Episode summary
Recording the day after his first Father's Day, Tayvin reflects on what it really takes to raise a child, and the people who quietly show up to fill the gaps a family can't fill alone.
T.E.A. Time is hosted by English teacher Tayvin Bayless. Read the full transcript.
Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. To any first-time listeners, I hope you decide to stick around because I’m glad you’re here. And a hearty welcome back to anyone joining me again. When was the last time you went out for a group activity? What was it? Did you enjoy it?
I’m recording this the day after Father’s Day. It was my first Father’s Day after the birth of my daughter, Eliana. We had a wonderful day at church. There was a nice lunch of pulled pork, potato salad, and coleslaw after our church services, organized by a few of the members, the kind of casual potluck where everyone brings a dish and somehow it all comes together perfectly. Eliana spent most of the lunch passed from one set of arms to another, cooed at by half the congregation, unaware that this was supposed to be my day. There was even dessert. The brownies, which I was not supposed to eat due to my gluten intolerance, were delicious. I had exactly one bite, then decided it was worth the consequences and ate the rest.
In the evening, Emma, the loveliest woman I’ve ever known, made an absolutely spectacular dinner. We had surf and turf, which is seafood and beef steak served together. We had shrimp, and then two kinds of steak. One was marinated in a flavor-packed balsamic vinegar marinade, and the other was pan-seared with butter and garlic. All of that was served with balsamic baked broccoli and a baked potato. Practically professional quality, because Emma does not do anything halfway. I told her yesterday, and I still stand by it after eating the leftovers today: I think it was one of the top five best meals she’s ever cooked.
My first Father’s Day as a father has gotten me thinking a bit about what it means to raise children. Which brings us to our phrase for the day: it takes a village.
The full phrase is: it takes a village to raise a child. Without diminishing, meaning without reducing the importance of, the irreplaceable role that parents play in a child’s development, the phrase means that the support of the surrounding community is necessary for a child’s healthy development and eventual place in society. There are many important roles that members of a community play as influences in a child’s life: teachers, coaches, neighbors, mentors, and friends, to name just a few. None of them replace a parent. All of them shape the final result in ways a parent alone cannot.
Here’s a quick example: my daughter has loving parents, but it also takes a village of people around her, at church, at school, and in our neighborhood, to help her grow into who she’s meant to be. I can teach her plenty. I cannot teach her everything.
Keep that phrase in mind. I’m going to come back to it more than once before we’re done.
As I mentioned before, I am a religious man. Without delving into the theological reasons for my faith, one of the major reasons I’m such an active part of my church is the community we create when we gather together often. On Saturday, we had a baptismal service for two young girls, sisters, eight and nine years old. A baptism is a ritual within the Christian tradition that symbolizes starting a new life as a follower of Christ. It is also the ritual that makes someone an official part of my own church community.
We had a good number of people there to support these two young sisters’ decision to join our community and to show their love for Jesus. Folding chairs were set up before a small baptismal font, excited and smiling faces of family and friends filled the room, and a few of the younger kids fidgeted in their seats. That support is an essential part of my own faith journey, as well as a formative part of the man and father I have become.
When I was young, my parents got divorced. My father left and was never a part of my life after that. I have almost no memories of him at all, just a handful of disconnected images. I grew up with my hardworking mother, who did everything she could to provide for me, and with my grandparents, who lived close enough to step in whenever she needed help. For much of my childhood and teenage years, Father’s Day was a very difficult day for me. It served as a reminder of the absence of my own father as I watched so many of the children around me celebrate theirs.
However, because of my church, I had many great examples of manhood and fatherhood to look up to. There were men who took me on camping trips together with their own sons, setting up tents in the dark, teaching me how to build a fire that would actually stay lit through the night. Men who taught me skills like shooting, rope work, fishing, and car repair, patiently, the way you’d teach your own kid, even though I wasn’t theirs. Men who showed me, through their own example, how to respect my wife and support her in her personal development, long before I had a wife of my own to apply any of it to. Men who showed me how to serve those in need within our local communities and beyond, not because anyone was watching, but because that’s simply what you did.
I know that the many examples I saw from the men in my church growing up helped me understand who I could grow up to be and who I wanted to grow up to be. They filled a painful hole in a young boy’s life, and for that, I will be forever grateful. The village showed up for me exactly where my own father had not, filling in a gap I didn’t always have the words for at the time. I just knew that on the days those men showed up, something inside me felt a little less incomplete.
This brings me back to our phrase for the day: it takes a village.
Let’s take a closer look at where this expression actually comes from. It’s commonly described as an African proverb, and you’ll see it labeled that way in plenty of places, often with a specific country or tribe attached for good measure. But here’s something worth being honest about: nobody has ever been able to trace it back to a specific tribe, language, or source. It’s one of those phrases, like a lot of famous quotes wrongly attributed to Einstein or Abraham Lincoln, that gets passed around with a confident label attached to it, even though the actual origin is murky, meaning unclear and hard to trace.
What we do know for certain is how the phrase entered mainstream American English. In 1996, Hillary Clinton published a book called “It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us.” The book argued that children’s well-being depends not just on their parents, but on the wider network of community, institutions, and relationships around them. Whatever you think about the politics surrounding that book at the time, the phrase itself stuck, and it’s been part of everyday American English ever since, repeated so often in school newsletters and parenting columns that most people who use it today have no idea it has a specific publication date at all.
I find that origin story almost more interesting than a tidy folk-tale one would have been. The phrase doesn’t need an ancient, exotic source to be true. It became true because millions of people recognized something real in it. Including me.
My own village wasn’t a single neighborhood or a single tribe. It was a collection of men at my church, on Saturday campouts, and in carpools to scout activities who showed up for a boy who didn’t have a father showing up for him. None of them were required to do that. They just did it, because that’s what a village does. It fills in the gaps that any one person, even a parent, cannot fill alone. I think about that often now that I’m a father myself because Eliana is going to need her own village too, for the things I won’t be able to predict or provide on my own.
So here’s something to think about. Who has been part of your village? Not necessarily a parent, but someone who showed up for you when they didn’t have to. A teacher, a coach, an older cousin, a neighbor who always had an extra seat at the table. The next time you think of that person, consider letting them know what they meant to you. It’s a small thing to say, and it can mean everything to hear.
I think that the need for village support doesn’t go away once a child is grown and ready to strike out on their own. I know I still need my village. That’s why I go to church. I firmly believe that it is not good for people to be alone. Humans are social creatures, meaning we have evolved social, psychological, and even physiological needs for community; the kind of needs that don’t simply disappear once you’ve reached adulthood and can technically take care of yourself.
I’ve talked a lot about church today because it’s such a central part of my own community. It’s where I found friends and role models growing up. It’s how I’ve been able to connect with people in every place I’ve moved, even in a foreign land where I didn’t share a native language with most of the people around me and yet still found a version of belonging I recognized. And it’s a large part of how my wife and I found each other.
Church has been the foundation of my own community, but it doesn’t need to be yours. Find a community where you feel comfortable, where you’re surrounded by people who share some of your passions, and where you can work and improve together. Join a chess club. Go out with a birdwatching group. Connect with your local historical society. The specific shape of the village matters far less than whether you actually show up to it.
It takes a village to raise a child. But I think it also takes a village to live a happy and fulfilling life. I got to be on the receiving end of that village for most of my own life. Now, as a father, I get the chance to be part of someone else’s.
And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.
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