As the father of a 2 year old with no family for thousands of miles, I often fantasize about having a village to help raise my child as this study: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3w7sbf/lack_of_sleep_found_to_impair_the_brains_ability/ rings all too true for me.
My question to you wonderful historians is: historically, did the village help raise the child? Or is my fantasy of the elderly in the village watching the child in the morning while the parents go off and pass out for a couple extra hours just that, a fantasy?
Thank you.
In the early middle ages, almost certainly yes - but not in the convenient way you're imagining.
The average age at death (NOT counting infant mortality) in the period I study, which is 6th century England, was about 25. A colleague is finishing his PhD on demographic modelling, and his work on this skeletal material makes it very clear that most children would have (statistically speaking) lost one parent during their childhood, and many would have lost both. Early medieval England was full of orphans.
That means that children had to have been raised by the community - perhaps extended kin groups, or maybe one of the other families in the settlement (there were usually a half dozen families living close together).
So: yes, the village raised the children. But unfortunately, not because their parents were sleeping.
Is there a particular time period or region you are interested in? As it stands, your question is a bit broad, narrowing it down a bit will help increase the chances of a response.