It can feel, in the middle of a hard 3am stretch, as though every generation of mother before you simply coped better. What actually changed isn’t mothers’ resilience. It’s the structure they were held inside.

The historical norm, briefly

For most of human history, and in many cultures still, a new mother was not the primary or sole caregiver operating alone. She was surrounded by a wider circle, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, neighbours, who shared the physical tasks of the early postpartum weeks, cooking, household work, holding the baby so she could rest, freeing her to focus on recovery and feeding.

What I’ve seen directly in Malawi

Through years of work with the charity I founded in Malawi, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing matriarchal community structures where this traditional model is still largely intact. New mothers there are cared for deliberately and communally in the early weeks, and the difference in reported exhaustion, isolation, and overwhelm compared with many mothers in more isolated, modern settings is genuinely visible, not simply a romantic assumption.

What changed with the shift to nuclear, isolated households

As extended-family living arrangements became less common, particularly in urban settings, new mothers increasingly moved from a shared caregiving structure into one where one or two people are expected to meet needs that were previously distributed across many hands. This is a structural shift, not a shift in how capable mothers are.

The research this pattern is consistent with

This lines up with the broader postpartum research: social support is repeatedly identified as protective against depression and anxiety, and isolation as a consistent risk factor, across very different cultures and income levels, suggesting the mechanism is more universal than any single cultural tradition.

Which is a far more achievable and honest goal than simply trying to cope better alone.

With care, Gayle.