A Mother’s Case For Bringing Parental Socialization Back

While the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic may seem like old news, Americans, particularly American moms, are still reeling from the lockdowns. Depending on the area, Americans were functionally isolated from others for anywhere from three months to three years. In that short span of time, we got used to doing without certain informal social gatherings and in-person commitments, although our hearts and minds didn’t need them any less. The social fabric has yet to recover.

For moms, post-COVID social isolation is uniquely difficult to shake. As certain segments of society slowly revert to pre-lockdown norms, a mom’s social life is far harder to rebuild. For instance, back-to-office mandates force employees back to daily socialization with other people. But there’s no such mandate for full-time homemakers. The life of a stay-at-home mom does not necessarily require socialization. She can simply be in her house all day and still do her work as a mother. That’s right there in the name we commonly use to refer to moms who don’t work outside the home full time. Moms should resist the temptation to isolate as much as they can. Yet when the network of other moms is itself lacking, bleak statistics on maternal loneliness make all the more sense.

Millennial and Gen Z mothers are lonely at extraordinary rates. A survey from Motherly reports that 82% of mothers said that they are lonely. While some of that is due to a lack of support, especially intergenerational support, it is telling that almost 90% of surveyed moms also reported that most of their socialization occurred online, not in-person. A study in the Journal of Clinical Gynecology & Obstetrics found that 58.6% of mothers reported feeling lonelier after the COVID-19 pandemic than before.

Indeed, even the often-used term “stay-at-home mom” says something about how we as a society view full-time homemaking. Staying within the four walls of one’s house is not necessary to live out one’s life as a homemaker. In fact, it can be outright unhelpful if done to excess. Homemaker appears to be a far better term than “stay-at-home mom,” as it implies a vocation that is oriented toward the home, that is, the social unit of her husband and children, while not always occurring within the home as a physical building.

While social media moms groups are great ways to find and organize socialization for homemakers, this mom-to-mom support can’t remain online to be effective at combating loneliness. Moving from online interactions to an in-person hangout is still a massive societal hurdle in our post-COVID world.

Make it happen

The most effective way to combat maternal loneliness is to be the inviter. Don’t wait for an already well-formed mom group to materialize alongside you. Play dates are the ultimate mom hack, since you and your children both get social time. They can be scheduled at any time, hosted at your house or another mom’s, with zero cost, and are an effective way a mom can socialize that doesn’t require the hassle of securing good child care to happen.

Be the hostess

We have to become comfortable with the idea of inviting people into our homes. Hosting is a dying art, but play dates are a far more low-effort way to do this than throwing a candlelit dinner party. Inviting over another mom can be both low-cost and lower-effort, while strengthening those socialization muscles. Less “let’s meet for coffee” and catching up in seconds-long spurts while you chase a toddler around a decidedly un-childproofed cafe. More “come over for coffee” while you chat together on a couch in your basement playroom.

The key to combating motherhood loneliness is to turn your home into a place where socialization happens. Homes used to be social environments. Neighbors stopped in to borrow a cup of brown sugar and ended up chatting for an hour. The mail lady was a familiar face you looked forward to seeing every day on her rounds. After-church catch-ups migrated to homes for the afternoon back when parishioners lived near one another. Home-bound socialization doesn’t happen organically, but moms who are serious about curing the loneliness epidemic have to become the inviters in their communities to bring it back. Socialization should not be something that only happens when you leave the house.

Connect with your church

The burden of solving the loneliness epidemic should not fall exclusively on an already tired and overextended mother. Churches have a unique role to play in all this. They are well-placed to facilitate meaningful connections between like-minded moms in a general geographical area. My church hosts a morning Bible study with child care during the winter at a time ideal for most nap schedules. Others host mom walking collectives or small groups in kid-friendly locations with kid-friendly activities. A mom with the room to spare can host a low-pressure play date. Park meet-ups can happen at regular times during the week. But the point is, churches can do most of the planning and facilitating and let the moms take that first step to avoid sinking into loneliness.

Reigniting an informal social life in motherhood won’t be easy for everyone, especially in our isolated society. But restoring the casual in-home invite is one low-pressure and low-cost way to begin building a community that understands the challenges of moms, especially those who stay at home all day with their children.

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Sarah Wilder is a visiting fellow at Independent Women and contributor for IW Features.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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