Groups of friends living around each other raising their children in a shared environment.
To get a taste of that, you could go on a vacation with friends who have children of similar age as yours.
One of the most difficult parts seems to be getting everyone to agree to a set of parenting standards and having the flexibility and acceptance to not require perfect adherence to every rule from every parent all the time.
Yeah. We experimented having vacations with various friends who have children, and indeed this was a problem with some of them. Some parents were “nature-oriented” and were shocked that our children were allowed to use computers at pre-school age (also that we refused to use homeopathy to solve all kinds of problems). Some parents insisted that every conflict or misunderstanding between children needs to be solved by endless moralizing and psychologizing (as opposed to just sending kids to different rooms and letting them calm down). Some parents were shocked to hear me tell children that they are not supposed to interrupt adults when they are talking, and especially not by repeatedly yelling something that was supposed to be very funny but actually was not (in their opinion, it is only legitimate to tell children “no” when you are already on the verge of collapse, and mere constant yelling shouldn’t get you there).
But that’s what you solve by trying different people. Either you find someone with similar norms, or someone who knows how to interact with people who have different norms. For example, we are an atheist family, but my children are taught that it is polite to respect that other people are religious—without necessarily agreeing with them. “They are wrong, but it is not your place to tell them, or to make fun of them.” (The differences in belief are often not a problem in practice, but proselytizing is.)
To get a taste of that, you could go on a vacation with friends who have children of similar age as yours.
Yeah. We experimented having vacations with various friends who have children, and indeed this was a problem with some of them. Some parents were “nature-oriented” and were shocked that our children were allowed to use computers at pre-school age (also that we refused to use homeopathy to solve all kinds of problems). Some parents insisted that every conflict or misunderstanding between children needs to be solved by endless moralizing and psychologizing (as opposed to just sending kids to different rooms and letting them calm down). Some parents were shocked to hear me tell children that they are not supposed to interrupt adults when they are talking, and especially not by repeatedly yelling something that was supposed to be very funny but actually was not (in their opinion, it is only legitimate to tell children “no” when you are already on the verge of collapse, and mere constant yelling shouldn’t get you there).
But that’s what you solve by trying different people. Either you find someone with similar norms, or someone who knows how to interact with people who have different norms. For example, we are an atheist family, but my children are taught that it is polite to respect that other people are religious—without necessarily agreeing with them. “They are wrong, but it is not your place to tell them, or to make fun of them.” (The differences in belief are often not a problem in practice, but proselytizing is.)