Episode 23: Three Social Justice Actions to Build Your Parenting Support System

“Many parents told me that getting support around parenting is a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” sort of situation…where individualism makes you feel like you’re failing by asking for help and capitalism shames you when you can’t afford the help.”

A woman with short black hair and bright red lipstick smiling, wearing a green embroidered top with colorful floral decorations and large multicolored earrings, set against a pink background.

Episode Summary

In this episode, you and I are going to roll up our sleeves and dig into how to build a parenting support system. We’ll explore what social justice actions like pod mapping, building mutual aid networks, and nonviolent conflict resolution can teach us about how to build a parenting support system that’s based on trust, reciprocity, and interdependence. We’ll also unpack how inner child wounds can sometimes make this interdependence and community building work so uncomfortable and challenging.

Full episode transcript here.

Quote about nervous system reactions to threats, featuring a woman's photo at the top, episode 23 of Come Back to Care Podcast, and icons for Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Amazon Music at the bottom.

Episode Outline

A parenting support system is a necessity when a systemic support is lacking.
How “marginalized” communities have survived and thrived outside systems in solidarity.
Asking for help is hard when you are already burnt out.
Different ways your upbringing affects your comfort around asking for help.
Why reaching out to other families can stir up feelings of unworthiness, “being needy,” rejection, humiliation, shame, and ambiguous loss.
We contextualize- not pathologize- our discomfort or resistance around reaching out to people, asking them for help, receiving it, and relaxing into that support in our upbringing and inner child wounds.
Building your parenting support system: What pod mapping is and what it can teach us about identifying “our people” and cultivating trust and consent in the relationships.
Managing your parenting support system: What mutual aid is and what it can teach us about non-hierarchical, shared, participatory, and transparent group decision making.
Deepening trust in your parenting support system: What nonviolent conflict resolution is and what it can teach us about generative conflict.