mike_decock

In response to Psychic's thread "not everyone should be allowed to have children", I suggested that society could benefit from a Communal Family structure as opposed to our Western "Nuclear Family" structure.

I don't have a fully developed picture of what this would be like, but I'll give it a shot:

Instead of the traditional "two parents + children" in a household, many other cultures have a larger structure for childcare and education.

Asian cultures traditionally had grandparents in the household who could aid in parenting and this has been demonstrated to being beneficial to both the parents and the children. It is also provides a support structure for the elderly.

Indigenous tribes also have a different family structure in which the children are cared for by the parents of other children while the parents are providing for the tribe.

Also, considering the genetic benefits of random coupling, this could lead to fewer health problems for the children. Instead of two people being married to each other, it could be 3, 4, 15, whatever.

This Communal Family would probably consist of about 30 people (based on the size of hunter-gatherer tribes still functioning today). Multiple parents would share the responsibility of earning money for the Family. This distributes the burden and reduces the risk of the Family sinking into poverty.

Instead of single-family houses, a house could be more like a mansion offering privacy as well as shared areas (community kitchen, dining room, whatever). I think you could achieve a greater population density in mansions which leaves more space available for nature, agriculture, etc.

Multiple parents would share the responsibility of taking care of the children whose parents are working.

As adults have a variety of interests and academic disciplines, children would have many parents to turn to for education. This could be as simple as having multiple of parents to ask for help with homework with our traditional educational systems or go as far as "home-schooling" entire curriculums.

A Communal Family could also offer greater stability for children and adults alike. The death of one parent, although a tragedy, would be less likely to be financially devastating and the network of the other parents could step in to fill those needs.

That's it for now, I haven't gone into whether or not this is Psychologically viable for the typical Westerner, but I think it at least has technical viability as well as some obvious benefits.

-Mike...

Ab_Normal

Largest "group family" I've seen is three adults under the same roof with with 3-6 kids (depending on custody schedules). From my outsider's perspective, it's working fine, and they certainly seem to benefit from economies of scale.

Ab_Normal

And now, for some deeper analysis...

I find the idea of living communally attractive. My husband and I have gone so far as to sit down with another couple and try to plan out what our group home would look like. Finding people we could live and raise our children with, and finding a suitable piece of property, were big hurdles, but the biggest obstacle was money; neither family had the capital required to purchase property, so nothing came of our plans.

The mobility required of modern corporate wage slaves would be another show-stopper. I've already had to relocate my family once for job reasons. I can imagine how much harder it would be if we had been living in a "communal family", and needed to liquidate our share of the assets in order to move.

mike_decock

Hmmm... It would seem that those who have the money to start a communal family would benefit the least from a communal living (the parents, at least, the children would probably benefit greatly if the parents are busy professionals). The greed factor plays a big role in here. I don't think too many people are willing to share their money.

That's one aspect I haven't considered. The requirement for mobility in this age really sucks.

-Mike...

LostGirl

There's a book entitled, Vigilant by James Alan Gardner which envisions a kind of communal marriage (Marymarch unions) where there are a group of people get together and pair (or triple) off eventually, but children are raised communally. The benefits are that there are a variety of "human resource" available to the group; more productive members can support less productive members, children always have someone to look after them, and the emotional needs of the people involved are more deeply met. I may not want to "marry" my best friend(s); but I do love them in a filios/agape (when translated as brotherly/spiritual or love of the mind/love of the spirit) way and consider them family in a very real way. I can understand living together communally could be very satisfying.

My main problem with this is that realistically, we have enough problems in our society finding one person with whom we're able to spend the rest of our life in a stable relationship, let alone six or eight. However, perhaps you could make the argument that more people would have a stabilizing effect. I'm not sure it wouldn't self destruct, and with a more "flowing" structure, there's the loss of stability.

mike_decock

Perhaps stable relationships are hard to find because the traditional nuclear family is so "confined". I think that finding a balance between privacy and community would go a long way to increasing the stability.

If you could escape into your private living quarters whenever you needed some time alone, you could avoid much of the friction which is inevitable when adults have to share the same space day in/day out.

From my own experience with my roommates (one of whom has lived with me for almost 10 years), we get along really well as long as we respect each other's privacy.

-Mike...

Psychic

hmm. the idea of a communal way of living sounded very interesting at the begining but now I realize that there are many aspects that would prevent its implementation!
but I'll keep thinking about this, and if i find some way to go around the main obstacles i'll get back to you with some new vision of the subject.