"The day I went into labor early, a neighbor offered to change our sheets and tidy the house. When we potty trained my oldest daughter, three neighbors took turns watching our 2-month-old baby. Whenever someone new moves in, there’s a dinner or drinks out with the neighborhood to get to know them. We closed our street for an annual Halloween party and had a silent disco party for New Year’s Eve this year. My family has Sunday dinner with a neighbor at least a few times a month. I joke that it’s not the great mortgage rate that my husband and I locked in in 2022 that will keep us in our house. It’s the fact that our neighbors are like family now.
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It’s a sense of community I never expected to find after spending my 20s and 30s barely speaking a word to people I lived next door to. Now that I’ve experienced this type of community and sense of belonging I have in our neighborhood, I recognize how much of a positive impact it has on my life. It makes me sad to realize that I missed out on over a decade of potential community by not making any effort to get to know my neighbors, but I feel better equipped to build community if we ever leave our current house.
The importance of community
They say “it takes a village”—a support system that you can lean on for emotional or physical help—to raise kids and to generally get through life. Knowing there are people you can call in an emergency or who can share in your joys and losses is good for your health, too.
In 2023, former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy warned that being lonely and lacking social connection can exacerbate the risk for things like depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, and stroke. He noted in his advisory that community involvement has been declining since the 1970s, and in 2018 found that only 16 percent of Americans felt very connected to their community.
“Social connection is a fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter,” he writes. “Throughout history, our ability to rely on one another has been crucial to survival.”
It can be hard to build a new community
But how do you find that village and community? Making friends and connections as an adult is hard, but if having a parenting village or neighbors who feel like family is so crucial, why aren’t there instructions on how to build one?
Growing up, I lived on a cul-de-sac that had lots of families with small children. Times were different, but I remember bopping around from house to house every afternoon after school (without any cell phones or GPS devices to keep track of where I was!) and big kick-the-can games during the summer.
The parents were all friends, too, and would hang out often, and my parents are still friends with them 30 years later. I assumed all neighborhoods were this connected but got a rude awakening after college.
I couldn’t tell you the name of anyone I lived next door to, let alone down the street, until I moved to our current neighborhood. My husband and I didn’t even know the names of the family that lived in the apartment directly across from us in NYC.
It wasn’t because I didn’t want to get to know my neighbors. Creating a community that makes it feel like family takes vulnerability and can be a bit scary. Introducing yourself to someone who lives so close to you can be intimidating—what if they don’t want to get to know you and that makes things awkward for the rest of the time you live there?
But what I’ve learned from living in our current neighborhood is that everyone craves connection and that neighbors want to be a support system. Even if you don’t become best friends with your neighbors, having people you can leave a spare key with or ask to check your mail when you’re on vacation or to borrow sugar from is a comforting feeling.
How to start or strengthen a neighborhood community
Introduce yourself to your neighbors
When my husband and I moved to our current neighborhood, we took a bag of chocolate covered pecans and a note with our names, where we lived, and our numbers to all of the houses on our street.
Some neighbors were home when we rang the doorbell, so we got to introduce ourselves in person and make a connection, but others came home to find their goodies. We started receiving thank you texts from neighbors, which meant we soon had a list of numbers from our street-mates.
If you’ve already been in the neighborhood for a while, you could use a holiday like Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day to walk goodies and your contact information around. Or bake a few batches of cookies and drop ‘just because’ packages on everyone’s porch. It’ll prompt conversation. It can be the beginning of building a relationship to possibly having neighbors that feel like family.
Start a listserv with your neighbors
Our neighborhood doesn’t have a formal email list-serve, but many do to share things for sale or to ask for recommendations for things like plumbers. This can foster a greater sense of community even if you aren’t communicating face to face.
Once you have a couple of neighbors’ information, ask if there’s any sort of email list that you can join. If one doesn’t exist, it could be a great time to start. Dr. Murthy has even commented on how much he got to know about his neighbors through a listserv.
Instead of one of these, our neighborhood has a massive text chain. As new neighbors move in, they get added. We share any safety concerns, ask if anyone’s up for a Friday beer, and plan group meet-ups. The moms also have a side Instagram chat group for sharing relatable memes during the day.
Like I mentioned above, we’re all wired for human interaction and connection. My guess is that you have neighbors who would want to be closer but who are afraid to make the first move.
Offer to have a casual drop-in one afternoon or evening where kids and adults are welcome, or suggest that everyone meet at a neighborhood bar to watch a sports game together. Drop-ins are great so people know they don’t have to stay long if they are uncomfortable, while watching a game together means there will be something to talk about or pay attention to if you don’t know what else to do.
Being part of a neighborhood community has brought me so much joy, and I am thankful knowing that my family is supported. I can vent with other moms about the ups and downs of parenting but also know that I can lean on neighbors for help when we need it.
Building a community and having neighbors feel like family takes time. If you’re nervous to take the first step, think of all of the things you can gain by being a bit vulnerable and putting yourself out there. It’s so worth it, I promise.
Elliott Harrell, Contributing Writer
Elliott is a mom of two little girls and is based in Raleigh, NC. She spends her days running a sales team and doing laundry and her nights writing about the things that she loves. She’s passionate about all things motherhood and women’s health. When she’s not working, writing or parenting you can find her trying a new restaurant in town or working on her latest needlepoint project.