors keep their judgments to themselves, and that has to be reciprocal. I am sure there are some people on my street who are sure I’m going to hell because I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, but as long as they keep it to themselves and treat me with dignity and kindness, we can be good neighbors. But if they told my kid that we were bad people who are going to hell, I think things would stop being neighborly right quick.
Thanks for this, Chip! Reciprocity is for sure a part of this, thanks for articulating that!
Personally, I cannot: I struggled years ago when a friend's husband voted against . . . I forget what: gay rights. Women's autonomy. (So many "some pigs are more equal than others" measures to choose from.) I decided not to invite them over. I wanted my home to be safe, a place I could let my guard down. Clearly, this is an individualistic move. Clearly, community calls for greater tolerance. And yet.
To be clear, I think that is right. I would have a hard time being friends with someone whose views I abhor.
I wouldn’t think of my neighbors as friends--we didn’t choose each other--but I appreciate that they are being, for lack of a better word, neighborly, and try to reciprocate. It is a shallower version of community in a lot of ways, but I think there is room for that too.
I wonder if shallowness is the key here? I would like to figure out how to be in community with our neighbors in a meaningful way, but maybe there's not room for meaning? Like, I want to do more than smile and wave but I don't know that there's room for that? So challenging!
When we bought our house, one of our next door neighbors was pregnant (they had lived there for a year) and they were happy to see another young couple (the neighborhood had a lot of older folks in it). We became friendly and our kids played together constantly in our backyards and they were great neighbors. They were also very conservative Catholics, so our politics were not aligned and we figured out pretty quickly that we wouldn’t talk politics. In 2004 or so a local news channel stoked by and interviewed my wife and the neighbor woman because they noticed we had competing political signs in our yard and wanted to see how we managed that difference. It was a pretty good interview that was mostly about how we like each other and don’t talk politics. They moved to a different part of town a few years ago so we don’t see them much but it was an interesting lesson is getting along with people who have different beliefs (it helped that they were friendly, parented in a similar style and were considerate).
I was brought up to understand that it is best not to talk about Politics, Religion, & Money. Especially with extended family and in social situations. Of course, I have rebelled against this at times, but still in selective situations.
This is such a good point - I realized a few years ago that, while I was longing for the type of community that my parents had (and that I grew up in), I didn't see the work that they put in, or the risks they took, or the friction that must have inevitably come up, or the times things didn't work out. To me, as a child (and rightfully so, because none of that should have been my business / my problem as a kid), there was just this group of loving adults around all the time seemingly by magic. And then, when that didn't materialize for me as a young adult (into now), it felt like I had missed out or done something wrong.
I crave this, and even to a smaller degree I want to be able to let my kids go to sleepovers, bike around the neighborhood, hang out at friends houses. But now I'm so worried about abuse, about something terrible happening to my child at the hands of an adult - because all of the stories are coming out now, that our communities we thought were safe were actually not. People I thought were safe in my own childhood who harmed my friends. I don't want to be this person living in distrust and fear, but it is hard to escape it.
This is such an interesting discussion and I’m still mulling over the prompt, but I was really struck by how accurately you were describing the two bookends of my parenting-kids-under-18 life. My husband and I moved to a place where we didn’t know anyone when I was 20 weeks pregnant and didn’t make any friends. It was awful, but we left the day our daughter turned one and moved a state away, where, after some time, we did make friends. Then, as we approached our kids (16 and 14) going into HS, we moved again. It’s been two years and zero friends.
My youngest sister just found out she’s pregnant with her second. She and her husband met in HS and moved from GA to IL for him to go to graduate school. He finished in 2020 and got an offer to come back to our hometown, which is a decent sized city and where our mother and his mother both live. They both also have tons of friends from HS who settled there. My sister has a good community around her—a lot of friends with babies the same age as her first, my mom and her MIL watch her child every day (which allows her to do her job, which involves extensive travel), etc. But she hates living there and it looks like my BIL may have an opportunity to leave his current position and find something else if they want. And a big part of me understands this—I wouldn’t choose to live there, either—but the part of me that has raised my kids far from family and was desperate for connection when they were young is resisting offering any unsolicited advice about moving just for the sake of leaving (it’d also be conflicting with my other sister’s advice, which is inevitably centered around her feelings of superiority related to her choices).
I think a lot of the staying power of individualism comes from propaganda surrounding the fiscal requirements of a more collective society but also, at least in my experience, in this feeling that “I struggled, so should you.” I work in an industry that has few women, and was disappointed to find that many of the women who came before me were not supportive or helpful to the next generation. They came up through the school of hard knocks and if we are going to learn, then so should we. Similarly, during the pandemic many of us were almost furloughed from my company, and the attitude of the older generation was “well I was furloughed too.” This from older men and women who have the benefit of a really strong collective bargaining agreement and union representation. I am forever confused by the individualist nature of union members, but thats a different topic. I think the key to moving toward collectivism is not only our personal attitudes but the general belief that we need to make things better for the next generation. Also a full revamp of our untethered capitalist system, but that one will be harder.
The "If Books Could Kill" podcast episode about "Lean In" mentions some interesting statistics about this - If I recall correctly, getting *one* woman into a position of authority can actually have a deleterious effect on the promotion of other women, but if you have something approaching parity, the hiring outcomes are very equal between men and women. (Apologies, I might be misrepresenting this a bit - it's a great ep, I do recommend checking it out).
It makes a certain amount of sense that a woman on her own might be hesitant to risk her position by packing the ranks with more women and upsetting the existing dynamics of the workplace. But if you've already got a lot of women everywhere, you just keep hiring the best qualified person, and about half the time that's a woman. The problem is bridging the gap between the one token woman and the truly diverse workforce.
completely had the same experience from women I worked with in higher positions. Profoundly disappointing.
I am really sorry that this is your experience.. As women we really need to work together to collectively get ahead
Another incredible read. However, I am bristling at something in this last paragraph:
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Millions of people — and white people in particular — would rather endure physical isolation, generalized loneliness, caregiving exhaustion, and financial precarity than relinquish some of their societal power. That’s a far less optimistic foundational myth than individualism. But it’s a far more honest one.
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My personal bugaboo these days is the pushing of environmental/societal problems created and upheld by the ultra-wealthy and powerful onto the individual. Massive corporations and huge power structures get off scot-free on the destruction of our environment and the gutting of any remaining social safety nets while our society implores individuals to make up the difference (recycling, gofundme, donations and volunteering)
This may not have been the intent of your last paragraph but I see this message frequently, that it is the fault of white/privileged people that we hold on to our privilege rather than relinquish our social power for the greater good.
There is a vast spectrum of what people are willing to risk to protect their privilege and certainly many do nothing. But what exactly is being suggested here that would result in meaningful societal change? Should people stop taking mortgage interest deductions? Donate their homes to charity? Clear out bank accounts to redistribute wealth? Give up steady jobs to make room for others?
There is no clear line from an individual giving up their privilege to them achieving relief from physical isolation, generalized loneliness, caregiving exhaustion, and financial precarity. There is no clear line from an individual giving up their privilege to creating a more just and equal society. There is not even a fuzzy line. We can not solve macro issues with micro actions (micro actions en masse is another story!). To be honest it feels cruel to imply that individuals are choosing to preserve their privilege out of selfishness, racism, etc even though that is certainly a part of the mix.
In my opinion these issues are not caused by "millions of white people" but rather - mostly - a quite small number of extremely wealthy, almost entirely white people. Yes those people are supported by a millions of people who give them their votes and therefore power but I feel that is a different conversation than one about giving up societal privilege at an individual level.
I am not saying it is right for people to hold on to privilege. But to me it is irrational to ask individuals to give up privilege to dismantle a horribly unfair system without providing a better system as an alternative, or at least coordinated effort that ties these sacrifices to a legitimate potential outcome. And shaming individuals for not making individual sacrifices to solve systematic problems in society - I can't see the path to systematic change with this narrative.
I'm sure I've grossly misinterpreted the intent and sentiment of the last paragraph but I find the language and constant implication that societal problems are the responsibility of individuals so pervasive that I wanted to say something. I'm reading all the comments with so much interest. Thanks AHP!
I appreciate the other commenters working through this below — I feel like we are very lucky here at Culture Study to have a community that can engage in this sort of conversation with itself (and not just with me, as the author of the post). From my perspective — like you, I am also very against privatizing and individualizing these big systemic problems; I now feel rage pretty much every time I have to rinse something gross to recycle, which is not how I should feel about recycling. But I also think there's a halfway between understanding the sheer power of systems (and those in power) and how we begin to change them. As I'm going to explore in the weeks to come, I think we're in a real period of backlash to individualism as a founding or guiding myth, and that backlash manifests in everything from hope to rage. But the only way we start trying to find other ways of living, other guiding understandings of how to be, is by beginning to do some of the work on and with ourselves.
Thanks so much for your response and I look forward to the continuing conversations! I hope you are right about a backlash to individualism and feel both hope and rage at the prospect. And I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence.
I feel very out of touch with societal shifts, and I’d like to think you’re right about people being over individualism. My workplace launched some “culture of care” change which I think is reflective of that shift. But also this at a workplace so any actual need to access a culture of care is going to be responded to with “we’re so glad you reached out. Our culture of care engages with practices that create belonging so we have a broad range of initiatives you can contribute to”.
I think I have very much been where you are - I am a big problem solver and I can become impatient with vague "solutions" when it seems like there should be a straightforward lever to pull.
I also can't help thinking that by your logic there might never have been a year-long bus boycott or long, hungry labor strikes. Which points to -
My journey from where you are now to where I've now found myself is long and complicated, but it mostly hinges on a belief (a practical/strategic, but yes, also a spiritual) belief in the power of solidarity. I do think there is a line and it runs through the reclamation of solidarity, a practice and an attitude we've largely lost. Our elders, especially our white elders, have failed to pass it down and in many ways we will have to reinvent it for ourselves, without knowing when we start how exactly we will end.
The really hard part is, yes, all the actions you describe would be experiments and formative practices for re-tying our fates to one anothers'. As for the billionaires, we will never just take some stuff away from these incredibly powerful people without giving up some capital, comfort, and security in the fight they will bring to our doorsteps.
I agree with you completely and knew I was probably not articulating my thought entirely correctly. I love your framing of solidarity - but that is by definition not individualistic.. if that makes sense? And I agree so many movements start with individual action that then takes hold into something larger. I wasn't suggesting that nothing should be done without a straightforward lever but also I don't think we'll make progress if we aren't more empathetic and thoughtful how we talk about the individual's role in societal change.
I also want to say, what I wrote isn't necessarily where I am now (I am very much personally aligned with what you've said here) but how we make this place more accessible to others so that we can activate more people to come to this place. I would happily give up capital, comfort and security (and do although I won't get into that here) ... but how do we get others to do this at scale? Maybe it's conversations like this :)
It think you're right! I think it's both! Like we have to find a place to name what AHP is naming on a societal level *and* name the difficulties of breaking out of that - a thing that has ultimately mostly been done *to* us at this point through the legacies and myths of whiteness. So far we've put a lot of onus on privileged people to parse all those nuances out on their own (which, yes! Individualism!) and that simply is not working. Especially when people are so under-resourced, it's not a winning strategy. I think we are still fumbling toward the language and metaphors we need to be able to be clear-eyed about the macro level and compassionate and patient on the micro.
But ultimately I don't disagree with AHP's framing. I think, for instance, we've watched millions of people around the world make the deliberate choice to risk death from Covid rather than admit their own life was bound to their neighbor's. (And if that's not you, then it's not about you!)
I agree to an extent. In some ways that paragraph includes the very individualism the rest of the post is about, albeit in reverse.
However, policy can’t fix everything, right? At some point, our individual dollars/attention/time/votes need to be spent in a different way for societal change to occur. So it’s a both/and proposition.
I completely agree!
Danika, I didn't bristle, but I sure appreciate you saying that you did, and eloquently filling in the details. In my version of The Good we each feel free to speak up in the service of our beliefs but even more, in the service of thinking clearly.
Thanks so much Nan, I was quite nervous to share my thoughts and was worried they would be misinterpreted. Every other word in this incredibly smart and thoughtful essay resonated so strongly with me and I didn't want that to get lost. Obviously individual choices/actions and large societal structures are deeply interrelated but it does feel like the balance of responsibility in the narrative has shifted too far towards individuals which - not coincidentally - is quite beneficial to those power structures.
I'm still thinking about this a few days later, because I guess the impulse for individual solutions is so deep that it's really hard to parse out how to change it that doesn't eventually come down to some individual action? Like, I feel that my imagination is failing me?
More usefully, I'm thinking about existing (but weakened) institutions built on collectivism as opposed to individualism. Like labor unions! I work in manufacturing which is a place that laborers have *greatly* benefited from unions in the past, but also where unions are practically non-existent in right-to-work states and even the workers who might benefit most from a union are vocally and staunchly anti-union. How much power imbalance has to occur before the people are ready to admit they are being exploited? Or unfairly compensated? Or just, aren't in a strong enough negotiating position to actually negotiate?
I don't know. Supposedly we have a government "of the people" so we can vote for folks that are more collective-minded, but when you live in a deep red state that feels quite hopeless. Thanks for giving me something really challenging to wrestle with the last couple days!
I too have been thinking about this conversation for days. Change won't come without a LOT of individual action but how can we as people who care about creating a just and equitable system prioritize individual actions that are feasible, sustainable and impactful? Because there is a risk here of folks burning out on individual actions that are ultimately futile - another desired outcome from the powers that be (imo).
Yes, they depend on us being to tired to keep fighting.