This Mother’s Day, many of us will honor the mothers in our lives. For some, that may include recognition to the nonparents in our village who helped raise us.
I was recently reminded of what building a village can look like in practice. My partner and his ex-wife share custody of his 14-year-old daughter (I’ll call her D). Recently, his ex-wife bought a ticket to a mother-daughter supper club scheduled for the week before Mother’s Day. When an inescapable work conflict came up, she offered me the ticket so I could take D instead.
As someone who has spent more than two decades working with young people and studying positive youth development, I immediately clocked that this was not just a casual invitation. I took it as an act of trust.
Being included matters. To be invited into a space typically reserved for a parent and to be trusted with a child you did not raise but deeply care about, communicates “I trust you and see you as part of this child’s support system.”
At a time when young people are experiencing worrisomely high rates of loneliness, these moments remind us of the specific actions that we as adults can take in their lives. At its core, the current youth mental health crisis is a crisis of connection. One in six people experience loneliness, with the highest rates among teens. Back in 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness a public health epidemic. And, more recently, over a third of young people report that loneliness interferes with their daily lives in the United States.
Decades of research show that young people—even those exposed to adverse childhood experiences—do better when they have more trusted adults in their lives. And we’re not just referring to parents here: Children need a network of adults — teachers, mentors, coaches, and extended family members like an aunt or uncle. They need people who show up across contexts, consistently, and over time. Research shows that adolescents with several supportive non-parental adults have healthier mental health outcomes, higher self-esteem, and perform better academically.
Parenting has always been demanding. What has changed is the networks that once supported parents/families. Raising children was never intended to be done alone. It relied on a community of relationships, from neighbors to relatives to educators and community members, each contributing in different ways.
In modern family structures, including blended families, those networks can be more complex. Co-parenting across households is not easy. It requires adults to navigate complicated histories, potentially unresolved emotions, and other competing priorities while maintaining a shared focus on the children. Research is clear, though, that cooperative co-parenting, defined by how well adults work together and respectfully communicate with one another, helps a child maintain stability and develop prosocial behaviors. How adults work together can matter even as much as, and sometimes more than, what each adult does individually. When adults in the child’s life align, they all send a powerful message to the child: You are loved and supported by many.
Building that kind of alignment requires a willingness to push ourselves beyond comfort. It means intentionally choosing collaboration and openness to allow others into your child’s life. These choices are expressed through small, consistent steps toward this goal. In this case, it was the act of inviting me to attend this supper club. That gesture communicated something powerful to D. It said that she has a network of adults in her life to support her. It modeled cooperation, consideration, and trust.
To be sure, this invitation was not about replacing a parent or diminishing a primary bond. Parental relationships remain central and irreplaceable. What this approach offered was an expansion of support, an acknowledgment that additional trusted adults strengthen a child’s well-being.
Not all families have the conditions to make these choices easily. Structural challenges, unresolved conflict, and competing demands can make collaboration difficult. These realities should not be minimized. But when opportunities for connection are available, they matter.
As it turned out, the dinner itself was canceled by the host. D’s mother sent me a message apologizing for the change, followed by a beautiful invitation: “Perhaps we could attend a future event together over the summer?”
That message was another subtle step in building the village we speak of. It is through invitations, gestures of inclusion, and intentional coordination between adults that we signal to the young people in our lives that support is not limited to a single relationship but distributed across a network. It’s that safety net of trusted adults who step forward, sometimes imperfectly, to share responsibility and build that village together.
