Bubble families or why we raise alone (and four nails to hold on to)

• Sigma Two Children?

  Yes, as long as (many) conditions are met

• Sociology The first child beyond 30: why we expect more and more

With an increasingly aging population, Spain faces the demographic challenge of increasing the birth rate.

Few children are born, that is the crux of the matter.

We women start late (at 31.2 years old) and when we start, we do it with caution.

That thing about the crowds has long been left behind.

According to Eurostat, the fertility rate in 2020 fell to 1.5 children per woman, but we Spaniards are even below that figure: we have

and thus, we are second from the bottom, only ahead of Malta.

The reasons are very few and can be summed up in the search for personal, work and economic stability that allows them to enter the unpredictable journey of motherhood with a certain security.

With the minimum wicker tied, after

These reservations about reproduction were also left black on white in the survey that Sigma Dos carried out for Yo Dona and that we published on the occasion of Mother's Day.

In light of that much-desired economic solvency, a study is also recent by virtue of which raising a child costs more than €300,000 euros from birth to emancipation, so no, it does not seem like a matter to be taken lightly.

Parenting without a tribe

About the less vaunted reasons has to do with that African proverb that says that "to educate a child you need the entire tribe."

Let's see: what tribe is that?

Is the family?

The friends?

Caregivers?

Everyone probably weaves a covering net, but more and more, at the moment of truth, we close the door of the house and we are left alone.

Without that tribe, says Marta Erill, creator of the blog A Mom from Another Planet, parenting is very hard.

She admits that breeding is unique and precious, but very demanding.

"The hard part, the really hard part, is that we raised without a tribe," she says.

She needs a network, she continues, to hold us when we fall or to support us when we don't get there: "You need

, to give you a hand, to listen to you, to see you".

Nothing more, nothing less.

Rut Abad

, anthropologist and professor at OBS Business School, explains that the family model has changed: "We have gone from an extensive one, in which we had uncles, cousins, etc. close by, to another nuclear one, made up of one or two parents" .

"As humans we need to live in

," says Abad, not only to raise children, but as a way of being in the world.

The productive system and urbanism do not do anything on their part either: "Every time it individualizes us more and cities are not designed to be inhabited but to travel through them", he affirms.

There is a lack of time, but also benches to sit on, parks, squares and

where we can weave that tribe that is disappearing.

Covid-19 again

The Covid-19, guilty of so many things and 'wild card of the public' for everything, also, of course, appears here.

The coronavirus was a mirage, insofar as it acted as a spring for the generation of solidarity networks of proximity in the face of the pandemic emergency.

But also, explains the anthropologist, it has meant a loss of

in the other, the cornerstone and premise 'sine qua non' to generate ties with others.

I mean, good and bad.

If we think about tribes and upbringing, the concept of

is taking time to appear in this text.

So let's start.

Rut Abad says: "As a society we have yet to recognize that care is also an economy, that it is

. The visibility part is important, but without forgetting to highlight the material contribution that it entails. Without care, the system does not work."

1. The school as a community agent

Shutterstock

But in all deserts there are oases and today we will talk about

of them.

Rut Abad affirms that schools are currently very lively spaces for socialization.

In fact, its role as a community agent dates back to the 1970s, when the outskirts of large cities experienced great development: "These associations were the ones that began to fight for resources and acted as a meeting point for many women, as before it was the churches," he says.

"School is a good place to share with your peer group, so educational centers can and should facilitate these informal meetings between children and adults alike," concludes the anthropologist.

Diana Oliver

is a journalist and has just published

, a book in which she asks many questions with the excuse of talking about motherhood, what families need to raise children and what, instead, they have.

"We talk about conciliation but there is much more behind it: low wages, the cost of housing, the lack of networks... There is a structural precariousness that affects the personal and the economic. It crosses us in everything and this influences how we raise to our children," he says.

Oliver also insists on the idea that families are increasingly alone, despite the fact that "10 or 20 hands" are needed to raise.

"But the impossible schedules and the work, which absorbs us all day, make it impossible.

."

School shouldn't just be seeing each other at the door, drop the child and that's it

Diana Oliver

Stuck in our bubbles, so how can we get out of them?

Without social and political changes that favor it, the author is committed to proactivity: "We have to start with ourselves and create alliances around us, with our neighbors, for example.

".

In line with what Rut Díaz pointed out, Diana Oliver, a mother of two young children, has found

"Raising up in a city as big as Madrid is not the friendliest thing, but at school we have a group that holds us back," she says.

Inside it they help each other, they have fun, they make plans, they support each other.

"It's one of the best things that's ever happened to me," she says without hesitation.

"It is very important to know that you can call someone if you have a setback. We have made a community."

In the absence of other public spaces where to be and generate ties, the school can be, therefore, a good asset for cohesion.

To do this, of course, group activities are needed outside of the day, "not just meet at the door,

," concludes Oliver.

2. Ring the neighbor's doorbell: the audacity

Shutterstock

We see in American series that the neighbors welcome each other with a cake.

Around here this may be uncommon, but it has not been to take the chairs out into the fresh air to chat at sunset.

Without having to go back to rural contexts (because of the al fresco chairs), decades ago one could form a

The neighbors were trusted people to ask for two eggs, a handful of rice or help to repair the sink.

And they were also willing to stay with other children to play or to cover the parents in case of any unforeseen event.

Now the story is another and many times we do not even know the name of the one we hear on the other side of the partition.

Much less are we going to ring his bell

while we go out on an errand.

In these times, in fact, it is almost a daring.

If it weren't for the support they provide and my friendship with the neighbors, we would have moved to a larger flat.

Lucia R.

But, there are exceptions that are another oasis in the desert.

Lucía R. is 52 years old and has two children.

She lives in the center of Madrid, in a small urbanization of flats that has functioned

and that has decisively saved her children's logistics.

"When my children were 2 and 7 years old, my husband went to work outside.

", she explains and remembers that they were an essential support in her upbringing during that time.

The network that she has formed with her neighbors is made up of three families and that alliance, she says, arose spontaneously when her children went down to the community pool.

"I've always been lazy about neighborhood relationships, but they are the ones who arrive earlier because they are closer. For me they are friends. It has been lucky to have them and it still is," he says.

So much so that they are the ones who keep the family in the area: "If not, we would have moved to a bigger apartment," she says.

3. We will always have the internet

If the family is far away, the children's school locks the door when classes are over and the neighbors seem strange to us, there is always a rip for a rip.

In this case, the internet has been the new Paris of 'Casablanca', that is, it has become a

Mónica de la Fuente

is a journalist and founder of

, a portal specializing in maternity, parenting and education.

Now she has just published 'Goodbye expectations, hello reality', a book in which she talks with humor and empathy about what she has learned about motherhood from her personal experience (she has two children) and her work In the net.

"When my first daughter was born 13 years ago, I experienced it in total isolation. My mother had just passed away and I started writing my

. I immediately found other women who wanted to share the same thing and this community was created," she says. .

Today Madresfera brings together some 4,500 content creators, has had a daily podcast for five years and 50,000 followers on Twitter.

It is clear that interest in meeting, even in cyberspace, had...

For someone to pick up your children from school, you need a signed authorization!

Monica from the Fountain

"Madresfera has been ours, our

where many of us have let off steam. In addition to giving me a job, it personally gave me life," he says.

Mónica complains, like everyone else in this report, about the loneliness of families (even more so if they are single parents), about the lack of community spaces, about the loss of trust in those next door.

"For someone to pick up the children from school, you need a signed authorization! And for them to stay at your house,

, write it down in the agenda... A mess," she protests.

"It's institutionalizing individualism and the extension of the 'get by as you can' philosophy."

4. The networking profession

Shutterstock

OK agreed.

We live behind closed doors and we raise in the same way.

We try to escape from that loneliness through school, neighbors, the internet... It seems that we are rusty when it comes to building community, but there is also a remedy for this:

, if, as it seems, spontaneity is numb or numb.

Maria Folch (47 years old) is an artist, art educator and educational advisor specializing in positive parenting and pedagogies of creativity.

She has created and participated in

in Spain, the USA and Italy, where she currently resides.

That is to say, she has made community building a profession.

12 years ago their daughter was born.

She had no family help and that's where it all started: "I started organizing talks with professionals in the neighborhood where I lived, which were immediately joined by other families who wanted to feel accompanied during their upbringing," she says.

came from.

an association that still continues in Barcelona.

"In New York I advised individual families, participated in shared parenting groups and urban forest-schools, carried out artistic activities with adults and children to create bonds and participated in experiences such as a solidarity chain to

" , recounts.

Now, in Reggio Emilia (Italy), where she lives, she continues her work collaborating with schools and other institutions, such as the City Hall Family Center, and in the training of professionals and families, among other ways.

Maria Folch is dedicated to this because she believes that the human being is a social being and because she arrives at parenting with

, be it due to a lack of logistical, emotional, economic support, of play spaces, of knowledge of childhood by part of the adults...

"In these projects

, or food, or make a family that is far away appear out of nowhere. But we can offer many things that will help in part to alleviate these deficiencies at the material and emotional, and to transform that stage into an opportunity", he adds.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more