It’s easy to take a sense of community for granted, but this is why we all need it

In a world of democratised artificial intelligence, smart homes, and video conferencing, the notion of “a village” feels almost quaint, a relic of a bygone era when family extended beyond the nuclear and work was distributed according to ability, not earning capacity. But what if the village wasn’t merely nostalgic reminiscence but a living, breathing, well nurtured community?

When I was a kid imagining my future, community wasn’t something I thought much about. My mental checklist of adult achievements included having a partner, a couple of kids, a safe home, a meaningful career, a dog, the occasional holiday and Cher’s computerised wardrobe from Clueless. Simple things.

If you want to reap the rewards of the village, it requires effort in return.Credit: Getty Images

My fantasies of a life-sized Barbie dream house never extended to who lived in the house next door or around the corner. Perhaps that’s because children are generally born into communities. They don’t – or at least they shouldn’t have to – develop it for themselves. Their communities are inherited through extended family, their parents’ friends, school and sporting clubs. And when you don’t have to work for something, it’s easy to take something as ephemeral as a sense of community for granted.

In the various realms of human relations, community can be undervalued once we reach adulthood, too. The 2021 Australia Talks survey found that 38 per cent of us don’t know our neighbours by name. Further, 37 per cent of Australians don’t participate in any clubs, societies or community activities. Community work is also economically undervalued, with many employees in the sector both overworked and underpaid.

Yet community has been fundamental during some of the most significant periods of my life. When I became a mum before most of my peers, it was getting coffee and chatting with women who lived within walking distance of my home that made me feel normal again. After becoming seriously ill in my early 30s, strangers who had lived through similar illnesses became my support network.

The nature of modern life doesn’t facilitate community. We live in small, separate family units, unlikely to be within walking distance of the people we love most.

During Melbourne’s COVID lockdowns, it was neighbours who made the nearly two years lived indoors bearable. We dropped freshly baked muffins (of varying quality) on one another’s doorsteps, swapped puzzles and games to keep kids entertained, and shared precious boxes of the facemasks that were in short supply. During curfew, a neighbour dropping in a sprig of rosemary when the shops were closed was more than an act of service, it was another log on the communal village fire.

In a brief interlude between lockdowns, my family and I escaped to the Victorian coastal town of Wye River. Along with a dozen friends and their families, we stayed in cabins, caravans and tents, all within the same park. Weeks later, ordered to return to our homes, my then five-year-old begged to move to Wye River permanently. There, he reasoned, we could live alongside our closest friends and family instead of being alone and fending for ourselves.

The nature of modern life doesn’t facilitate community. We live in small, separate family units, unlikely to be within walking distance of the people we love most. We don’t share labour and the fruits of that labour beyond compulsory government redistribution. Instead, we fend for ourselves even though history knows there is a better way.

The village is a foundation for our emotional wellbeing and administrative efficiency – and it’s also critical for gender equality. In 2022, both parents were engaged in paid work in more than 70 per cent of coupled families with kids under the age of 15.

When both adults in a household are doing paid work, that leaves less time for unpaid work and the social labour of tending the village – and it’s mostly women who pick up the slack. The ideal solution, of course, is not for women to engage in less paid work but for men to engage in more unpaid work.

The work of community still exists even when its social structures have been depleted, so we pay for the village instead in the form of prepackaged meals, cleaning services, babysitters, taxis, private tutors, food delivery and Air Taskers. But during COVID lockdowns many of those services couldn’t operate, so we leaned on our communities in ways many of us hadn’t before.

In the years since, nurturing the village has again fallen down our long, long list of competing daily priorities. We’re tired and busy, and now that we can leave our five-kilometre boundaries again we’ve rushed out into the world to see what exists beyond. In doing so, we quickly forgot that precious glimpse of community and inclusiveness. And women especially joined in that familiar modern chorus of “But where is my village?”

It is a reminder that all relationships take work. If you want to reap the rewards of the village, it requires effort in return. People who enjoy the sort of community we all aspire to often talk about how lucky they are, when really – as is the case with most luck – what they have has been earned.

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