Company

During a break in the wet weather this afternoon, Hamish and I went to the local park. There was a large group of people there with their kids, and after a while I got chatting to a couple of the mums.

It was great - to get out of the house, see blue sky, and to have a conversation. It made me realise how lonely it can be at home, especially when the weather is bad, I'm sick, Hamish is sick, or for any other reason we're housebound. I spend so much time these days without any adult company, and while I absolutely love being at home with Hamish, it can get challenging when I don't get much contact with other people.

I think mums are one of the more isolated groups in our culture. Our lifestyles often position us away from family (they are rarely living in the same town, let alone the same house!), we don't know our neighbours anymore, and even when you have local social circles, illness often makes them difficult to access, and there's a difference between having the occasional playdate, and sharing the real grit of daily life with someone close.

Dads are working longer hours, and up here, commuting means that for many families, they're lucky to have dad home before the kids are in bed, and so mum handles the family load largely on her own.

Having said that, being a mum provides plenty of opportunities to get out and meet people - it's just that sometimes it's a poor substitute for the community living that I think we were designed for, and that best supports a mum at home.

There's a well known saying - it takes a village to raise a child. As my friend Jane pointed out, there's a lot of villages of one out there.