We’ve done some amount of this, as you reference. I would strongly enjoy having more children around, and I think my kids would like that a lot. On the other hand, there are drawbacks:
Parenting styles very enormously. It’s very hard to watch someone else’s kid if you disagree about how to do it. I think this is much less of an issue in extended families, and especially historically, because there’s better agreement on how to do it, but I know a lot of people in houses with multiple adults who have a lot of conflict over this. How closely do you supervise the kids? If one of them is hitting the other do you do something about it or let them sort it out themselves? Can they eat whenever they want? Can they have candy whenever they want? How messy an activity are they allowed to do on their own? If they do something wrong what sort of discipline do you use?
Kids are very good at understanding that different adults have different rules, and if sometimes kids are being watched by a parent and other times a nanny this isn’t a problem. On the other hand, when multiple adults are present at once it’s not clear which rules to apply, so you need more communication among the adults to have a consistent system. Otherwise the kids are going to spend all their time jurisdiction shopping and poking at edge cases.
Kids are messy and noisy, and different adults handle this differently. I’m also not very confident in adults ability to predict how their preferences will change after having kids. Perhaps your cleanest roommate will turn out to be exhausted and overwhelmed by child care and decide that keeping things tidy is just not a priority. This combines with the previous point: some parents are going to be okay just letting the kids yell, while others aren’t.
I’m pretty pessimistic about strategies that involve building a new intentional community in a rural area, because you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. In Boston I have many communities, and while I’m close to my housemates they’re not that my whole world. If something happened where we stopped getting along, we all have other options that don’t totally disrupt our lives. The rural approach is definitely cheaper, and going into it with several other families does cover some of the normal downsides of isolation, but I’d expect this to be much higher variance than I personally would be comfortable with.
It’s funny how even parents don’t have strong evidence about parenting. Suppose you do X and your kids are Y. You might say “I did X, and therefore my kids became Y”, but your neighbors might say “your kids were Y (e.g. for genetic reasons), therefore you were able to do X successfully”.
For example, when either of our kids started hurting the other one in any way, we tried to intervene always and as soon as possible. As a result, now most people say our kids are super nice to each other. But “as a result”, that’s just my opinion. Maybe our kids just inherited some gene which causes both nice behavior and a desire to prevent other people’s conflicts. Or maybe they just copy the behavior of me and my wife.
I agree with all you wrote here. As another example of different strong parenting beliefs I would add: what is proper amount of computer use? I know people who insist that the only acceptable value is zero. I only ban youtube, but my kids are allowed to watch movies on the computer (how is that worse than watching TV?) and paint. Some people are horrified when they hear this. Also, some people believe it is wrong that my older daughter can read and write and the first-grade math before going to school. The latter probably wouldn’t be a problem in a community, but some kids using computers and others not being allowed to use computers, that could cause conflicts, because the latter child would feel discriminated against.
We’ve done some amount of this, as you reference. I would strongly enjoy having more children around, and I think my kids would like that a lot. On the other hand, there are drawbacks:
Parenting styles very enormously. It’s very hard to watch someone else’s kid if you disagree about how to do it. I think this is much less of an issue in extended families, and especially historically, because there’s better agreement on how to do it, but I know a lot of people in houses with multiple adults who have a lot of conflict over this. How closely do you supervise the kids? If one of them is hitting the other do you do something about it or let them sort it out themselves? Can they eat whenever they want? Can they have candy whenever they want? How messy an activity are they allowed to do on their own? If they do something wrong what sort of discipline do you use?
Kids are very good at understanding that different adults have different rules, and if sometimes kids are being watched by a parent and other times a nanny this isn’t a problem. On the other hand, when multiple adults are present at once it’s not clear which rules to apply, so you need more communication among the adults to have a consistent system. Otherwise the kids are going to spend all their time jurisdiction shopping and poking at edge cases.
Kids are messy and noisy, and different adults handle this differently. I’m also not very confident in adults ability to predict how their preferences will change after having kids. Perhaps your cleanest roommate will turn out to be exhausted and overwhelmed by child care and decide that keeping things tidy is just not a priority. This combines with the previous point: some parents are going to be okay just letting the kids yell, while others aren’t.
I’m pretty pessimistic about strategies that involve building a new intentional community in a rural area, because you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. In Boston I have many communities, and while I’m close to my housemates they’re not that my whole world. If something happened where we stopped getting along, we all have other options that don’t totally disrupt our lives. The rural approach is definitely cheaper, and going into it with several other families does cover some of the normal downsides of isolation, but I’d expect this to be much higher variance than I personally would be comfortable with.
It’s funny how even parents don’t have strong evidence about parenting. Suppose you do X and your kids are Y. You might say “I did X, and therefore my kids became Y”, but your neighbors might say “your kids were Y (e.g. for genetic reasons), therefore you were able to do X successfully”.
For example, when either of our kids started hurting the other one in any way, we tried to intervene always and as soon as possible. As a result, now most people say our kids are super nice to each other. But “as a result”, that’s just my opinion. Maybe our kids just inherited some gene which causes both nice behavior and a desire to prevent other people’s conflicts. Or maybe they just copy the behavior of me and my wife.
I agree with all you wrote here. As another example of different strong parenting beliefs I would add: what is proper amount of computer use? I know people who insist that the only acceptable value is zero. I only ban youtube, but my kids are allowed to watch movies on the computer (how is that worse than watching TV?) and paint. Some people are horrified when they hear this. Also, some people believe it is wrong that my older daughter can read and write and the first-grade math before going to school. The latter probably wouldn’t be a problem in a community, but some kids using computers and others not being allowed to use computers, that could cause conflicts, because the latter child would feel discriminated against.