As a single parent, I often feel like a one-person show. While I don't feel isolated, weeks can pass without a proper chat with my best friends. The daily juggle—work, school runs, homework—feels like a marathon. I'm fortunate to have a core group of mum friends at my children's west London primary school, but there are no fun aunts or uncles popping in to entertain my kids. Fallouts with family over my late father's will, both parents deceased, and an immobile grandmother up north mean practical support is scarce. Babysitters at £15-£18 an hour are a rare luxury.
I'm not alone. Even married mum friends experience burnout or clash with extended family over parenting styles, limiting support. So new research from Vitabiotics Pregnacare revealing that one in ten parents have no support network comes as no surprise. Modern parents are struggling to build a 'village.'
Why the Village Is Missing
The reasons are manifold: demanding work lives, living far from family, fear of asking for help, lack of tight-knit local communities, and smaller family networks. Yet experts often advise exhausted parents to try harder—join online groups, find a 'digital village' on Facebook or WhatsApp, as 56% of parents in the study have done. While valid, this advice feels like pressure: another thing to worry about, another reason to feel I'm failing as I juggle work, childcare, and a cost-of-living crisis.
The Pressure to Build a Village
Hillary Clinton popularised 'it takes a village to raise a child' in her 1996 book, arguing children thrive when families are supported by community. I've seen friends take it to extremes: one single mum has 37 godparents; others rotate childcare during school holidays. For me, that logistics—multiple drop-offs, unreliability, difficult dynamics—isn't worth the hassle. Total control over parenting decisions often feels easier than navigating disagreements with toxic family or eccentric neighbours.
Dr Tara Porter, clinical psychologist and author of Good Enough: A Framework for Modern Parenting, notes that today's parents have a different village—24/7 access to friends via text and WhatsApp groups, and 'digital babysitters' like iPads. But the internet fuels 'not being good enough' feelings, anxiety, and unhealthy comparisons. 'There are so many reels on Instagram on how to parent that caregivers lose their own intuition,' she says.
The Digital vs. Physical Village
While a physical village isn't realistic for many busy parents, it has advantages. Children develop resilience through independent play, making their own games rather than adult-supervised activities. Dr Charlotte Faircloth, professor at UCL Social Research Institute, says telling parents to build a village puts the problem back on them when it's structural. 'Society is structured in a way that makes it hard—the nuclear family model isolates parents and eradicates multi-generational support networks.'
Long working hours, commutes, and distance from extended families add to atomisation. The 'solution' often becomes paid services like childminders or cleaners, which are expensive and don't ease burnout. Village-building is tough because intensive parenting styles—helicopter, gentle—assert that parenting is 'the most important job' and no one can be trusted to do it as well. This makes it hard for others, even fathers, to help. Social distrust also plays a role: men running playgroups face suspicion.
What's Needed: Structural Change
Dr Faircloth calls for a collaborative care system, especially 'excellent quality accessible childcare' and informal spaces where parents can hang out and look after each other's kids. Dr Emma Svanberg, clinical psychologist and author of Parenting for Humans, insists 'the village isn't a myth, it's a necessity.' The nuclear family was never designed to hold everything we've asked it to hold. 'Yet our response is to tell people to just reach out more. People do reach out, but those around them are too burned out to reach back.'
The craving for collective care remains, but the conditions—infrastructure, time, trust—have been quietly dismantled. 'We can start small with neighbours, showing up where we can. But we have to be honest: building a community takes more than individual intention. Telling exhausted parents to try harder is another way of making them feel they're failing.'
I've realised how important it is to ask for support. When I do, most people feel privileged to help. I'm grateful for people with whom I can be myself, warts and all. Yes, I'd love a granny figure to swoop in, and I miss my late dad. But perhaps I have more of a village than I thought. The mum friends I see at the school gate most days make me feel I'm not doing this alone.
