It takes a village to raise a child

THE AFRICAN proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child” is used to emphasise that community interaction is essential for children to grow in a safe and healthy environment.

However modern life has dictated that people live as individuals with minimum interaction with one another.

When I was doing my postgraduate training in the UK, I used to meet my neighbour in the morning as we head to work, and would exchange a smile and a node with the short “good morning” and that would be it.

Initially this was a relief from the social interaction that I experienced in my village as a child where every older man we call “uncle” and older women “aunties.”

Where the whole village knew where so and so worked and could guess his salary and when his wife is due to have their next child.

This living environment had its positive and negative sides. On the positive side people felt close to each other and one rarely felt lonely or isolated, children would have better social skills as they spent most of the time interacting with others and learning from the experience of the older generation.

On the negative side such communities tend to develop strong identities and ways of living that may be forced on its members and the person - if not careful - risks losing his identity to the group.

In western countries there has been a recent interest in designing communities with shared living facilities so people can have their own private rooms but share kitchens and sitting rooms.

Initially the idea behind this was to support people who cannot afford their own house but studies showed this living arrangement had a positive impact on people's mental health as it has the potential to create new meaningful social connections which means a ‘network of potentially supportive friends.’

This eventually decreases social isolation which is beneficial both for our individual and collective mental health.”

While another study of the impact of co-shared living on people’s mental health during Covid-19 showed that residents in co-housing communities had lower levels of depression, anxiety, compulsive and eating disorders, as well as less use of unhealthy coping strategies such as problem avoidance, and social withdrawal.

Residents also had higher levels in the use of social support. These results suggest that co-housing communities have a better impact on residents’ mental health in comparison with life in traditional neighbourhoods.

Last week I attended a presentation by a professor from Canada who was talking about the role of Artificial Intelligence in supporting older adults.

He showed smart houses that enabled older people to live alone independently with minimum support from families.

An alert system monitors the activity of the older person and sends a signal to their family if the person is not responding or spending longer time in bed or has not used the kitchen to prepare a meal.

Yet despite all of this the system failed to report a person who was found dead two days later. This made me feel that technology can never replace humans in certain aspects.

Finally, a village can raise a child and support older people so let’s take the positive aspects of village life and avoid the negative ones.