Multiple Parenting in Community: The Advantages

by Daniel Greenberg

Diffusion of Burdens

For example, in one community that provided 24-hour-a-day childcare a mother expressed how she was not emotionally prepared for parenthood and began using this service almost exclusively from the time her child was three-months-old. During the next two years, she felt she had grown into motherhood and began working in the community's childcare center and spending more time with her child. It is unclear how this parent would have dealt with her child if she had not been living in this community. It is possible that forced exposure to her child would have elicited a rapid maturing of her parenting skills. It is more likely, however, that the community acted as a buffer in what would have otherwise been a stressful and deleterious situation for both mother and child.

In addition to the "strength in numbers" aspect of communal childrearing, the combined parental experience of multiple caregivers often facilitates more relaxed attitudes towards childhood conflicts. As one family researcher describes it, there is "nothing so helpful as a liberal dose of judicious neglect" (Bossard & Stoker Boll, 1979, pp. 1920). In such an environment, traditional developmental issues remain, but generally with lessened severity. This dynamic was described by one communal adult who was childless, yet participated in the child rearing of other adults' children.

The increased number of adults seemed to significantly diffuse some of the traditional battles. Toilet training was a long process, but not a particularly tense one. Justy's periods of "no" to every suggestion were shared by a number of people, and thus were easier for all of us to put up with (Gross, 1974).

A wealth of wisdom, opinions and parenting styles is available in most communities. Parents or childcare workers can receive helpful advice on everything from diaper rash to adolescent rebellion. As one mother stated:

I started having them fairly young and I felt extremely isolated and felt like I didn't know what I was doing or how to take care of them . . . and I didn't have a lot of people I could talk to about it. I really like sharing responsibility and decisions about the children in community. I can go and say to any number of people here, "I seem to be having this problem with the children and I don't know what to do. Have you tried anything?" And they often say, "Oh yeah, I've had that problem too and I've tried this and it's worked. This hasn't worked." So just being able to share the experiences of raising children together is really exciting.

Often, new styles of interacting with children are absorbed simply by observing other parents or adults. For example,

One woman was really into watching her child eat and telling her what to eat. The result was that the child was nervous at meals and ate hardly anything. From watching other adults and children, she realized that other people were not doing this to their children and they were eating more sensibly than her own child. Although she still was anxious about what her child ate, she was able to stop hounding her about it and let her eat (or not eat) in peace.

In large communities, pregnancies seem almost contagious and several mothers may deliver babies within a few months of each other. Cohorts of parents are then able to provide support to each other and share the joys and burdens of parenting as their children progress through similar developmental stages. One community member recollected the following:

One of my favorite times with children was when we first moved here and [my daughter] was about a year old or a bit older and there were five other children within three months of her age. All of the mothers were really close and most of them were breast feeding. I was still breast feeding and we used to hang out as a group a lot and had group childcare and we shared breastfeeding and that was really neat. I could go away for 10 hours and know that if [my daughter] really wanted breast milk that someone else was there to nurse her.

In a sense, multiple parenting replaces the obligatory exchange of resources from parent to child, to more of a marketplace. With a variety of adults sharing child care responsibilities, parents can choose to interact with children more often when they want to rather than when they have to, thus reducing burnout and enhancing the overall quality of parent-child relationships.

Flexibility

We exchange clothes among ourselves ... especially at the change of the seasons. At the washhouse, we have one section of a table that is called the "giveaway."... I needed new pants for my child and some Calamine lotion. I put a note up and within 10 minutes, I had six pairs of pants, a bottle of cough syrup, and a brand new bottle of Calamine.

Communities that share childcare, and related tasks such as cooking, laundry, shopping, and cleaning, allow parents (most notably mothers) freedom to pursue activities other than parenting and to be more fully involved in work and social activities both in and out of the community. Intentional communities with cottage industries or communal economic ventures generally have flexible work schedules making it is easy for parents to take breaks to visit their children. Furthermore, as most communities are on one contiguous piece of land and are generally designed as pedestrian communities, parents are never very far from their children. This situation is especially advantageous for fathers living in communities who can spend more time with their biological families than they might be able to "on the outside."

Community life offers another benefit to parents who are frequently on the go. When parents travel outside of the community either for work or vacation, their children can stay home and experience continuity in their primary care and routines. This continuity is often a source of great comfort to parents. As one community member noted,

When I was raising children outside of the community, if I sent them to daycare, I was sending them to be taken care of by a bunch of people who I didn't really know. I didn't really know their values. Here, at least I know the people who take care of her and we have at least some similar values as far as non-violence and cooperation are concerned.

In a similar vein, another member emphatically stated, "I know who is taking care of my children. I know they are not home alone. They are not latchkey kids. There's always somebody home ... always."

Single Parents and Divorce

Divorce, although never pleasant, tends to be a much smoother and less jarring process for both parents and children within communities. For parents, the social support structures and elbow-room available within most communities generally diffuse intense conflicts between couples and relieves the pressure to quickly deal with the separation.

Frequently, separated partners remain within an community and continue their re lationship with the group. This aspect of divorce in com munities is gene rally quite bene ficial for children who are able to maintain close relationships with both parents and often get to see them slowly be come friends again as members of the community. Also, given the extended family-like relationships within most com munities, children do not have to be right in the middle of the fighting and the chaos sometimes associated with separations.

So far so good. Through sharing tasks, resources, and personal support, parents within communities are buffered from some of the stresses common to parenting and have various options available when balancing family and career and in cases of divorce. Before you reach a final opinion, however, please wait to read the June issue's "Children in Community" column which will address the down side of multiple parenting.

Bossard, J. H. S., & Stocker, E. (1979). "The Large Family System," Child and Family, 18(1), 11-25.

Fuchs, V. R., & Reklis, D. M. (1992) "America's Children: Economic Perspectives and Policy Options," Science, 255, 41-46.

Gross, L. (1974). "Communal Childcare," in V. Breibart (Ed.), The Day Care Book: The Why, What, and How of Community Daycare. New York: Alfred A Knopf. pp. 83-86.