WHY IT'S HARDER NOW
You're Not Failing. The Support Structures Are Missing.
steamHouse Essay — For Families Track
Start with this: you're not crazy.
If raising kids feels harder than it should, that's not your imagination. If you're doing everything "right" and still worried — that's not neurosis. If your family has more resources than any previous generation and something still feels missing — you're not alone.
The context has changed. What used to happen automatically now requires deliberate effort. The structures that once supported families have weakened or disappeared.
This isn't catastrophizing. It's naming reality so we can address it.
The Village Fragmented
For most of human history, children were raised by villages.
Not metaphorically. Literally. Extended families lived close together. Neighbors knew each other across generations. Kids moved through their days observed by adults who knew their names, their parents, their stories.
No one planned this system. It emerged from how humans lived. And within it, development happened almost automatically:
Multiple adults knew each child — not just parents, but aunts, uncles, neighbors, elders. Different angles on a developing self.
Kids did real work — genuine contribution the family depended on, not invented chores.
Older kids looked after younger ones — natural mentorship, constant modeling.
The community noticed — reputation mattered, actions had consequences, accountability was built in.
Everyone belonged — you knew who your people were.
Now consider what's happened.
Families are mobile. Extended kin are scattered across the country. Neighbors are strangers who share walls but not lives. Kids are observed primarily by paid professionals who see fragments and move on. Older kids are segregated from younger ones by rigid age-grading.
Each change made sense on its own. Jobs required moving. Suburbs offered space. Schools organized by age. Careers demanded both parents.
Collectively, they dismantled the developmental environment humans had relied on for millennia.
The Environment Shifted
The village fragmenting would be hard enough. But the environment kids navigate has also transformed.
Your child encounters:
Infinite stimulation. The entire world's novelty available at any moment. Every app optimized to capture attention. A brain built for scarcity drowning in engineered abundance.
Global social comparison. Status systems evolved for groups of 150 now comparing your kid to millions. The curated highlight reels of strangers. Metrics of likes and followers that can never be won.
Engineered persuasion. Thousands of people whose job is capturing attention and directing behavior. Algorithms learning what triggers your child and serving more of it.
Simulated connection. The feeling of belonging without the substance. Hundreds of online "friends" and no one who would notice if they disappeared.
This isn't your child's weakness. It's a mismatch between the brain they inherited and the world they inhabit. The instincts that kept ancestors alive now make kids vulnerable to systems designed to exploit exactly those instincts.
Good Families Are Struggling
Put these together:
The village that once shared the work of raising children is gone. Each household operates as an independent unit.
The environment kids navigate has been colonized by forces competing for their attention — often in directions that don't serve their flourishing.
Schools can't fill the gap. Teachers see too many kids, change too often, operate within structures designed for different purposes.
Activities can't fill the gap. Each one is a silo. No one connects them. No one helps kids see how what they're learning in one place relates to who they're becoming overall.
So parents try to fill all the gaps themselves. They drive and schedule and supervise and hope that somehow, through accumulation, their children will develop into capable adults.
Often it works. Kids are resilient. Good intentions matter.
But it's harder than it needs to be. And something is visibly breaking down for many families. The anxiety, the loneliness, the fragility — these aren't random. They're symptoms of a developmental environment that isn't providing what humans need.
What's Actually Missing
Kids aren't known. They're evaluated, measured, scheduled — but not known. No adult outside their family has watched them grow over years.
Families are isolated. Each household operates alone. There's no community that shares the burden, provides support, holds the family.
Development is invisible. The growth that matters most — character, judgment, wisdom — happens without anyone naming it. Kids can't articulate how they've changed. Parents can't see what's developing.
Connection is simulated. Kids have hundreds of online contacts and no one who really knows them. The feeling of belonging without the substance.
None of this is your fault. You didn't break the village. You can't rebuild it alone.
But it can be rebuilt. Deliberately. Locally. By families who find each other and commit to raising kids together.
That's what steamHouse is for.
~850 words · 4 min read