Sometimes, after a long day alone with my young children, I wonder what life as a mother would have been like a long, long time ago, when we were cavepeople. 

While it sounds unpleasant to cook squirrel meat over a fire, hide from wooly mammoths, and make clothes out of coyote fur, what sounds appealing is the cavemama communal living.  Maybe the phrase “it takes a village” originated then:  a time when mothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, helped each other with daily child-rearing and household duties. 

In a world where so many of us find ourselves hundreds of miles from our own mothers and sisters, it’s oddly comforting to picture myself as a cavewoman, stirring a pot of bison stew with my nephew while my sister straps my baby on her back to forage for berries, and my mom potty [bush?] trains my son.

About the Author

Julia Arnold

Julia Arnold is a mom of two young kids living in the Twin Cities who is still coming to terms with the fact that her counters are always sticky, and her floor is never clean. She writes about the less glamorous side of new motherhood on her blog .