We’ve got multiple parents for ours—we sort of fell into the arrangement (one moved in with us when kiddo the first was a few weeks old, it gradually became obvious that if she ever left he was going to take that like a divorce and we should be thinking about how to keep her around, eventually she added her primary partner in the manner of a stepparent). But only I am primary caretaker (everybody else has a job), so while I rely on the others for advice and discuss things with them, what’s sustainable and practical for me tends to trump—if I cannot be around some noise a toy makes, the toy does not get to have batteries, etc. We agree on the broad strokes of what considerations are important in general, and implementation details are just a thing the kids will learn vary between people—for example, there are a lot of things my son is only allowed to do if he can locate someone who is willing to supervise the activity and be responsible for any cleanup (today this was “eat shredded cheese”, which usually winds up all over the floor, but a roommate who isn’t even one of the parent collective was up for helping him with that this time).
We’ve got multiple parents for ours—we sort of fell into the arrangement (one moved in with us when kiddo the first was a few weeks old, it gradually became obvious that if she ever left he was going to take that like a divorce and we should be thinking about how to keep her around, eventually she added her primary partner in the manner of a stepparent). But only I am primary caretaker (everybody else has a job), so while I rely on the others for advice and discuss things with them, what’s sustainable and practical for me tends to trump—if I cannot be around some noise a toy makes, the toy does not get to have batteries, etc. We agree on the broad strokes of what considerations are important in general, and implementation details are just a thing the kids will learn vary between people—for example, there are a lot of things my son is only allowed to do if he can locate someone who is willing to supervise the activity and be responsible for any cleanup (today this was “eat shredded cheese”, which usually winds up all over the floor, but a roommate who isn’t even one of the parent collective was up for helping him with that this time).