It takes a Village

For most of human history, family didn’t mean nuclear isolation...it meant community.
Children weren’t born into private property; they were born into belonging. Grandmothers, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and even older siblings shared the work of care, protection, and guidance. Love wasn’t measured by ownership; it was measured by presence.

Then came patriarchy, and with it, the idea that a man must own the home, own the woman, and own the children under his “protection.” What was once communal became controlled. The family unit shrank, love became contractual, and caregiving became labor done behind closed doors, unvalued and unseen.

The modern masculine ideal says, “Protect what’s yours.” But real protection doesn’t need ownership. In its pure form, masculine energy shields the community, not because it belongs to him, but because it’s part of him. When men act protectively over a world they don’t own, that’s strength. When they demand ownership to justify care, that’s ego.

The phrase “it takes a village” isn’t sentimental...it’s revolutionary. It’s a call to return to shared care, to systems where empathy and interdependence replace control and hierarchy. In those older, wiser models of community, no child was ever “someone else’s problem.” Every elder was a teacher. Every woman’s voice shaped the rhythm of life.

Patriarchy turned parenting into possession, but the truth is simpler and softer: we raise the next generation together.

Because love, the real kind, not the kind bound by contracts or names on a deed, has never needed to own what it protects.