BlogHer - Would you live on a family compound? - Comments

I would LOVE to!

Southerngirl — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:15:49 -0500

My family gets along really well and we respect each other greatly. This would be a great solution for us but we are so scattered about that it is not realistic. My sister and uncle share a driveway with one big fence surrounding both their properties. I would be very content in this situation except I cannot find a job close enough to them to add myself to that fence.

Maria maybe we can talk!

Michelle

I blog at http://www.mommycan.blogspot.com/

yes, with family by choice

Laracolvin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:42:28 -0500

A few months ago my best friend and I both found ourselves going through divorces, struggling to raise our kids while finding time for ourselves, and trying to figure out how to stay afloat financially. So we decided it would be easier for everyone if we just joined forces and combined households. She could keep her house (and with me chipping in can afford to pay for it), and we would have the unconditional support only really good friends can lend to each other.

I must say it has worked out fantastically! My daughter now says she has two big teenage sisters; we can trade off dinner and supervisory duties; and we all fit so well we laugh and dance and play together effortlessly...and often! Sometimes the ideas that seem the most unorthodox can provide the happiest solutions.

Notions of Identity

My Kids...

TW — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:59:03 -0500

At one point I thought this would work out really well for me, Denise, my ex, and the kids all swarming about, adding my mother in another little house.

Now, older and wiser...I wouldn't. But the kids periodically poke their father to buy the house under construction next to our rental and a few years back tried to get us to buy a house across the street from his house that was for sale.

Yay! No more back and forthness...but then you realize thateek, no, thanks.

~TW
Retro-Food

The whole family would have to agree...

ynnej — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:31:42 -0500

The only problem for us would be that the whole family would have to agree to a city to live in ;-) My side lives in a rural area and would never leave, my husband and I live in the middle of a large city urban area, and my in-laws live in a the suburbs of another large city...no one would leave their environment!

On another note, my mother, who is not yet 60, cares for my niece 4 days a week in lieu of daycare for my brother and sister-in-law. While this works great for them, I think it is actually exhausting for her. She wishes sometimes that she could just relax and be retired instead of having to chase around after a 2 year old when she has already finished raising 2 kids...So sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be a little unfair to the grandparents.

http://www.ConscientiousConfusion.com

http://www.afamilyis.us

dreaming...

markedintentions — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:27:22 -0500

it would be possible that i could live on a compound. but i would get bored after a while since i want to expand myself to other people

Sounds great, but not for me

AmberS — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:58:11 -0500

I see all the advantages to a family compound, and part of me finds it really appealing. But I just don't see myself doing it. I think that my hang-ups and my fondness for privacy would overwhelm any benefits at the end of the day.

But there is a part of me that thinks it's really great. And that people were really meant to live more in community like this.

~ Amber

www.strocel.com

Cohousing.

LPC — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:52:49 -0500

http://amidlifeofprivilege.blogspot.com

The title says it all. Cohousing.

It's my dream

Maria Niles — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:38:00 -0500

Unfortunately my family thinks me insane in this regard ;) But I think it is something families are returning to as I wrote about here in my post about modern tenements. And it would be great to see government looking at what benefits family living, co-housing and other modes of communal housing could bring to communities and be worthy of support.

I sort of grew up this way as my grandparents lived two doors down and our backyards connected. It was great for me though hard in some ways on my mother because when you're that close it is harder to maintain the independence and autonomy from your parents that you develop as an adult. Even still, seeing that, I would choose that way of living. I don't have children, though so that might affect my desire.

Good luck in gathering your family around you, Morra.

BlogHer Contributing Editor
PopConsumer
Beyond Help

Would you live on a family compound?

Morra Aarons Mele — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:02:25 -0500

To schedule adequate childcare for a tiny baby around a one-day business trip today took wrangling the schedules of four adults. What’s wrong with this picture??

I’ve never been one much for regional architecture but two New England specialties have inspired me in my quest to find childcare that doesn’t make me ache. As a newcomer to New England, I recently visited the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine and the Hyannis, Massachusetts Kennedy compound. Seen from afar the compounds resemble military stations but really they’re brilliant: a collection of small houses with central areas for dining and recreation (not unlike the polygamist family’s suburban set-up on HBO’s Big Love, actually). Fortunate friends grew up among a family-owned series of cottages scattered around Rockport, MA, and on coastal Rhode Island where everyone lives with in a mile of each other but has their own space.

Hillary Clinton reminded us that it takes a village to raise a child. Maybe it just takes your family, near by. I live in a typical Boston suburb where two family houses dominate: aluminum sided, two entrances off a small front porch, one unit upstairs, one down. These double deckers are incredibly practical although they’ll never win an award for design. A typical symbol of blue-collar semi-urban America, these houses, in my mind, present the ultimate solution to America’s childcare woes. In my neighborhood, mothers or mothers in law tend to live downstairs, young families upstairs. Doors can be closed, and (hopefully) walls are soundproofed, but dropping a kid off for day care can be as easy as a trip downstairs. Aging parents get the first floor with no stairs.

Living near our families is an ancient tradition for most cultures, of course. A recent trip to the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst awakened me to my forebears’ life on the shtetl back in Russia: again, a squat collection of nearby houses conjoined by shared faith, education, and usually bloodline. The appeal of many of these communities, too small and tribal to be called villages, is that you were related to most of the inhabitants and so you had no choice but to help take care of them. How different that is from my experience as a new mom: feeling isolated in my house with so many questions and knowing the only way I can get reliable help for my is to pay for it.

Yes, our families drive us crazy. Sometimes they are toxic and it’s right to leave them. But how much would I rather have extended family near than to have to outsource care? I come back to this article in my mind: as Kate Michelman reminds us in her heartbreaking account of trying to support her family’s medical needs, when a child and a spouse needs medical care, we have no choice but to drop everything, often at great financial cost as we need to stop work. From Kate’s article, it sounded like she faced these innumerable stressors alone. She needs a village.

When I left home I felt compelled to move away from my family, even though I love them. It starts with college: upwardly mobile people go where the best school is, no matter where. Then, you graduate and go where the best jobs are, with little regard (at 22) for where it might be good to raise a family or what will happen when your parents are older and need your help.

Now that I have a baby, I want to live on a compound: Dad in one bungalow, mom and stepdad in another, sister on the other side. I’d even settle for a double (or triple) decker. Mrs. Obama’s mother Marian Robinson lives in the White House! I read with interest the account of California family that built a compound, “The Shiltses used some of Joe's retirement money to buy the land, and all three family groups pitched in for the down payment after selling their houses. They own the house as joint tenants, and each family contributes to a joint account that pays for the 15-year mortgage and other shared costs.” Sounds quite buttoned up and reasonable.

There are great incentives for green building, such as solar panel tax credits, but how about family friendly building? How about tax incentives for families who consolidate? Think of the economies of scale, the green possibilities when we pool resources. Think of the saved gas mileage and, best of all, no horrific Thanksgiving travel.

There are a lot of dilapidated double deckers in my area that could use some families.