A Tale of Two Surgeon General's Warnings

We need ways for overwhelmed parents and lonely people to find each other.

Welcome! I’m Lisa Sibbett and this is The Auntie Bulletin, a newsletter for people who are helping to raise other people’s kids. 

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Has Anyone Else Noticed This?

Aunties, the most recent two U.S. Surgeon General’s warnings are like a matched set. In August 2024, Dr. Vivek Murthy (himself a parent of two young kids) warned that American parents are at their wits’ end. And in May 2023, Murthy warned of a public health epidemic of isolation and loneliness. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve considered that these two problems might help solve each other. Let me illustrate.

Since launching this newsletter in early September, I’ve received many communications from parents who wish they had more support in their lives. A common refrain – especially from single parents – goes like this:

Sometimes when I’m walking past a retirement community with my kids I want to veer in and start yelling, “Hello!!! Anybody here want to pick up some grandparent duty?”

Okay, now get a load of this. Since September I have also received many communications from people who wish they had more kids in their lives, and here’s a common refrain from those folks:

Sometimes when I’m walking past a playground, I want to veer in and go around to the parents like, “Hey, do you want any help with your kids or anything? Do you need a grandparent or Auntie-type person, by chance?”

Y’all, I am not making this up. At first I was like, “huh, weird coincidence!” But then it kept happening. More parents told me about staring longingly at retirement communities. More people without kids in their lives told me about gazing wistfully at playgrounds.

So here’s what I’ve been thinking: overwhelmed parents need more kin – more community to help care for their kids and give them breaks and have their backs. Lonely adults need more kin, too – more community to love and be loved by, and to provide ongoing daily connection and meaning in their lives. We need to figure out ways for the overwhelmed parents and the lonely people to find each other, get to know each other, and start to treat each other a bit like family. It won’t be easy. The path isn’t clear. It’s obviously not for everyone. But I think it’s possible that a lot of overwhelmed parents and a lot of lonely people could connect up, build kinship, and help address each other’s central problems.

Bicanski, via PIXNIO

Building new kinship relations requires courage and faith. We need courage to reach out a hand to someone we don’t think of as kin – to ask them to come closer, to let us in, to let us help, to let ourselves be helped. It takes faith that we are genuinely worthy of other people’s love and trust, and it takes faith that we can find and connect with others who are genuinely worthy of our love and trust. Building kinship connections also takes patience, because love and trust aren’t built overnight, and it takes good judgment, because parents need to make careful choices about who they let into their kids’ lives.

So where do we find our people? How can we start building connections? How can we think about safely bringing people into kids’ lives? How can we go from strangers to friends and from friends to kin? I don’t have all the answers — if these questions were easy, we’d have all this stuff figured out already. But over the next few months I’ll be diving into these topics in an exploratory capacity, starting next week with the premier of my new “Ask an Auntie” column. I’ll be offering some ideas in response to this excellent question from Auntie Bulletin reader Iris:

When I’m at the pool with my grandchildren, it feels ok to bring other parents’ kids into the ruckus without asking. But walking onto a playground not knowing anyone – most parents and guardians are unsure of me. Do you have suggestions about where I could go to connect with families?

Iris dropped her question into a comment thread, and if you have a question for a future edition of “Ask an Auntie,” you can do that, too. I always read every comment on my newsletter posts. You can also message me through the Substack app, or email me at auntiebulletin@gmail.com. 

Three Recommended Reads

One. Parents Under Pressure

At her newsletter The Opt Out, Kelly Johnson took a deep dive into the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on parents’ overwhelm – so you don’t have to. She sums up Murthy’s statistic-laden report in 21 short takeaways, and it’s a quick, info-rich read. If you haven’t had time to read the full report, read Johnson’s summary instead.

When the surgeon general puts his or her warning stamp on something, one thing is clear – we should probably pay attention.

Here’s a list of some previous warnings doled out by surgeons general over time, just to give you an idea of the issues that have been worthy of advisories in the past:

• Cigarettes (1964)

• Violence on TV and in video games (1972)

• AIDS (1986)

• Drunk driving (1989)

• Obesity (2001)¹

• Vaping (2016)

• Gun violence (2023)

• Loneliness and isolation (2023)

• Parenting (2024)

Two. How to Never Say “Let Me Know If There’s Anything I Can Do” Again.

Maggie of Early Bird sketches what she learned about showing up for new parents (or anyone undergoing a major life event) when her son was born. She offers a wealth of highly specific alternatives to saying “let me know if there’s anything I can do,” including how to make specific offers of help (with scripts!), how to just show up and do what needs doing, the contents of her “ultimate postpartum prep care package,” and how to win at meal trains (with suitable recipes!):

When you say “let me know if there is anything I can do”  (or any of its iterations), you leave it up to the recipient to decide what an appropriate ask is, and then also actually ask you for it. While intended to be helpful, it can often end up adding to the already mentally taxing burden of whatever is going on. 

I know from my experience, I definitely needed and wanted help, but I either didn’t really know what help would be helpful, or I didn’t know how to bring it up days after the original offer of support, so I never asked and just left it at that. 

All that’s to say: here’s what I now like to do instead….

Three. A Changemaking Guide to Intergenerational Collaboration.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my weekly recommended reads was the report, Is America Ready to Unleash a Multigenerational Force for Good?, which reported on research about Americans’ strong desire to connect across generations. This week, from The Grandmother Collective and Ashoka, I am recommending a kind of companion report, this time on how to connect across generations. It’s entitled Thrive Together: A Changemaking Guide to Intergenerational Collaboration, and I’ll be writing more about it next week. It’s chock-full of real-world examples and practical solutions for cultivating intergenerational communities. Here’s one I love:

Social Dancing is inspired by the Poco Poco dancing of the Alzheimer’s Indonesia community, as a potent tool for dementia prevention…. Intergenerational social dancing, as seen in trends like TikTok challenges, Jerusalema Challenge, line dancing, K-Pop dances, fusion styles, and online classes, brings generations together, fostering bonds over shared experiences and celebrating diversity. In a tech-centric world that can isolate age groups, these dance forms provide joyful connections and mutual understanding. 

And Now, the Cute Kid Video of the Week

First kiwi! This video cracks me up. The baby is so horrified, but so intrigued.

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1. The Auntie Bulletin strives to be a fat-positive space. Over the past several years, I’ve learned a lot from anti-diet nutritionists and public intellectuals including Shana Minei-Spence, Virginia Sole-Smith, Kate Manne, and if you’re not familiar with the arguments about why diet culture is problematic and oppressive, I highly recommend checking out these newsletters. Sole-Smith and Manne have both recently released books to high acclaim, and if you’re up for a deeper dive, Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body is Not an Apology is a must-read.