This is an important topic. One item I would consider looking into (and you started on it), is how much of this community building or 'kin keeping' women in particular do. While physical infrastructure is a major issue, there's also a broader societal issue. When I briefly took a step back from a big job and got more involved in my community directly, I was thunderstruck by how much of our town runs on the free labor of predominantly women, and in particular moms. We create the new mom groups, run the PTOs, organize the campaigns. I was President of a group that brings together families of young children, and we learned that pre-COVID this group had been significantly responsible for driving Kindergarten enrollment (raising awareness). Post COVID there was a lot of turnover, and we didn't know this was in our 'remit'. I learned our K enrollment numbers had dropped even though we knew from the town census that more students should be enrolled. It wasn't the case that everyone suddenly chose private school....nope, it was that this community group hadn't done all the awareness raising we had done in years past. Sure enough, we did a campaign to remind folks to register and bam, there were all the 5-year-olds. We need men like yourself (as you are doing!) to help fill in the gaps. We need jobs that don't leave humans so emotionally and physically burnt out they don't have time or energy for their local community. And we probably all need to spend less time finding our community social media and not in person.
I think you’re spot on here, and these are great thoughts. Incidentally, when our neighborhood association was most active, the two leaders were women…but they got burnt out. It’s gone dormant under two men.
Ryan, I loved this. You took an idea I’ve been thinking about at a very personal, neighborhood level and widened the lens so beautifully. Community really does require people willing to create structure, absorb some friction, and keep showing up. I hope our pieces encourage more people to build that kind of community where they are.
Men need to step up more. It’s almost always women doing the social organizing, and that’s not necessarily bad, but it can get exhausting. It would be nice to have more help.
This is an important topic. One item I would consider looking into (and you started on it), is how much of this community building or 'kin keeping' women in particular do. While physical infrastructure is a major issue, there's also a broader societal issue. When I briefly took a step back from a big job and got more involved in my community directly, I was thunderstruck by how much of our town runs on the free labor of predominantly women, and in particular moms. We create the new mom groups, run the PTOs, organize the campaigns. I was President of a group that brings together families of young children, and we learned that pre-COVID this group had been significantly responsible for driving Kindergarten enrollment (raising awareness). Post COVID there was a lot of turnover, and we didn't know this was in our 'remit'. I learned our K enrollment numbers had dropped even though we knew from the town census that more students should be enrolled. It wasn't the case that everyone suddenly chose private school....nope, it was that this community group hadn't done all the awareness raising we had done in years past. Sure enough, we did a campaign to remind folks to register and bam, there were all the 5-year-olds. We need men like yourself (as you are doing!) to help fill in the gaps. We need jobs that don't leave humans so emotionally and physically burnt out they don't have time or energy for their local community. And we probably all need to spend less time finding our community social media and not in person.
I think you’re spot on here, and these are great thoughts. Incidentally, when our neighborhood association was most active, the two leaders were women…but they got burnt out. It’s gone dormant under two men.
@Holly Berkley Fletcher wrote something great about this!
Ryan, I loved this. You took an idea I’ve been thinking about at a very personal, neighborhood level and widened the lens so beautifully. Community really does require people willing to create structure, absorb some friction, and keep showing up. I hope our pieces encourage more people to build that kind of community where they are.
Men need to step up more. It’s almost always women doing the social organizing, and that’s not necessarily bad, but it can get exhausting. It would be nice to have more help.