Mom’s viral video makes a great point: If you’re done having kids, you’re ‘the village’ now
Sometimes—especially if your kids are older now—it’s easy to forget what it was like to be a brand new mom. The newborn stage can feel like fighting for your life sometimes, between the sleep deprivation and the stress and the wondering if you’re doing anything right. New parents can all use a helping hand, especially from those who have been in their shoes.
That’s why a TikTok video from a mom named Lindsey is striking a chord online.
“This video is for the parents who have decided they are completely done having children,” Lindsey says in her video. “Maybe you or your partner have made that permanent decision and you are no longer having any more. You’re not pregnant, you’re not nursing, and all of your children are now fully potty trained. You don’t have to carry around a diaper bag. You might even be completely out of car seats. And you don’t have to help your children open their snacks anymore. They can do that by themselves. If everything I’m describing sounds a lot like your life like now, congratulations—you’re now the village. You’re now tasked with helping new parents.”
Lindsey’s video, which she made as a sort of call-to-arms to parents of older kids like herself, what she calls “senior moms”, has gone viral for all the right reasons. In it, she continues, “You are in charge of making meals for new parents, for offering to clean houses, for offering to take the older kids to the park when somebody has the new baby. And I know plenty of people are going to say, ‘I didn’t have a village, so why should I help others?’ You didn’t have a village. How did that make you feel? Did it feel lonely? Did it feel isolated? Did it make your postpartum depression worse?”
She points out that once your kids are old enough to start doing chores and fending for themselves a little bit, you have it easier than parents of newborns, who have to be “on” all the time to care for their little ones. And the least you can do, especially if you didn’t have a village of your own, is show up for them.
“The stage of parenting that we are in is so much easier than those early stages of having babies,” Lindsey says. “We don’t have to pack everything up before we leave. We can say, ‘Come on, let’s go, get your shoes on.’ We can be out the door, in the car, within a minute. Do you remember not being able to do that for years?”
Oof, for real.
“So when somebody you know—a coworker, a neighbor, a friend—has a baby, they have three under 3, they’re going through something really difficult, they’re going through grief, offer to make them food,” she says. “Be the person that you needed when you were in that new motherhood era and it was so incredibly difficult.”
Lindsey’s video has gotten a little bit of a mixed reaction in the comments section, where some parents have pushed back—saying they don’t want to help other moms because no one helped them or because they’re busy taking care of their own families. But for the most part, people are very on board.
“I can’t wait to be the village one day that I don’t have
,” one mom wrote.
Another added, “I don’t have kids and I really don’t want them. but I’m super excited to be the village for my friends and family who will have kids.”
At the end of the day, no one can have too many people in their corner, and a message like this helps reinforce that.
