Modern family life offers mothers an endless supply of services meant to make isolation more manageable, but Lauren Penn began wondering why so much support had to be purchased in the first place. After a violent crash near the crosswalk her children use to get to school pushed her into local activism, she began connecting unsafe streets and missing sidewalks to the exhaustion many mothers experience while coordinating transportation, childcare and social life largely on their own. Lauren shares how books, advocacy and small experiments with her daughters changed what she thought a neighborhood could provide. A place can either force every need into another private transaction or make room for families to help one another.

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