Parenting on an Island

Treading water without a village

If you’re raising a child without a village, your motherhood is very different from those who have a village. You might be one of the lucky parents who has family nearby and a whole crew of lifelines you can call on for support, and if that’s the case, I’m very jealous and this post might not be for you. New Yorkers are parenting on an island. No, really, New York is literally an island and the thing about parenting on an island is that, while there’s land everywhere, you still have to be a really good swimmer. Now, some New Yorkers are lucky enough to have some local support, more than one paddle to row with, but I meet fewer and fewer parents with expansive support systems for rainy days.

No man or woman is an island. That phrase usually refers to emotional isolation, but that’s not what this is. Being on an “island” is logistical isolation and being without a “village” is to be without sustained, default support. In our first year of parenthood, my husband and I have found ourselves village-less and on an island. This means no grandparents nearby to watch the kids, no aunts and uncles for field trips, no cousins to play with, and no consistent circle of friends with kids in the same stage, rallying around your parenthood. Every appointment, every sick day, every bit of exhaustion lands on the same two people, over and over again. I’ve become the planner, the executor, and the safety net, feverishly micro-dosing myself with a can-do optimism and hyper-organization while my husband is pulling all of the financial weight for our family. Raising kids this way, you learn where your limits actually are.

From our windows, we can see the water, the ferry boats and bridges and these things remind me how isolating my own little island can be. By 6:30am, I’m frantically brushing my teeth, trying to get dressed while passing the baby back and forth with my husband, then kissing him goodbye for the day, and bundling the baby for our morning walk with the dog. By 6:50am, there’s no longer someone for me to hand the baby off to if I need both hands, and by then, I’m in full one-handed problem solving mode. I’m very used to this dance, and for someone who has barely exercised since having a baby, my arms and back get a surprisingly effective workout, doing everything with my twenty-pound extra limb.

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On an Island in the Sun

Finance wives learn courage by necessity, seeing as our partners hardly get any paternity leave, a reality shaped more by work culture than privilege. We had two weeks as a family before my husband went back to work. My husband would leave for the day like he was dropping off a kid at sleep-away camp. Here’s my direct work line, in case you need anything. I’ll check on you!

Anytime I see a new mom venturing out solo with a fresh baby, I wonder if her partner also only got to enjoy two weeks at home before heading back to the office. I feel this temptation to give a little courtesy wave like, “Ahoy, my fellow finance wife!” Two passing ships, doing the morning schlep with our UPPAbaby blocking-sleds.

Newly postpartum, morning walks felt like pure survival. The word ‘survival’ in postpartum is funny to me because it implies there’s a danger of some sort to survive from. There’s no danger at all, unless you count the many many times a day a new mom doubts herself and feels like she’s gambling on keeping a new human alive. And if you’re alone, there’s no one to question your instincts. How many layers to dress a baby in? How long is too long for a nap? Nobody knows, not even ChatGPT, your gut is your manual to not fail at momming for the day.

I picked a morning walking route that was a perfect distance from home, in case I ever had to turn back — one that didn’t require too many doors, too many obstacles, or too many moments where I’d have to choose between holding the baby, wrangling the dog, or keeping myself in one piece. Our dog hated the morning stroller walks and still wanted to call the shots. We weren’t going to the dog park anymore, we were walking a new loop that required negotiation and bribery to get him to not make my day harder.

It took five or six weeks of postpartum life to get the hang of my morning walks with the stroller and dog. I was healed enough that I wasn’t losing my breath as much, my legs and back didn’t ache so badly and I bought myself a new pair of leggings so that my uterus wouldn’t feel like it might fall out when I walked.

Just when I started getting comfortable taking my strolls with the baby and the dog, this idea of the island started to sink in. There’s no one to hand the baby to. I should really go to pelvic floor therapy or maybe get my grays colored. But there’s no one close to us who could care for our boob-spoiled baby.

I walked up to my local coffee window one morning, “Island in the Sun” was ironically playing. I used to love Weezer, I knew every word to every song. I had three different Weezer- themed AIM usernames back in the day. And would often type Weezer song lyrics ~* LiKe tHiS *~ on my away messages. Twenty years later, I’m rocking a baby stroller, singing familiar words while waiting for my cappuccino. “On an island in the sun, we’ll be playing and having fun. And it makes me feel so fine I can’t control my brain.”

See! There’s nothing to be afraid of! We’re out here having fun on our island! No one is chasing us, we’re out here thriving! I’d tell my postpartum anxiety.

I watched the parents in the mornings taking their kids to school and imagined life here as a parent, as our daughter grew older. There’s Wagon Mom, towing her two kiddos in a wagon up the hills from the waterfront. There’s Longboard Dad, cruising and sharing foot space with his toddler. My personal favorite is Bike Tow Mom, towing a caravan of two kids and two dogs. And there’s Chic Beach-Cruiser Mom, always dressed beautifully for the office with an equally stylish kiddo behind her. I wonder, which one would I be? But I also wonder, how do these parents do it? How do they manage the juggle on this island where many of us are too proud or uncomfortable to lean on anyone else, so much so that we’d rather optimize some sort of contraption to deliver our kids to school?

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The “Islander’s” way

There are a million ways to parent and you see these little vignettes all around New York. Just like there’s more than one way to do anything in this city. There are different subway routes to the same place, different bagels and pizza slices people argue are the best, and there are incredibly inspiring parents from all walks of life, doing things their own way and making new moms like myself believe it’s all doable in the city, even without relief.

City parenting rewards competence. It applauds parents who can carry everything themselves, who maneuver strollers up stairs and get to places roughly on time. If I’m wearing my baby on my chest, holding a dog leash and poop bag in one hand and a coffee in the other, I can count on some random old man making a comment like, “Watch out, she’s got her hands full!”

For a long time, I thought acceptance meant giving up, perhaps admitting this was harder than it needed to be was the same as resigning myself to it. But acceptance is actually an active decision to stop measuring your life against a version of parenthood that requires resources you don’t have. It’s letting go of the idea that there’s a missing piece you just haven’t found yet. Parenting on an island isn’t a phase you hustle your way out of—it’s a reality you adapt to, one that begs you to conserve energy instead of constantly reaching for more.

I was on the treadmill in our building, it’s beautiful and looks out over the East River towards Manhattan. Our neighborhood has become a destination. When you see young parents on a walk with their own parents, it feels a little like parents day at University. And when the grandparents come to town, we walk the waterfront all together and romanticize the skyline, take some photos and maybe get a treat somewhere. I especially appreciate how clean the waterfront is. The Brooklyn waterfront is a movie set — here, parents can’t comment about how dirty the city is. Anywhere else, we’d hear comments like, “It’s bad enough you’re so far away from us, but look at all of this poop and garbage! How can you even walk here, let alone, raise a child!?”(This is me projecting—what I’d say to myself from the alternate suburban life.)

The new mom I met months ago —she and I are now friends via our playgroup and attend the same swim lessons. Both of our husbands play golf, we both wear Jenni Kayne sweaters and Birkenstocks and our babies are close enough in age — that’s as much criteria as we need to be friends. There’s a term called the golf widow, for those of us whose husbands leave us to play their nine hour hobby on weekends, April - October. “We can be golf widows together soon!” she says as we’re both leaving swim lessons.

I’ve gotten used to the sign offs from friendly run-ins:
We should totally hang out!
We should totally grab a coffee soon!
We should totally take a little walk together or something!

It all becomes a nice hypothetical that we hardly have the capacity for.

We have friends that we haven’t seen since our wedding day, and they also now have their own babies on the other side of the river in Manhattan. We might complain about how hard it is to line up nap schedules when in reality, crossing a river requires packing a carry-on luggage.

We must get together soon! We always say this and yet it’s so hard to make things happen because the first year of parenthood in the city is like living within a little glass box, looking at the other new parents in their little glass boxes, wondering how we could possibly get from our box to their box to share a meal, while our babies pound on the sides of the glass box playfully.

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The Archipelago

I’ve always worn my independence like a badge of pride here and parenting has magnified that even more. I’m a woman who once lived in a fifth floor walkup — the same little lady who carried an air conditioning unit, a couch, a mattress and countless heaps of laundry up those five flights. Surely, I can handle being a full time mom in the city of convenience and inconvenience. But competence can masquerade as self-sufficiency, and self-sufficiency can start to look like isolation if you’re not careful.

The village, or lack thereof, is often decided by work schedules, distance, and choices made long before a baby ever enters the picture. There’s a black and white myth about villages—you either inherit one or fail to build it, and here I find myself in the gray area. At times, it feels like we’ve shot ourselves in the foot. Maybe we chose the wrong city, stayed too long, waited too late, or built a life that didn’t leave enough room for help. But I’m learning that self-sufficiency can disguise need, and that asking for nothing and needing nothing are not the same thing.

On the bright side, islands have layers. There’s the city itself and then there are the smaller ones we dock ourselves to over time: the block we live on, our apartment building and the everyday routines in which we’re regulars. These are places where things feel more grounded, even though the responsibility doesn’t disappear.

Our building has the most incredible community of parents. If someone runs out of diapers, there’s a chorus of parents ready to deliver a handful to their front door. Or if someone has a hand-me-down, they get to pass it down to a younger babe nearby. The doormen and women know every child’s name and are very much part of our extended families here too. They know who’s teething, they remember birthdays and watch these babies grow, as if they’re part-theirs.

I know who to call in case of emergency and I know if I bravely ask for help, it will arrive. But the daily rigmarole of parenting on an island teaches you to live with fewer safety nets, stronger legs, and a keen awareness of who is swimming alongside you.

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Offering you a paddle

The “islander” lifestyle isn’t remedied by sleep or self-care or a night out. You’re all the things on your island, you’re the wearer of every hat. When people say, “You should really build a village,” they often miss what that actually requires: time, excess energy, and availability—three things in short supply when you’re already doing everything yourself. Try harder to make friends, join more things, really put yourself out there. But the kicker is, when you’re parenting without a village, your effort is already maxed out; there is no extra bandwidth to socialize your way into relief. The suggestion to just go “build a village” frames the circumstances as a personal failing, and that’s where the shame creeps in.

If you’re parenting without a village, on an island — nothing is wrong with you and you’re not doing motherhood incorrectly. You’re parenting in a heavy-load environment and adapting the best you can. You’re learning in real time how to hold more than most people ever see and your world might deliberately stay small so it stays livable. This kind of parenting won’t make sense to some people so the kindest thing you can do for yourself is respect your own boundaries and limits.

I’m desperately trying to stop comparing my life to other parents’ logistics, as if we’re all working with the same inputs. And I’m doing my best to remember that different support systems produce different-looking days, different capacities, different versions of “doing well.”

If you’re like me, on your own little island, we’re not stranded, our reality is just more demanding. And if I see you also pushing your stroller at 6:50 a.m., I’ll do my best to give that little courtesy wave to say — I’m in the same kind of boat too. Same kind of boat, but different. On an island in the sun, here, we’re playing and having fun, and it makes me feel so fine I can’t control my brain.