We’ve all heard the saying, “It takes a village.” It’s a proverb that’s been shared among us for generations. It’s echoed at baby showers, graduations, and even funerals.
And there’s an even deeper reason why we may need to lean into our “villages” even more than we already do.
Our mother’s friends become aunts and their children become our play cousins. We have always been communal, but the nuclear family structure, a married couple and their children, can discourage our ancestral ways of kinship and fostering community.
Is it really for us?
WEB Du Bois pushed back against the idea of the nuclear family in his book“Darkwater. Voices From Within The Veil.” Instead, DuBois emphasized Black women’s importance and centrality to our families, an idea that anti-Blackness often rejects.
But African notions of the family have always honored women and been rooted in community, Du Bois explains in his passage, “The Damnation of Women."
Since the 1950s, the nuclear family has become a norm in many Western countries. It’s a form of hyper-individualism that can keep us isolated, subjected to social shaming, stressed out, and centered on forgoing our families to chase money capitalism's rat race.
It’s time we consider all the ways we can break free from the anti-Black molds of society and determine what’s best for us. Try reaching out to someone in your “village” and find tangible ways to support each other—as we’ve always done.