Julie Jay: What if parents don’t have that village to help rear children?

The proverbial saying ‘it takes a village to rear a child’ is one I hear ad-nauseum when discussing childcare arrangements. But what if parents don’t have that village to assist when it comes to rearing children?

Way back when, in the year 12,000 BCE, neanderthals raised their children in such a way that the wider clan consisted of multiple surrogate parents, and there were zero arguments around screen time. Prehistoric-age parenting was hardly a walk in the park — I’m thinking specifically of short lifespans and big animals trying to eat you — but at least they roamed in packs. As a result, unlike parents today, no mother or father was ever left to fend for themselves.

At the playground last week, I bumped into an old teacher friend. She told me about her nightmare week when she received a call to come collect her son from his primary school because he was unwell.