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I think your "hippie anarchist commune" (aka "society") is the closest answer. They say "it takes a village to raise a child". Very young children need at least

by dTal 4y ago

I think your "hippie anarchist commune" (aka "society") is the closest answer. They say "it takes a village to raise a child". Very young children need at least one dedicated caretaker, it is true, but by age 5 or 6 - around the time we start sending them to school - they are independent enough, and low-maintenance enough, to be reliably looked after by other adults. By age 10 or so they are more or less ready to move through the world autonomously and without supervision, and at this age the relationships with the adults around them begin to shift from "babysitter" to "friend". We aren't meant to be helicoptered by a single parental unit from birth to age 18 - we're meant to engage with society, from pretty early on. So if we imagine a world where we aren't so damned estranged from each other - doesn't have to be a hippie commune, could be a cozy urban village like Sesame Street - the durability of a family unit probably experiences diminishing returns as the child exits infancy, provided they still have access to at least one parent. And it wouldn't be at all surprising if the fabled "7-year itch" was a biological reflection of this.

thriftwy 4y ago
I don't believe that's going to work. Unrelated people's families living together leads to huge amount of toxicity. There's no housing or legal framework to support this, but more importantly, people just don't and can't live that way, en masse. Add to that the financial question which turns out hard even for nuclear families. It becomes better when they're all relatives of each other, but still quite toxic so in the end, people are dying to get their own home with a locking door, even at consderable expense. It's all been tried in the Soviet Union with its housing shortages and shared apartments.
- dTal 4y ago
  I'm talking about villages, not hostels. Villages are not toxic.
  - trieste92 4y ago
    > Villages are not toxic. I highly highly doubt this
  - znpy 4y ago
    > Villages are not toxic. it really depends on a lot of things, first among which "how do you define toxic". you can't really make that generalization, your argument is invalid.
fxtentacle 4y ago
You're ignoring the fact that raising kids in the US is a huge financial investment. Who pays for clothing and food? Who is going to pay $200000 for university, if not the biological parents?
- thriftwy 4y ago
  Also, how they are going to divide inheritance and parential support, on which the youth happen to depend more and more? You are either going to launch these community kids essentially naked into the hostile world when they came of age, or figure out who specifically has to cough out the cash to support them in early adult life. If there is an entangled group of children, but only one of them is inheriting the house since it happened to be one biological parent's property, it's going to get ugly.

by dTal 4y ago

thriftwy 4y ago

I don't believe that's going to work. Unrelated people's families living together leads to huge amount of toxicity. There's no housing or legal framework to support this, but more importantly, people just don't and can't live that way, en masse. Add to that the financial question which turns out hard even for nuclear families. It becomes better when they're all relatives of each other, but still quite toxic so in the end, people are dying to get their own home with a locking door, even at consderable expense. It's all been tried in the Soviet Union with its housing shortages and shared apartments.

dTal 4y ago
I'm talking about villages, not hostels. Villages are not toxic.
- trieste92 4y ago
  > Villages are not toxic. I highly highly doubt this
- znpy 4y ago
  > Villages are not toxic. it really depends on a lot of things, first among which "how do you define toxic". you can't really make that generalization, your argument is invalid.

fxtentacle 4y ago

You're ignoring the fact that raising kids in the US is a huge financial investment. Who pays for clothing and food? Who is going to pay $200000 for university, if not the biological parents?

thriftwy 4y ago
Also, how they are going to divide inheritance and parential support, on which the youth happen to depend more and more? You are either going to launch these community kids essentially naked into the hostile world when they came of age, or figure out who specifically has to cough out the cash to support them in early adult life. If there is an entangled group of children, but only one of them is inheriting the house since it happened to be one biological parent's property, it's going to get ugly.