In August 1996, then First Lady Hillary Clinton addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It was the now famous, “It Takes a Village” speech. In it, she details how, while parents are a child’s first and primary teachers and role models, it takes everyone in the community to raise a healthy, happy child. I was a young mother at the time, with a five-year-old about to start kindergarten, and Tim, just turned two (in hindsight, starting to show symptoms, but still a pudgy, curly-headed bundle of whimsy and energy). I saw the speech on television and, after digesting it, I disregarded it. A village? Pfft. We didn’t need a village.


Tom and I were two college educated, capable adults, perfectly equipped to raise our family on our own with occasional input from our parents. I wasn’t the single mother, working two shifts, that Mrs. Clinton referenced. Tom wasn’t a young man raised without a father. We lived in a good neighborhood with good schools. I was convinced Mrs. Clinton was wrong; about us, anyway. We didn’t need a village. Fifteen years later, I have a completely different perspective.


Read the rest at The Balanced Mind Foundation.