Haven't we all heard it takes a village?
In my social circles, becoming a parent is seen as a gigantic sacrifice. You lose sleep, time with friends, time for hobbies. You’ll probably have to move to a less desirable neighborhood to afford the extra space for your kid. If you’re the one carrying the child, you’re ‘destroying’ your body and jeopardizing your professional goals.
But what if it didn’t have to be this way?
An Indian friend recently told me how his parents couldn’t fathom why anyone wouldn’t want to have a child. In his parents’ India, having children is just fun. Most families live in multigenerational compounds, where parents raise their children alongside their nearest and dearest. When they’re babies, you always have someone to help babysit. Past a certain age, the kids run around with their cousins and entertain themselves.
“It takes a village to raise a child” is perhaps the most common phrase I hear about having kids. It is, as Phil would say, an Obvious Truth. Children thrive when they are surrounded by a community of loving humans. No couple - much less single parent - can meet all of their child’s needs and their own.
And yet very few people raise their kids in community. In the US, 71% of children grow up in single family homes. This is despite the fact that most Americans can’t really afford it: one in three home owners and nearly half of rental households are spending over 30% of their income on mortgage/rent.
And, unfortunately but understandably, it’s making us miserable. Studies show that adults who choose to have kids are less happy during peak parenting years than those who don’t, especially in the US. And it’s something we hear all the time: parenting is exhausting and there’s never enough time or money.
Except, perhaps, if you live in a village. Frederic Laloux, author of Reinventing Organizations, and his wife moved their family from Belgium to an eco village in upstate New York. On the stress of modern parenting, he says:
“Here’s what I’ve discovered: much of that strain is self-inflicted. The dream of individualized lives, of the nuclear family as the basis of modern existence, is not conducive to joyful parenting. For hundreds of thousands of years, children were raised within multigenerational family structures. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, and other members of the tribe or community watched over the children and interacted with them. Not everything depended on the parents!”
For years I’ve been seeking out friends who are choosing to raise their kids in some form of community. On the whole, the parents seem better rested and their children better adjusted than my friends doing the standard nuclear family life.
My co-author Phil and his wife Kristen have shared their experience in this Supernuclear post about Radish, their cohousing community in the Bay Area:
“People talk about the first year of having a kid as extraordinarily challenging. I feel like a bit of a jerk for saying this, but it’s been much easier than advertised for us. And we think our living situation plays a huge role in this.
Of course, it took a lot of upfront work to make this year easy. Building a community is hard. None of this came for free. But the payoff is there.
We’ve had to give up very little in our life to make room for our kid. We still eat dinner with friends every night of the week. We go out on a whim. And our baby girl has a whole clan of admirers.”
Then there are Priya and Andrew Rose, founders of the Fractal network in New York (and previously Rabbithole). They welcomed their baby girl last May and started experimenting with ‘baby coworking’.
By making baby-raising a communal project rather than trying to do everything alone, Andrew and Priya have found parenting to be less stressful than many of their peers. In Priya’s words:
It turns out that taking care of a baby is much easier and more fun when other people are around. When you’re alone with a newborn, even going to the bathroom can be stressful since they must always be watched. As babies get older, they become more independent but also need lots of stimulation and play. If they’re surrounded by many people, that stimulation comes naturally.
Since I live near friends, I am almost always caring for my daughter with other people around. That means baby care is easy, and I still get to socialize as much as I did before I had a baby. It even makes it easier for me to read and do traditionally solo activities. If I’m reading in a room with my baby alone, she gets bored and wants to play with me. But if we’re in a big group of adults, she gets lots of attention, and doesn’t mind if I read!
Since my friends see her so often, they’ve developed relationships with her. This makes them excited to babysit her, and in fact, a few of our friends babysit every Monday so that Andrew and I can have a date night.
At Feÿtopia, a creative commune in France, I’ve had long conversations over dinner with friends as their baby monitor lies on the table. If the baby stirs, one of the parents can be back at her bedside in a minute - but in the meantime the parents get to enjoy whatever dinner, salon, workshop, or party is going on in the castle.
During the work day, the parents sometimes ask other Feÿtopians if they can watch the baby when both parents need to get work done, and someone always volunteers. Like Tyler describes in his post about baby coworking, it’s a joy to spend an hour with a kid - and it’s often hard for non-parents to access this joy if they don’t live near or have family.
In our intro survey for Supernuclear subscribers (please fill it out if you haven’t already!), many of the responses to ‘why are you interested in coliving?’ centered around childcare. Some are from parents who want support or an easy way to hang out with friends while raising kids. But a surprising number are from child-free people who long to be involved in raising the next generation, regardless of whether they are their ‘own’ kids. For example:
‘As someone who isn’t having kids and isn’t connected with her extended family, I find I’m still craving the “group project” energy that comes with the rhythm of domestic family life. I just want to share something with others. The treadmill of deciding what I individually want and then acquiring that desire has lost its meaning. Sharing feels like an antidote.’
I’ve experienced this myself: last year at Casa Chironja, my coliving community in Puerto Rico, I sent my friends on a date night with the promise I’d keep an eye on their kids, who were sleeping one floor above me. I was working on a deadline for my accountant and knew I wouldn’t be leaving the house so it took no effort from me. My friends were effusive when they got home: they said it was the first time in three years that they felt like they got to be adults and not just parents. How many times do you get to feel like a hero when you’re doing your taxes?
A couple days later, on the last night of their week long visit, I wanted to go out with my friends. I encouraged them to ask in the house chat if anyone was willing to ‘watch’ their kids like I had. My friends resisted: they felt they couldn’t impose on the community, many of whom they’d just met. I pushed them, and sure enough multiple people volunteered. We had a great night out while our housemate Matt occasionally poked his head in their apartment to make sure the kids were sleeping soundly.
A few months later I learned that my friends had sold their apartment in Brooklyn. In January the mother wrote me:
I want to have kids - and I want to raise them around a wealth of adults who model different ways to be successful and happy. I want them to grow up with a diverse and fun group of kids who will become their extended family. I want to inherit strollers and baby clothes from my friends, and pass them on to the next family in our community when mine have grown out of them. I want to teach my friend’s kids to sing and mentor them when they build businesses.
And yes, I want support when life throws me curve balls. And I want to be that support for other friends when they need it.
Writing Supernuclear has been a great excuse to research why most people in the US don’t live this way, and how we could. My hunch is that many more would live in ‘villages’ if they had clearer models for how this could work - just like my friends whose week long experience in a coliving space helped inspire them to move into an apartment building with their friends.
We’re looking for more stories of people who are raising kids in communities. So far we’ve written about Radish, The Village, Windhover, and Open Field Coliving. Rhaina Cohen also just published ‘A Grand Experiment in Parenthood and Friendship’ in the Atlantic, which dives into several more examples.
If you are living close to friends and raising kids, we’d love to hear about your experience: please write us at hi@gosupernuclear.com.
Suggested further reading:
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Comments
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 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 chneu 2025-05-297:18 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.
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.
By jp57 2025-05-2914:55 My dad was born in 1925. He lived with his parents and sisters and didn't share a household with grandparents aunts or uncles. My mom was born in a small town in Italy on the eve of WWII and orphaned when she was ten. Again, there were no grandparents aunts or uncles, or friends or neighbors living in the same household, and none were in the picture to care for her. She was went to boarding schools until she could emigrate to America, where her uncles lived. During school breaks she lived with neighbors in her home town.
I don't know enough about my grandparents to be able to answer, but I think it's likely that small three-generation households were common somewhat common, i.e. a grandparent and one of their children, that child's spouse and that set of grand children. But I think multi-family households and intentional household relationships not bound by marriage or parent/child bonds were rare in their day as well, at least in the US and western Europe.
By afaxwebgirl 2025-05-2816:073 reply 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 your own house. When you live with these folks, the disagreement may not be as amicable especially if they see that you're not implementing their ideas of what they think is best for your child.
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 crazygringo 2025-05-2818:516 reply 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 baseline level of compatibility and trust that can make it all work. But in today's world where you often have to move every five years for a job, or for a better school, etc., spontaneously joining groups of families and having it "just work" is a tall order.
By ryandrake 2025-05-2819:23 I can't even agree with one spouse about a lot of these things, let alone a bunch of co-parents from different walks of life, in some sort of community house. No way that's going to work. I would not be able to even deal with having my own parents live with us and "help" with our kid. While I love them, the things they consider important about child-raising are not all compatible with the things I consider important and I am certain we would clash all the time.
By geverett 2025-05-2821:02 I'm reminded of this Atlantic article that says 'You can try to micromanage your child’s care—whether they eat sugar, whether they get screen time, whether someone insists that a child apologize after snatching another kid’s toy—or you can have reliable community help with child care. But you can’t have both.'
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/01/intensive...
Personally I'm ok with flexing my standards a bit for the sake of having a great community - I'm on the cleaner side but I don't mind doing a little extra tidying as long as it feels like a balance. I've lived with my friends and their kids and while we don't have the 100% the same parenting styles we all respect what the others bring to the table.
By mihaaly 2025-05-2819:29 And there are enstranged families. A sort of common occurrence nowdays, but not unknown in the past either (concealed, suppressed, being a shame, common occurrence of the present is perhaps due to less stigma nowadays). They do not want to live or even be in contact with those who gave you (you gave to) their values, efforts, view of life. Lived together for years and years in dependency. People with very strong ties, like it or not.
And co-living should work better with strangers of mixed mentality?
Yes, this must be for people with highly common way of current thinking (current, momentarily, as people do change when they go through significant life experiences, like raising children or joining a community).
By spacemadness 2025-05-2916:04 It seems everyone’s trying to fix one part of the system without seeing the system as a whole. Build more housing is all you need to do, live in communes is all you need, etc. That’s great for easy blog fodder. I definitely think community is vital, but the system you live in can easily poison it or make it unworkable. Also the article seems to mention actual intergenerational families in India then asks why aren’t families living with other families which is a weird conclusion to make from that.
By drewcoo 2025-05-291:10 Community and selfishness don't mix well.
And with more than 2 co-parents, a quorum might form that excludes you.
By magicalhippo 2025-05-2819:221 reply My company has a cabin us employees can use. Only thing we have to do is reserve it and clean up before we leave.
Cleanliness has been a huge source of frustration, as you say there's a huge chasm between what some people considers "clean enough".
And that's not sharing it at the same time, like in a community home...
By SoftTalker 2025-05-2820:03 Easily solved by hiring a cleaning service to come in between bookings. Anyone renting apartments or even doing AirBnB knows you cannot rely on tenants to leave the place anything better than "broom clean" and often they don't even do that.
By dheera 2025-05-291:03 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.
By mattlondon 2025-05-2820:131 reply Some people quoted sound like they only have one baby.
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 D13Fd 2025-05-2820:52 Five kids here, and I’ve found the same thing. Even though we’ve raised them all the same way, they are each unique individuals with very different behavior.
Before kids I was very much on the “nuture” side of nature vs. nuture, but now I think a lot of it is random, just a genetic lottery.
