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Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

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Re: Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

#71

Post by geverett »

bombcar wrote: post #14
ARandomerDude wrote: post #9

> And yet very few people raise their kids in community. In the US, 71% of children grow up in single family homes. 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.

You can have quite a close knit community in single family homes - I've known and been parts of neighborhoods where everyone wandered into everyone's house, but you'd never know that looking at the plats. Communal areas like a shared kitchen immediately fall to the tragedy of the commons, unless there's a HOA or similar that directly pays someone to maintain it.

I've lived in community for 10 years in a variety of different houses/complexes (including ones where I've had my own apartment and there's been a communal kitchen). We've almost never had issues with cleanliness. It really depends on who you live with!

Re: Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

#72

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

B. F. Skinner dreamed that people can be scientifically (behaviourally) trained to live together and described his vision in "Walden Two". It is interesting that the book spawned quite a few attempts to do that and some have survived longer than usual. I think one such community still functions someplace in Mexica, but do not know how close it remains to Skinner's ideas.

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.

Re: Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

#73

Post by kayodelycaon »

altairprime wrote: post #61
kayodelycaon wrote: post #34

There’s also the problem of communities that are not nice to anyone they don’t approve of. 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 an…

If one can be selective about who is “in” and who is “out”, then it’s a social club, not one’s community. Community precipitates around shared characteristics; typically places or hobbies. You have no say whatsoever in who else shares that characteristic. Shunning is the only form of exclusion reliably available. Social clubs are organized around voluntary membership, where one can choose to enter or exit the club at…

I really don't understand the distinction you're trying to make. I think you're trying to make community too specific. And support meetings are very much clubs by your definition.

Also I haven't had to deal with "awful rainbow clubs". In fact my experience has been the exact opposite. Twelve years ago, I went to a furry convention and ended up joining one of the most accepting communities I've ever seen. And let me tell you, once a community gets to a certain size, it will have Problems™. :)

Re: Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

#74

Post by dheera »

afaxwebgirl wrote: post #3

My parents had to share a house with a couple when I was a small child. It was not ideal. Shared kitchen. Other shared spaces. Unless you are all on the same page about things, you are basically taking on extra parents. Other people telling you how to do such and such in raising your child which may be ideas that you're not on par with. When you have your own home, you can amicably disagree and go to the privacy of y…

I can't imagine sharing a kitchen with anyone but my own partner. Cleanliness is the bare minimum, but design and aesthetics is a big part of it.

I'm very particular about how my kitchen (and living space in general) looks. I coordinate the colors of appliances with the cabinetry, the styles of all the cutlery, the locations and labelling of everything. Fonts, typography, margins all matter in those labels. I sometimes design and make my own containers for things. I like bottles of ingredients being in aesthetically-pleasing arrangements by color shade.

But I'm also an introvert, an artist at heart, and it helps me save money. When my kitchen is an evolving work of art, I'm drawn to spend more time in that space, and that inspires me to make more food for myself, at 1/5 the cost of food outside. If my kitchen looks like an aesthetic mess because the person I share it with does not give a shit about design, I would be more likely to go spend $30 on food outside, and that adds up pretty quickly.

Re: Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

#75

Post by drewcoo »

jp57 wrote: post #37

Many of the problems this article talks about are relatively new, historically, and I can't help but wonder if the problem isn't really other trends like high-intensity helicopter parenting, rather than "atomic" families. 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 enti…

The nuclear family is also relatively new.

It probably just seemed normal to you if you grew up in it.

It was almost certainly not how families worked when your parents or grandparents were kids.

Re: Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

#76

Post by drewcoo »

crazygringo wrote: post #5
afaxwebgirl wrote: post #3

My parents had to share a house with a couple when I was a small child. It was not ideal. Shared kitchen. Other shared spaces. Unless you are all on the same page about things, you are basically taking on extra parents. Other people telling you how to do such and such in raising your child which may be ideas that you're not on par with. When you have your own home, you can amicably disagree and go to the privacy of y…

Yup. Disagreements over tidiness, food, kitchen usage, what is appropriate for children, the list goes on and on. Different families come from different cultures, have different values, etc. It's incredibly difficult to find a bunch of other families you're "on the same page with" where you actually want to be co-parenting with and hanging out with all the time. It's one thing when you all grow up together. There's a…

Community and selfishness don't mix well.

And with more than 2 co-parents, a quorum might form that excludes you.

Re: Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

#77

Post by drewcoo »

altairprime wrote: post #61
kayodelycaon wrote: post #34

There’s also the problem of communities that are not nice to anyone they don’t approve of. 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 an…

If one can be selective about who is “in” and who is “out”, then it’s a social club, not one’s community. Community precipitates around shared characteristics; typically places or hobbies. You have no say whatsoever in who else shares that characteristic. Shunning is the only form of exclusion reliably available. Social clubs are organized around voluntary membership, where one can choose to enter or exit the club at…

> If one can be selective about who is “in” and who is “out”, then it’s a social club

If one can be selective about who is "in" and who is "out", then one is a leader of the social club. There can be plenty of animosity between members.

Re: Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

#78

Post by chneu »

jp57 wrote: post #37

Many of the problems this article talks about are relatively new, historically, and I can't help but wonder if the problem isn't really other trends like high-intensity helicopter parenting, rather than "atomic" families. 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 enti…

Basically every aspect of modern life is new. It's weird how people yearn for "the old ways" yet they don't even know what they're yearning for.

There is p much nothing in our life that wasn't an invention of the industrial revolution or later. Every aspect of our life was invented within the last 2-3 generations.

But yet people talk like these weird, mostly white Christian ideals, are how life has always been throughout history. People believe what they want to feel good about their extreme overconsumption in todays modern world.

Re: Why is it so hard to get families to live in community houses?

#79

Post by altairprime »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #73
altairprime wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one can be selective about who is “in” and who is “out”, then it’s a social club, not one’s community. Community precipitates around shared characteristics; typically places or hobbies. You have no say whatsoever in who else shares that characteristic. Shunning is the only form of exclusion reliably available. Social clubs are organized around voluntary membership, where one can choose to enter or exit the club at…

I really don't understand the distinction you're trying to make. I think you're trying to make community too specific. And support meetings are very much clubs by your definition. Also I haven't had to deal with "awful rainbow clubs". In fact my experience has been the exact opposite. Twelve years ago, I went to a furry convention and ended up joining one of the most accepting communities I've ever seen. And let me t…

Ah, I clearly misunderstood. Glad to hear you’ve done well!
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