Raising a Barn by Yourself (er wait...a baby)

     As I sit here typing this, my young son is just getting up from a nap.  I have a few precious minutes to myself.  (I know, I know, I am supposed to cherish every second of his youth but guess what? That's just not realistic.  We cannot live in constant child-rearing bliss despite what parents of older children will tell you...)
I just finished reading a book on Amish barns.  The Amish apparently don't put lightening rods on their barns because it shows lack of faith in God.  Actually, I think it would show them lack of faith in their community.  If a barn comes down due to lightning etc. The community will come and simply raise a new one.  It usually only takes a day, and their community comes out of the country side up to a 1,000 strong.
  With all our modern conveniences we don't need to rely as heavily on our community, and yet, what has this afforded us? We've all drifted apart and no longer have the ties necessary to get jobs like raising kids done right.
   I spend day after day doing what I feel is the right thing, staying home and raising my kid, because someone has to do it, and I feel I am the best qualified since he is, after all, my own.  But to do this, I live in relative isolation.  I won't yet delve into what this means for us a society that we don't allow our homes and public places to be accessible to small children, or why we don't seem to value community anymore...
  The fact is we've spent the vast amount of our evolution with our tribe around us. Even if I had his Grandmother at hand all the time to help out, it cannot compare to what we are hardwired to expect and hardwired to need--a thousand people to come help build a barn in a day.  Is it too much to ask that we have a couple of children and somehow manage to have a life also? I don't think it is.  Only recently have we had to give up so much of our lives to rearing that little Joy-bundle.  Don't get me wrong, I love my boy more than I can say, but we could all stand to do more living and less running ragged....