Pioneers in new family forms, like pioneers
throughout history, often find themselves
alone in places for which there are no maps.
When nontraditional parents—who today
are the majority of parents—step onto the
playground, they’re not sure where they
stand in relation to other parents. Their fear
of not belonging can keep them isolated
from potential friends and role models.
changes are rendering that arrangement obsolete. In a time when
biological families are scattered across the world, we might once
again be seeing a need for dads and other adults to form voluntary tribes that can share in the care and rearing of children.
Indeed, I’ve discovered that today, as much as ever, parenting is
a social activity that no human can do alone. As our community
grew, my wife and I largely recovered from the anxiety and
depression that shadowed our son’s second year. “It’s a chicken
and egg thing,” says Olli, who is now Liko’s primary caregiver.
“Finding friends made me feel better, but feeling better helped
me to get more friends. My friendships have given me a lot more
confidence in what I’m doing as a parent—I guess because I see
other people struggling with the same things, and I’m appreciat-
ing their solutions and they’re appreciating my solutions.”
These friendships also provide a combination of emotional
and practical help. “I feel like I can call on friends for help when
I need it, like watching Liko when I’m going to the dentist or just
to be there when I feel like I’m going crazy,” says Olli. “It’s also
helped me avoid falling into bad patterns. If Liko wants to go to
the playground and I’m depressed and don’t feel like going out,
it helps to have someone to call and see if they also want to go
to the playground.”
Thus our growing circle of families helped repair our frayed
emotional lives, as individuals and as a couple. Other things
changed, too—for example, we carved out more time for our-
selves as a couple and developed a saner, more flexible sched-
ule—but finding our new community was critical to becoming
happy parents. Indeed, Philip and Carolyn Cowan found that
creating groups in which couples could talk with other couples,
and individual spouses with other spouses, “can buffer men and
women’s dissatisfaction and keep their marital disenchantment
from getting out of hand.”
“Friends are the secret weapon,” Bella DePaulo, a social
psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told
me. “When couples have kids, they tend to look inward and
focus completely on each other and the baby. You can see the
temptation of doing that, and yet that’s not the only way to deal
with that transition. Some couples do [build] connections to
friends and extended family, and the couples who do that are
less likely to experience the depression that sometimes happens
when people transition to being parents.”
Curiously, the families who now form our circle are very
different from each other in certain ways—racially, culturally and
economically. But we apparently do not need to be homogenous
in order to form a cooperative and caring community. “Respect
plays the main role in my day-to-day existence,” says Jackie.
“When I see other parents respecting other parenting styles that
are unlike their own, I take note and appreciate their ability to
be open and accepting. I find myself instantly drawn to them,
and I, who used to be an extremely shy person, am sparking up a
conversation and making a new friend. Parenthood has definitely
turned me into an open person—something I thought I would
never be.”
Today when I take Liko to the playground, I no longer feel like
a spy. I feel like I belong there—and I know many of the parents
around me now feel the same way.
© karen keczmerski / dreamstime.com
Jeremy Adam Smith is a Knight fellow at Stanford University, author of The Daddy Shift, and co-editor of Are We Born Racist? Visit his website
at jeremyadamsmith.com. View article resources
and author information here: pathwaystofamily
wellness.org/references.html.
