Ep 38: Millennial Moms Don’t Have a Village Anymore (And What to Do Instead)

Millennial moms were told we could have it all—career, family, and a “village” to support us along the way. But what happens when that village never shows up?

In this episode, we break down the reality so many working moms are facing today: raising kids without the built-in support systems previous generations had. From dual-income households to rising childcare costs to living far from family, the modern “village” looks very different than what we were promised.

You’ll learn:

•  Why the traditional village disappeared for millennial parents 
•  The real reason working moms feel burned out 
•  The 3 types of “villages” every parent needs (and how to build them) 
•  Why paying for help is not failure—and how to let go of the guilt 
•  Practical ways to create support as a working parent in 2026 

If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing it all without enough help, this episode will help you reframe what support actually looks like—and how to build a village that works for your life.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We are going to talk about the village that never came once we had our babies and we're trying to balance that with our full-time jobs. Hey Fraud Squad, welcome to Who Let Me Do This? I'm your host, Sadie, and this is the podcast for anyone who's ever looked around and thought, wait, who trusted me with this job, with these kids, and with this life? Here's the deal. I'm not here to hand you the perfect five-step plan to get your life together. I'm here to share the chaos, the fails, the small wins, and the oh my god, same moments of trying to be a working mom, a decent human, and occasionally a functioning adult. And because we are all out here winging it together, I'll also bring in actual experts to drop some wisdom and share tips that might make our lives easier. Just a little. So if you're listening, congrats. You're officially a part of the fraud squad. That's our little community of imposters, hot messes, and overachievers who are all just faking it together. So grab your coffee, grab your wine, or let's be real, grab the leftover food from dinner that your kid didn't eat, and let's dive in. Oh, and if you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you never miss an episode and share it with a friend who could, I don't know, use a laugh or maybe just a little solidarity. The more of us in the fraud squad, the better. We are gonna talk about the village that never came once we had our babies, and we're trying to balance that with our full-time jobs. And we're gonna talk about what a village actually looks like as a millennial mom in 2026. We all know as millennial women, we were promised that we got to have it all. We were told that we got to be the first president of the United States. We were told that we could have the big family, our husbands, our spouses could work, and we didn't have to dim our light or minimize our dreams. That was the promise, and that was the goal. And we were promised that there was going to be this village that was going to carry us along the way. And to be fair, our parents had that village. The 90s village was so different than the village of today. In the 90s, so many families had only one working parent. That meant that so many neighborhoods had built-in villages. They had often had stay-at-home moms, if not multiple, at least one or two, that was able to lean in and babysit when a kid was sick, that was able to grow kids in her minivan and bring them to the park, that was able to say, hey, the sprinkler's on in the backyard, come on over. I grew up with a stay-at-home mom and I fully witnessed that village, running around the neighborhood, going to various homes to plan to live the best life. And our moms were just reaching out back and forth to each other to say, hey, FYI, the kids are here. Hey, FYI, the kids are back to your house. There were always eyes on us. The village was naturally built in. The other thing that is so different about how we were raised in the 90s versus now is in the 90s, most of our grandparents were retired. They were at home, and many of our grandmothers, their role in the family was to raise their children. And so their role was continuing to be a caregiver. So they were waiting to be that support to our moms, to be that support to our parents, because that was their identity. And they didn't have a nine to five that they were still trying to work through. That generation was able to retire with pensions. That generation was able to fully secure social security. And so this is before the world got so insanely expensive that you could have a decent retirement at a decent age after a very normal career without having to be C-suite, without having to be the CEO. And so we had these grandparents that had done their time in the corporate world. They had retired, they were collecting their pensions, they were collecting their social security, their houses were paid off, and they had all the time in the world to spend with their grandkids. And that was part of the identity. The village of the 90s was full of carpools. Tell me one millennial that does not remember going to a basketball game in the back of a friend's station wagon or minivan. Tell me one millennial friend that doesn't remember doing a double buckle. I remember my grandpa had a seven-seat car, seven-seat big truck while we were growing up. And he often brought eight to nine people in that car. And we would just double triple buckle. Was it safe? No. Did we know at the time? Not really. We didn't have to worry about bringing car seats here and there and having boosters until we were eight years old. Am I saying that we shouldn't be doing those things? Absolutely not. But I am saying there were things that made life easier in the 90s that allowed the village to be more readily available and able to step in at a moment's notice that we don't have that luxury anymore. This brings us to the village we never got. We were promised this village. And if not by the words that were spoken, by the example that was set for us of the neighborhood moms helping out, being around, of the grandparents being at our beck and call for special days out, sleepovers at grandma and grandpa's house, or even just coming to stay while mom and dad went out on a trip or went out on a date. The problem was that village never came for most of us. And there's a lot of reasons why. And this isn't a blame game. This isn't about the fact that our parents haven't shown up for us the way they should. They don't have the same benefits that their parents had. Part of this is people aren't getting to retire at the same age. And so so many of us millennials who have had children have parents that are still in the corporate world. They are still grinding to be able to retire in a way that feels comfortable for them, for them to be able to maintain their lifestyle. Our basic life expectancy has got up, which means that our parents need more money to retire because their money has to go longer. So that means that when we started having babies, we still had parents working full time, which prevented them from being able to be here at our backing call. That's not their fault. That is the reality that they were dealt with, and they still have to take care of their own lives. Also, as millennials, as we were raised, we were told that you can go anywhere. The world is your oyster. Anywhere in the United States, there's so much of the world to see. Gone were the days where the expectation was that you grew up in a specific area of the country or a specific state and you stayed there your entire life. So many of us were encouraged to spread our wings and go somewhere for college, go far away, have the adventure, see what's out there. It became so much more accessible than it ever was before. To jump on a plane, flying became more affordable. It became more normalized to go across the country or across the world for your schooling, study abroad became more accessible and more common. And the idea of taking a job out of state after graduation was often encouraged. While I am so aware of how fortunate we are as a generation to have the accessibility to companies all across the globe in all of these different experiences, there is also a downside with that. Because so, because for so many millennials, we went to school out of the state. We took a job out of state, but guess what we did? We moved away from that village that we were promised. And I don't believe that was a conscious choice for any of us when we were 18 years old or 22 years old. And then we are faced with the decision: do we move back to the place where our village resides and we can have the village that we believe we will because of what we saw growing up? Or do we stay far away where we have built this life, where we have built this career, where we are chasing our dreams and potentially not have any village for our adult life, for our parenthood journey. And then finally, we were we were told time and time again that we could be anything as young millennial girls. But no one ever told us what was going to happen to everything our moms were doing at home, our stay-at-home parents were doing, because no one knew. It was never a dress, which meant that while we saw this village growing up where you could go to your neighbor's house and play all day, and maybe your mom has no kids home and she's catching up on laundry, she's cleaning up the house, she's tending to her garden, she's not balancing the 40, 50, 60 hour job on top of all those things. The difference today is that when we lean into the village that we do have, it often is to do the bare minimum to be able to afford a life for our family. It is less about leaning into that village to get caught up on laundry. It's more about leaning into that village so you don't miss the giant presentation that you've been preparing for for a month. It's leaning into that village to allow you to go on the work trip that you have to do to meet the expectations of the big job that you have worked so flipping hard for. That village never came. That village no longer existed once all of us millennials became parents. And as millennials, we have two choices. We can be pissed, and I think a lot of us are. But we also need to make the decision to say we are not victims. This is our reality, and all we can do is show the next generation a better alternative. We don't want to give up our dreams. We don't want our daughters to give up their dreams. We want them to know that they need to go after what they want. They need to use their brain in the way that will give them the most fulfillment in life. But we also recognize the hurdles that they're gonna jump through. And there will indefinitely be hurdles that we don't even know about, that we need to walk eyes wide open as we become the older generation and we're supporting our kids through parenthood. That being said, what we can do today is to look at what does the village for a millennial parent in 2026 look like? The way I like to think about a village is it's broken down into three categories. There is the the village that you were born into, the village that you pay for, and finally there is the village that you create. The village that you're born into is not a guarantee. The village that you are born into consists of family, it consists of your parents, potentially stepparents, it consists of siblings, it consists of cousins, it consists of people that are there by nature. All families are not created equal. You might have a parent that's deceased, you might not have strong relationships with parents. You might have siblings that have their own children or live all over the country. And so while there is an element to the village you were born into, it is so important for us to remember that those villages are not created equal. Even if you have a really close relationship with your family, they might not have the bandwidth, the financial means, the accessibility to be able to be the village in the way you need. We also recognize that that family we are born into is still living their lives. And their lives at six years old look very different than their parents' lives looked at six years old. They are still exploring the world. They are still creating that life that they are proud of, whether it be through work or experience, the village you're born into, whatever that looks like, can be a very strong village. It is the only village that is one way. It is the only village that you might you can be on the receiving end of a service, of support, of comfort. And they don't expect something back. Simple example, right? If your mom comes to babysit for you, for your kids, more than likely she's not expecting to get paid. More than likely she's not saying, hey, since I babysit for your kids, I need you to come clean my toilets. I don't know. Maybe other people have different situations. And I'm sure that they do. But in general, that village that you're born into, whatever that looks like, is often the village where you can take more than you can give. I think of it as passing it on. The things that that village we are born into have done for us through the various stages of our life are the things that we will do for that next generation. They might be different things, but it's the whole idea of the support of that next generation. The second type of village, like I mentioned, is the village you pay for. I think this village gets forgotten about a lot. I think it often isn't thought about like a village. I think there's a lot of guilt associated with the village you pay for. But I think it's time for us to recognize that we would not be able to function as a society. And millennials would not be able to function in the way that we were promised as kids, as full-time working parents, still raising healthy, happy, active kids without a village that we pay for. When we talk about a village that we pay for, it's everything from childcare. If you pay for any kind of childcare for your child, you are paying for part of your village. And there is no shame in that. There is absolutely no shame in paying for a service that allows you and your family to live their best life. Paying for your village can also include paying for the cleaning service that comes and does a deep clean to your house once a month or once every other week. For our family, part of the village we pay for is a laundry service. We have someone take our children's laundry every other week and wash, dry, and fold it. This takes an immense pressure off of the working parent and more often than not, off of the working mom. There are so many things we can and should be paying for to alleviate that pressure. It's impossible for you to do it all and do it all well. And if you are doing it all right now, it's not sustainable. The way I like to think about paying for my village is recognizing that there are people out there that do things better than I do. They do things I don't want to do and they find joy in that. Call me crazy, but it turns out there are people that enjoy to do laundry. I don't. I would be the worst person to pay to do your laundry. It's not going to be done well. But there are people out there that don't mind it and they'd like to make a buck while doing it. There are people that have given their lives to child care. They are experts in children. They understand children. They have more patience than God with children. I'm also not that person. I love my children. Do I want a career in it? I don't. I do not, which is why I did not choose a career in that space. The other way I think about paying for your village is, well, yes, maybe I could squeeze out time to get my kids' laundry done or deep clean my house or scrub a toilet. It's not that I'm above those things. It is that I don't want to do those things. But the two biggest benefits I see in outsourcing and paying for parts of my village is instead of the mental load of when is the laundry going to get done, when is the house going to get clean, the potential arguments with your spouse about who's going to do it, when are they going to do it, are they doing it right? It takes away that conflict. And when you know it's going to come, it takes away the pressure of getting it done. And when it's actually being done, it gives you a chance to catch up in the way you need to catch up. That might mean you get to catch up and work. That might mean that when someone else has taken the laundry, I get to go do something fun with my kids. I get to go out to the park with my kids. I go on a bike ride. I get to snuggle up and watch a movie with my kids. And so instead of feeling bad about this village that I paid for, I've chosen to approach that village as a way to enable me to be more purposeful with my time. When I look back at my life, what do I want out of it? I want to remember how hard I worked at my career, the impact I was able to make in other people's lives. I want to remember the time I spent with my kids snuggled up, watching a movie, going to the museum, making homemade pizza. I don't want to think about scrubbing the toilet. I don't want to think about folding the laundry. Other people might, and that is fine. But we need to stop shaming moms for using a paid village. Pay for that grocery delivery service. Or if there are things on your plate that are causing you stress and anxiety and they are taking away from the things that bring you joy, it's okay. It's okay to ask for help. And it's okay to pay for that help. We need to take away the dirtiness of that. The final village, and what I hear millennials talking about the most, is the village that we have built, the village that we have curated, the village that we have to invest in to get something out of. This is the closest to the village of the 90s, the neighborhood moms, the other parents in the school that our kids go to. This is the village of our friends from high school and college that had kids around the same time that we did. This is the village that we lean on when we can't show up 100%. And what that looks like is gonna look different for everyone. And what that looks like is going to continue to ebb and flow with what your needs are and what your friends' needs are. This looks like calling that friend and saying, I got to get out of the house. I don't know what to do with the kids. Can we meet at a playground? So the kids have someone to play with and I have someone to talk to. When you're at your wits' end with your child or children, you can call and say, Any chance your kids are home? My kids need a change of scenery and I need a 10-minute, a 30-minute, a one-hour break. This is the village that you send the picture of the red bumps on your baby's belly and say, Is this a hydrocortisone situation or is this a I need to go to the doctor situation? This is the village that reminds us the reality of parenting, both the beautiful parts and the hard parts, walking through it with us the good, the bad, the ugly. And while they are walking through it with you, they are willing to support you and show up when you are unable to. But the most important thing to remember about this village is you can't just take from this village. You have to give. And that is not going to be equal every day because there are seasons to this people. There are seasons to this parenting. But this is the village that you lean on when you have the newborn and you're exhausted. But then when they have the newborn, you're showing up for them in the way that they need as well. Finally, this is the village that reminds us of reality versus social media. This is the village that reminds us it's normal to have a clutter of shoes at your front door. It's normal to have an overflowing basket of laundry. It's normal to not have every room in your house look Pinterest worthy. But this is the village that you have the most control over. And as millennial parents, I think it's very easy to feel like a victim that we were promised something, we never received it, and we are being dealt a much harder hand than anyone was expecting. No one expected that millennials growing up would have to buy a $750,000 house to get more than a thousand square feet in the majority of the country. No one expected the cost of daycare for millennial parents to be the same price as many state schools. No one expected the idea of a pension to completely disappear. But at the end of the day, that is the hand that we have been dealt. And so we can either sit and wallow in that hand, which sometimes feels good. I'm not going to say I never do that, but instead, I choose to take a step back and recognize how do I make this work? How do I continue to think about the world around me, the hand I've been dealt, and the goals and ambition and dreams I have for this life, and pull all of those things together. There is a village out there for us. There are three villages out there for us. But we have to be able to lean into those villages, recognize when you have to lean in harder to one or the other, and drop the guilt associated with it. Every single person needs a village. How full or how active each of those three villages are in each mom's life is going to be different. It's going to change for you over the years as families change, as our parents get older, as our kids get out of daycare, as their friends change, as their schools change, as their activities and their needs change. But the one thing we have been able to prove as millennial moms is that we are resilient, we are ambitious, we are driven, and we can figure it out. But we need to stop the judgment, we need to stop the shaming, we need to stop the guilt, we need to lean into what we what we need as individuals, and we need to support those around us. I hope this has given you a different perspective on what the village for a millennial mom can look like and encourages you to reflect on your three villages. Where do you have a lot of support? Where don't you? Where do you need to find that support elsewhere? Whether it's paying for that support or curating that support and getting deeper into a community to be truly a part of that village. I'm not suggesting it's not hard. I'm not suggesting that we don't feel burnt out and that we have too much on their plates, but we have to keep moving forward and finding those little ways to alleviate the impossible load of the full-time working mom in 2026 and make a better path for our kids and show our daughters and our sons how to go after your dreams and have the family and truly have it all. Thank you guys so much for listening. I would love to hear your comments about this episode. What other villages are out there that I'm not thinking of? Go find your village, go invest in your village and keep killing it. Talk soon. Okay, that's it. Thanks for joining this episode of Who Let Me Do This? Go drink some water, set a boundary, and don't forget you're doing amazing, sweetie, even if you're spiraling. And hey, if this episode made you laugh or feel seen, send it to a friend, hit follow, or leave a review. You know, do all the things. See you next time.