When Did We Stop Trusting Each Other with Our Children?
Building on our “Reimagining Childcare” series as we move toward the year-end “Play Is the Blueprint” campaign
There’s a grandmother in Durham who watches her grandchildren three days a week so her daughter can work. She isn’t licensed. She’s not listed in any childcare database. She doesn’t charge a dollar, though it costs her time, energy, and often rest.
There’s also a neighbor who takes in kids after school. An aunt who covers school breaks. A godparent who steps in during emergencies. A friend who swaps hours of care with another parent.
They’re everywhere—holding families together through invisible acts of care.
And yet, when policymakers and economists talk about “childcare,” these people disappear.
So we ask: When did we stop trusting each other with our children?
The Shift We Don’t Talk About
Over the past few generations, something changed. What once was a shared community effort slowly became a professionalized system—one that sometimes confuses regulation with trust.
Our grandparents’ generation grew up in neighborhoods where children drifted between homes, where adults shared responsibility for one another’s kids, and where asking a neighbor for help was normal, not desperate.
That old model wasn’t perfect—some children did fall through the cracks—but it carried something powerful: the belief that raising children was everyone’s work.
Today, informal care networks still exist, but they’ve become invisible to our systems.
The grandmother providing care isn’t counted in workforce data.
The neighbor who helps after school doesn’t show up in childcare supply reports.
The intricate web of reciprocal care that actually keeps families afloat is missing from our frameworks.
We’ve built systems that only recognize what can be documented, licensed, or commodified—and we’ve lost sight of how trust itself keeps families strong.
When Fear Replaced Trust
Regulations and licensing came from a place of protection—after real tragedies, real failures. These safeguards matter. But somewhere along the way, we started to believe that only professionalized care could be safe.
That belief has consequences. It creates safety standards, yes—but it also erodes community trust. We begin to distrust neighbors, grandparents, and even ourselves. Parents feel guilty accepting or offering help unless it fits a formal category. Families become more isolated, not more supported.
The systems designed to protect children have, without meaning to, disconnected families from the very communities that help them thrive.
The Economics That Broke the Village
The change in how we care for children didn’t happen by accident—it followed the economy.
As the cost of living went up and wages stayed the same, most families needed two incomes to make ends meet. Jobs started to move farther from home, and people followed, spreading extended families across states. Work schedules became longer, less predictable, and harder to balance.
The “village” didn’t fade because people stopped caring—it broke under pressure.
Into that gap came what we now call the childcare industry. It grew because families still needed help, but there were fewer grandparents and neighbors close by. Licensed childcare became the main solution, but it was built inside a system that runs on money, not community.
And that’s part of the problem.
We’ve turned something deeply human—caring for children—into something families must buy. Parents are expected to purchase, on their own, what used to be shared across communities.
That’s not because providers are charging too much. In fact, most are barely covering their costs. It’s because the system asks childcare programs to act like businesses when what they really are is essential community infrastructure.
We’re trying to solve a shared need with individual transactions. But care isn’t just a service—it’s a relationship. And that’s why the market alone can’t fix the childcare crisis.
What We Lost When We Stopped Playing Together
Trust and play are connected. Play is how humans—especially children—learn to share space, negotiate relationships, and depend on one another. It’s how communities remember what connection feels like.
But play requires presence. It needs shared space and unhurried time.
When childcare became professionalized, play became scheduled.
Circle time replaced backyard games. Supervised “learning activities” replaced spontaneous connection.
There’s nothing wrong with structure—it has its place—but the kind of unstructured, intergenerational play that once built trust has almost vanished. Without it, neighbors don’t get to know each other’s children. Adults and kids share fewer experiences outside family walls. The spaces where trust naturally forms are shrinking.
If we want to rebuild trust, we have to rebuild the conditions for shared play.
Recognizing What Still Exists
The good news: those care networks never went away. They’re still here—just unseen and unsupported.
Grandparents still show up. Neighbors still help. Families still swap hours to make it all work.
At Windy Hill Play, we see this every day. Families come to us not only for childcare, but for community—a place where informal care is recognized and respected. Where a godparent who picks up from school is part of the care team. Where grandparents, friends, and parents are all valued as caregivers in a child’s life.
When we say we’re building a village, this is what we mean: creating space for informal and formal care to exist side by side. Rebuilding trust through shared experiences. Making play the blueprint for connection.
Play Is the Blueprint for Rebuilding Trust
So how do we rebuild that trust?
We start with space—physical and emotional—where trust can grow through experience.
Play offers exactly that. In shared play, adults learn to be present without controlling, and children learn to trust adult responsiveness. Families meet each other in relaxed, authentic settings. Relationships form naturally.
Play isn’t a break from “real” work—it’s the foundation of how we learn to live together.
That’s why our year-end campaign centers on this belief: If we want to rebuild the village, we have to invest in the spaces that make play possible.
Not just fenced-in playgrounds or structured programs, but real community spaces for unstructured, intergenerational play—where families see each other often enough to become more than strangers.
That’s where trust is practiced. That’s where connection begins again.
The Systems We Need to Support the Village
Rebuilding trust doesn’t mean abandoning safeguards. It means designing systems that support informal networks instead of replacing them. That looks like:
Recognizing informal caregivers as part of the childcare ecosystem, not “gaps” in it
Creating spaces where families can meet and build trust
Designing policies that protect, not penalize, reciprocal care
Investing in environments that encourage repeated, organic connection
Supporting both licensed providers and the families who make community care work
At Windy Hill Play, this is exactly what we’re building at Bacon Street—not just a childcare center, but a childcare village. A place where formal programs meet informal community. Where the grandmother, the neighbor, and the godparent all have a place in the network that supports children.
An Invitation to Remember—and Rebuild
“When did we stop trusting each other with our children?” isn’t about nostalgia.
It’s about remembering what we’ve lost—and rebuilding it with care, safety, and intention.
We can’t regulate our way to connection. We can’t professionalize our way to community.
Trust is rebuilt through shared experience—and play is the blueprint for those experiences.
This is what we’re building at Windy Hill Play:
Spaces where trust can grow.
Systems that honor both safety and relationship.
A model that sees every caregiver—formal or informal—as essential.
As we move into our “Play Is the Blueprint” campaign, we’re inviting you to help build this vision. Not just funding spaces and programs, but investing in the philosophy that children thrive when raised by many caring adults, and that communities thrive when play connects them.
Our children deserve to grow up known, seen, and surrounded by care.
Let’s make that possible—together.
Support Our “Play Is the Blueprint” Campaign
We’re building Bacon Street, the future home of Windy Hill Play—a space designed for the kind of play that builds trust, the kind of connection that creates village, and the kind of care that honors everyone who shows up for children.