by caser on 5/28/25, 3:41 PM with 74 comments
by jp57 on 5/28/25, 7:43 PM
I grew up in a fairly typical American suburb, in the 70s, and lived in a single-family, single-generation household. But, there were 35+ kids on my one-block street! The neighborhood consisted entirely of families with children and retirees, and among the families, the median number of kids was three. There were a couple of families with two, but multiple with four; there were also families with 5, 6, and 7. We were constantly in and out of each other's houses. I regularly would walk out my door, through my neighbor's front yard, and into my best friend's house without knocking. A lot of the time we were outside, and unsupervised by adults. Overall I think the burden on parents (per kid) was much lower than today.
I think the large number of kids made this kind of arrangement both necessary and possible. Nobody could have the energy to supervise so many kids the way kids are supervised today, but also we all looked out for each other. There were lots of siblings. Older sibs were responsible for younger, and by extension, their younger friends as well. If someone got hurt, some friends would help while others would run to get a parent, and not necessarily the parent of the kid who got hurt.
Even this situation, I can't imagine wanting to actually share a household with any of my friends' families. In fact, when I slept over, I was always struck with how weird other families' closed-door customs seemed. It's the same now: when we get an occasional glimpse into the behind-closed-doors dynamics of our friends' marriages and families, my wife and I are always like, hm... weird. I think it's like that for everyone.
Getting married and having a family is a very personal thing. I love my friends, but I wouldn't want to marry any of them.
by afaxwebgirl on 5/28/25, 4:07 PM
Then there is the whole issue of cleanliness. What one person thinks is clean could be light years away from what you think is clean and tidy. This would cause untold levels of stress and discomfort on both ends. I'd rather have my own domain even if its only a travel trailer, than share living space with a bunch of people continuously giving their "advice" on what they think is best.
by mattlondon on 5/28/25, 8:13 PM
Something I found was that different kids are, well, different.
For my own kids there is a huge difference in temperament. One is chilled and happy with basically anyone, another is extremely highly-strung. We raised them the same as far as we can tell, but one is very easy to look after and spend time with, the other is a fucking nightmare that no sane person would volunteer to spend time with (...or at least would not volunteer for the second time...).
So being able to "have dinner with our friends every night" I think comes down a lot to the individual kid and not the environment. You may have just got lucky and got a laid-back kid who just goes along with things and is happy hanging out with random adults. They're not all like that.
by zdragnar on 5/28/25, 7:36 PM
I can't imagine my family living with roommates for any reason other than necessity.
by jebarker on 5/28/25, 7:15 PM
by J37T3R on 5/28/25, 7:37 PM
by kayodelycaon on 5/28/25, 7:38 PM
Maybe I just have too many LGBT friends to be objective. But I’ve had to leave communities because I had to keep my head down and my mouth shut to stay in them.
LGBT communities aren’t perfect either.
Communities are messy and we have a lot of choice in who we pick to be in them. In the past, you didn’t have a lot of options and you were strongly incentivized to make compromises.
by zzzeek on 5/28/25, 7:28 PM
Putting all these folks into a "shared community" that actually codifies the obligation for everyone to work together....Well you'd need to get a very special group of people to pull that off and even then, im sure the falling outs are pretty awful nonetheless.
by micromacrofoot on 5/28/25, 7:59 PM
Right this is why I don't live in a community house, a lot of my kids' friend's parents suck ass. Who gets to live in the community house with the alcoholic soccer mom or the cop who got fired for threatening to kill someone at a baseball game.
by Analemma_ on 5/28/25, 7:36 PM
I know one community house of > 10 people in California, exactly the type the author says they want, which kept getting fines from PG&E because they were using too much electricity, even though this was solely due to the house size and on a per-person basis they used much less than people living in single-family houses thanks to resource sharing. A policy intended to encourage energy efficiency ended up punishing it instead. Landmines like this are all over the place.
by petercooper on 5/28/25, 7:25 PM
by flerchin on 5/28/25, 7:12 PM
by bluGill on 5/28/25, 7:55 PM
by Mikhail_Edoshin on 5/28/25, 10:38 PM
Monks live together in harsh conditions just fine. This is a specific community, of course. Yet this is also the answer: you need something bigger than yourself to submit your wishes to.
by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on 5/28/25, 7:05 PM
by currency on 5/28/25, 7:50 PM
by ARandomerDude on 5/28/25, 7:07 PM
This is the fundamental misconception of the article. Living with your own family does not equate to being raised outside a community. Church, school, little league, etc. are all community networks that huge swaths of society participate in regularly.
by breckinloggins on 5/28/25, 7:57 PM
I don't see any reason it has to be that way, though. It's more an accident of history.
I probably would have chosen to have children if I grew up in a culture where "a bunch of people living close together and helping each other out" was the norm. I didn't, though. I grew up in 1980s "Superman and McDonalds and the American Way" suburbs. Having kids in that environment always looked like a nightmare to me, so I didn't.
I also suspect this has an extrovert / introvert component. The super social people around me constructed these little "ephemeral villages" out of nought but thin air, smiles, backyard barbecues, and PTA meetings. Or so it seemed to me. I was always too introverted to do this, though.
by garbagecoder on 5/28/25, 7:41 PM
by mattlondon on 5/28/25, 7:58 PM
My own mother and of course my mother in law are absolute liabilities with my 5 and 3 year olds. They continually and repeatedly break our rules.
It's not unsafe per se, but it's just high-risk things for no reason apart from what we believe is just willful defiance from the grandparents. E.g. letting them out into the garden with no direct supervision, when there is no physical barrier from them getting into the road etc. "Oh lighten up! It's just a busy street with loads of distracted drivers in 2+ ton vehicles going over the speed limit! What's the problem!"
As a result, they're not usually left alone with the kids unless we can avoid it.
Ultimately if any harm were to come, I want to know that it was my own fault effectively, and not because I suspected that some other adult was not paying enough attention, or could have tried harder/made more effort to stop it, or was deliberately not doing things how I like it to be done. If it was under your own watch or your partner's watch that something bad happened then you can be pretty sure that the harm was unavoidable and not because someone else has other concepts of safety and risk for your offspring.
by hatly22 on 5/29/25, 7:57 AM
by mzs on 5/28/25, 8:25 PM
by os2warpman on 5/28/25, 7:33 PM
"But people in Indi.."
No.
Wealthy Indians have fucking single-family Get Me The Fuck Away From Everyone Else compounds surrounded by high walls, gate houses, and surveillance equipment.
Unless you're a lifelong career civil servant in the foreign service nearing retirement who went abroad working in consulates and embassies immediately after graduating university who has spent their entire life bouncing between different assignments to the point that you don't even feel like a resident of their own country anymore, I know more about this than you.
I know what Africans who live in villages do once they get money. (they buy an SUV or wagon and move to an American-style suburb)
I know what Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans who live in miniscule tower apartments do once they get money. (they buy an SUV or wagon and move to an American-style suburb)
I know what Hip Young Urban Professionals Sipping Coffee On A Sidewalk Next To A Cafe Along The Seine Or Rhine Because Their Apartment Is To Small To Do Anything do the second they get money. (they buy an SUV or wagon and move to an American-style suburb)
It seems impossible for the nu-urbanists and the like to understand the brains of normal human beings who prefer not smelling the farts of others or their terrible cooking, hearing them snore or argue or fuck, seeing them scratch their ass and pick their nose.
by InMice on 5/28/25, 7:37 PM
That said, I would not mind a good size plot of land with multiple structures..a family compound. Inside the same house? Absolutely never.
by __turbobrew__ on 5/28/25, 7:57 PM
by andrewstuart on 5/28/25, 6:33 PM
Except people who will never ever face the prospect of living in a community house - they’re puzzled.
by op00to on 5/28/25, 7:02 PM
by happytoexplain on 5/28/25, 7:49 PM
by bell-cot on 5/28/25, 4:02 PM
1) The article's portrayal of community living is rather idyllic.
2) To the Global Capitalist Profit Maximizer, community living is seriously sub-optimal. Ditto to aspiring members of the 0.01%, who can afford (or imagine) a "feudal lord" lifestyle - just themself and Mr./Mrs. Right, with a "community" of servants and servant-like outsourced labor services at their beck and call.
by altairprime on 5/28/25, 7:07 PM