A Village Denied

Co-authored by Shrankhla and Sadhika on August 28, 2025

Of all the deprivations visited upon modern childhood, none is so grave and yet so little acknowledged as the absence of other people. Those of us who grew up in fuller households know what today’s children are missing. We remember weddings where ten different families would squeeze into one house, sleeping on the floor, with cousins lined up like sardines. We remember giving up one’s own bed to an elderly uncle, and waking up to the sound of aunties and uncles gossiping arguing over tea.

In those homes, very little belonged entirely to us. The bed we slept on, the food on our plate, not even our stories. Someone was always listening in, correcting us, mocking us, softening our triumphs with their own, or placing a hand on our shoulders when we faltered. It was infuriating. It was also how we learned that life is not designed for any one person’s comfort—least of all a child’s.

Siblings taught us this brutally and tenderly: snatching a beloved toy one moment, defending us fiercely the next. Cousins were inconsistent but expanded our imagination, showing us how loyalty could shift and how affection could survive quarrels. Elders rarely asked what we wanted; they told us who we were. We learned early on that the world had all kinds of people: the caretakers, the gossipers, the strict elders, the funny cousins, the annoying neighbours who’d walk in uninvited and sit for hours and intrude in every way possible. Most of the credit for our problematic sense of humour goes to a relative’s offhand remark, a cousin’s relentless teasing, or an uncle’s unsolicited advice. None of it seemed monumental at the moment. We rolled our eyes, laughed it off, sulked for an afternoon and finally forgot about it. And yet, those were the voices that quietly shaped us in ways we didn't realize. They taught us to sit with embarrassment, to fight back, to laugh at ourselves, to see ourselves from the outside. The neighbourhood reached our ears unfiltered and everyone claimed to have a right to our stories. Looking back, it is almost alarming to realise how much of who we are came from those side characters we thought were interruptions. They were, in truth, the making of us.

Modern childhood comes with more loneliness than ever before. Children as young as six or seven, spend hours online, in worlds ruled by algorithms designed to promote rage bait, social media trends and certain kinds of messaging. Neighbours don’t speak, grandparents live in other cities and there are cousins whom one has only heard of, never met. The family unit has shrunk, and with it, the richness of childhood. 

Somewhere in our pursuit of what is “best” for our children, we seem to have forgotten that the most important lessons come from the wider circle of family and community. This tendency, particularly pronounced in the West, but increasingly spreading elsewhere, likes to imagine that a child’s welfare is best served by a kind of parental totalitarianism — carefully scheduled playdates, controlled outdoor play and algorithmically moderated entertainment. The child is expected to flourish best when entirely dependent on one or two parental figures, three at best (a babysitter, for instance). The assumption is flattering, because it casts the parent as the indispensable source of all that is necessary for the child’s emotional and intellectual growth. 

But children are not houseplants. They are adventurous and curious, and thrive in an unpredictable jungle of human variety. To grow amidst uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents and the motley assortment of neighbours, family friends and eccentric relatives, is to learn that one is not the sole object of the world’s attention. It is to encounter personalities that clash, opinions that differ and examples that are set by role models other than one’s own parents. A richly peopled childhood is the gift of perspective.

How do we restore that richness in an era of closed doors, high-rise living, and constant relocation?

Perhaps not by recreating the sprawling households of the past, but by choosing, with intention, a circle of people who consistently show up — friends who become family, relatives who can be trusted to love and guide as their own. Children, who see more keenly than they are seen, absorb from the conduct of their parents’ chosen companions a template of normality. Let children grow up amid such bonds, so they know what it means to belong to something bigger than themselves. Give them the freedom to explore new environments and meet new people, to experience warmth and also learn where to draw lines. Because the world is not made of safe spaces, and learning to navigate both comfort and conflict is essential to growing up.

One of the strangest aspects of our age, is that despite our professed concern for “socialisation”, we have created environments more socially impoverished than at any point in living memory. To have a child these days, especially if one is in one’s twenties is to enter a desert, for one’s friends, still absorbed in the trivial pursuits of prolonged adolescence, regard her maternal seriousness as an inexplicable betrayal. Even those of us who do choose to begin families, move to cities where no one knows us, congratulating ourselves on our independence as we sit isolated in our apartments. We have fewer children because they are “expensive”, inconvenient or because we believe ourselves “not ready”. We stop speaking to relatives over slights, real or perceived, and nurse our wounded pride with psychobabble like “toxic” and “boundaries”. In doing so, we rob children of the web of kinship that once taught resilience.

That web matters because family members play off one another. A grandmother’s indulgence tempers a father’s severity, an uncle’s story of failure teaches what a mother’s praise cannot, and a cousin’s mockery steels one against the cruelties of the wider world. These influences may not always be pleasant, but to deny a child access to them is to produce a fragile creature, attuned to his own comfort yet disastrously unprepared for reality. 

Creating this environment often requires a sacrifice most adults, in their solipsism, are reluctant to make. It requires the recognition that one’s own grievances, social awkwardness, and desire for control must sometimes be subordinated to the greater good. There comes a point at which the fantasy of being the main character of one’s life must be given up, and given up for good. To “do it for the child” may mean swallowing one’s pride, inviting the uncle you haven’t spoken to in years, or enduring the talkative aunt whose politics you despise. It may mean sitting in rooms you find dull and listening to stories you have heard countless times before. In other words, it may mean behaving like an adult. 

Image source: Children's Games by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.