I became a mom three months before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, so parenting in isolation was, at first, all I knew. There’s been tons of research published on the impact of the pandemic on different populations but less discussed are its effects on new parents and how we may now be wired differently. But what I can say from experience is that thanks to my constant worrying about Covid-19, my brain seemed to believe only my husband and I could keep our children safe—and that was exhausting. It’s also not true, which we quickly learned after moving closer to our closest family members in 2022. Giving ourselves and our children a village was the best parenting decision we could make. So I was really intrigued by Sophie Lucido Johnson’s new book, Kin: The Future of Family, and what it might offer regarding concepts of living communally that contrast from the false ideals of the nuclear family, which the Trump administration is pushing.

As Lucido Johnson describes it, kinship is a support structure that allows everyone within that structure to have their needs met. She defines “kin” as “the people in your life to whom you’re deeply bound through all things; and who are essential for your individual and collective survival.” It’s not a new concept: Indigenous peoples historically did not center a nuclear family unit, but instead had complex family structures. The same is true of Africans, who during chattel slavery forged kin groups as they were physically separated from their blood relatives. But today it’s harder than ever to form these types of bonds.