“It takes a village,” I was assured even before my daughter was born.
A village to provide for a child. A village to help with the child. A village to educate the child. A village to instill morals into the child. For a phrase popularized by Hillary Clinton, nominally hailing from some remote place in the massive continent of Africa (no one is quite sure where), “it takes a village” certainly gets a lot of traction. At this point, saying the words feels akin to invoking some great and intractable rule of the universe.
It wasn’t just the mom-themed social media posts my algorithm magically figured I needed to see — it was my mom, my sisters, the lovely women who came to my baby shower, and even the grandmas in the grocery-store checkout line.
Presumably, most of us say “village” and mean something along the lines of “a community — friends or family — I’ve chosen and would trust with my life.” Statistically speaking, that kind of community is more dream than reality for most young families today. So, because nature abhors a vacuum, something must step into that community’s place.
Enter Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts.
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