As a former homemaker this comes across as tone deaf. From my experience, you might as well have just said, "You can always hang out at a PTA meeting."

Being a homemaker can be incredibly isolating. Homemakers need meaningful adult interaction and relationships that are not centered around their children or exclusive to their spouses.

I’m not talking out of my ass here, it’s based on my experience being a stay at home dad for the past few years, we started seeing the same people over and over as we kept to a routine. I guess your mileage has varied from mine, though.

And yeah, it’s not supposed to be your only social outlet. Catch up with people who you’ve known from other parts of your life.

I apologize if my tone was inappropriate. My mileage definitely varied. I also found myself living without a car in the suburb of a new city with an absentee wife that didn't appreciate any of my sacrifices or my hard work (and I also consulted part time). She couldn't be relied upon for anything other than a paycheck. Obviously these things also played a role.

No worries, and yeah, most of US suburbia seems almost intentionally designed to stifle community formation, it’s pretty bad. We’re lucky that ours seems better than the average in that regard.

Sorry that experience was rough for you, I hope you've gotten to a better place.

> most of US suburbia seems almost intentionally designed to stifle community formation

Intentional how?

> Homemakers need meaningful adult interaction and relationships

So go out and make them? My 2 year old goes where we are, if that activity isn't kid centered that's too fucking bad and kid is gonna have to deal; I have a life too. It's not like having all conversations centered around work at the office is especially meaningful either.

> if that activity isn't kid centered that's too fucking bad and kid is gonna have to deal

Hilarious, and maybe it works with a 2yo, but when the kid is 5 it's "everybody else is gonna have to deal" as well.

Not that I disagree with the sentiment, though.

Depends on the kid. I did plenty of quiet waiting on my single mother when I was five, and portable entertainment has gotten a lot more engaging since the mid-90's.

This effect is definitely amplified by suburban lifestyle. Suburbia is not a very good place to be a homemaker.

It's not a very good place for anything other than having a few hundred square feet of yard that you can choose to work on.

Nannies are of a different social class. Most middle class people are much less likely to have real relationships with people who can’t relate to their problems. Same as rich people tend to have rich friends.

“Talking to someone” isn’t community. Colleagues provide an ersatz community for people who don’t have a real one in their life. You need a steady cast of characters and ideally repeated, purposeful interaction.

> Nannies are of a different social class.

I don't think that is true in Europe. They are probably a fair bit younger than middle class mothers which could be a barrier to being friends.

If the people employing nannies didn’t have more money than their employees the relationship wouldn’t exist at all. The only way I’m familiar with middle class young women nannying is as au pairs, in other countries. But there are people who nanny for decades. They are not the same social class as their employers.

My own experience of living in Europe is confined to Germany but middle class German girls mostly don’t even work part time jobs in university, never mind taking a year off before university to work as an au pair, in a foreign country. They do not nanny. Spanish friends made it sound like the same was true in Spain too. Students do not have jobs at university.

If you keep to a routine of going to the park daily and spending a couple hours there playing, you’ll almost certainly start seeing the same people over and over.