A friend of mine had her third child last week. After I got the details of the delivery over the phone, I asked her the typical questions good friends ask each other: “What can I do for you? Can I drop off some food? Can I pick up your kids?”

What was not typical, at least in this town, was that she said yes, it would be great if I could pick up her children from school the next day. It felt so good to be able to help.

Many parents in New York have hired help. This makes life easier, of course. But it also serves as a barrier to a certain kind of intimacy that can develop between families. Dependency can foster familiarity. And familiarity, particularly where young children are concerned, is the surest way to secure enduring relationships.

“When my friend’s child got sick recently and was in the hospital for a few weeks, I wanted to be there for her and her family, “a mother of three teenagers said. “Her two other children needed to be picked up, to be taken places. But she didn’t let any of her friends help out. We dropped off food and wrote notes and called. But she has a great nanny and a housekeeper and I think she just didn’t want to burden anyone. It was so frustrating, of course, because it would have felt better for me to be able to help.”

When I picked up my friend’s children, we chose flowers to celebrate the new arrival, I heard about possible name choices, and I took them to choose a snack. I felt privileged to be part of the excitement.

“I was raised in a pretty small town, and people were always helping each other out with their kids,” a friend said. “And when mothers had to go to work or doctor’s appointments, or parents went away on vacations, it was other parents who helped out. People depended on each other, not just their babysitters.”

But New Yorkers are all about not needing other people. We pride ourselves on being independent and self-reliant. Those qualities are, in part, why we are able to manage here.

New Yorkers these days, it seems to me, also have higher expectations than ever. Very few people I know expect their nanny to be the same person who cleans their toilets. As a result, people with young children sometimes employ more than one person, even if that second person only works one day a week. In a pinch, just having an extra set of employable help can make the difference between needing to ask a friend for help and not needing any help at all.

“Most people in New York, even those that don’t have a conniving bone in their body, worry that if someone does them a favor, they will invariably be forced to pay them back,” a mother of three said. “No one is worried about picking up a kid in return. But when that mother asks you to come to a lunch where she is being honored, and it’s at $500 a head, well, that’s a weird position to be in.”

Not everyone stands on ceremony, though. There are plenty of parents who take turns doing the heavy duty lifting.

“The cultures vary from school to school,” said a mother of three whose children, ages 11, 9, and 5, attend three different private schools in Manhattan. “At my oldest son’s school, the parents are so uptight and competitive that no one would even consider asking each other for a favor. It would somehow be a concession of weakness or poverty. But at my younger son’s school, the feeling is so much more cooperative. Parents are so happy to take turns manning the children and are also honest about loving the break. And at my daughter’s nursery school, there isn’t a mother to be seen at pickup time.”

The individualistic, harried, and competitive way of life in New York stands in stark contrast to the nurturing and supportive environment that most parents, if only theoretically, would like to create for themselves and their children.

A Swedish friend with two children says her sister’s life in Stockholm is different than hers in New York. “My mother takes care of her children a few days a week. Almost no one has nannies the way we do in New York. People rely on each other. There are plenty of people I know who live near their mothers here, but grandmothers in New York pick their grandchildren up once a week and take them for an hour or two.” Grandmothers in other parts of New York, of course, do care for their families full-time, while their daughters work as nannies or housekeepers.

Our children can only benefit from having friends and family invest in their lives. But people can only invest as much as we parents allow them. Asking people we care about to help us isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of wisdom. It’s hard to say who gains more from the experience – the children or the adults.