Throwback Edition: Alternative Solutions to the Nuclear Family

Plus, what if we stopped being so available, staying put for 30 years, and Oscar nominated shorts

Feb 23, 2023

Dearest Readers,

I come at you today from my bed. My eyes are swollen and squinty, unable to remain fully rapt even after 11 miraculous, desperately needed hours of sleep last night.

Yesterday, we wrapped shooting for the short film I wrote, directed, and produced here in Costa Rica. the experience was life-changing, fulfilling, challenging, and tiring—3:30 am wake-ups, full days, putting out small fires in between takes, filming in the heat. There is so much more to be unpacked about the experience, but for now, I have a few looming writing deadlines and the need to be horizontal, so I’ll save those stories for next week.

In the interim, enjoy this edition from about a year ago covering one of my favorite topics—communal living. My passion for this subject matter has only grown stronger as time has gone on. And please, if you or anyone you know has ever lived in a non-traditional, community-based dwelling setup, shoot me an email or leave a comment. I’d love to hear more about it. Also, don’t skip today’s “3 Pieces of Content” section. The first article is gold, one I revisit often, and the other 2 are equally interesting.

Until next week,

Co-Living Is Not a Trend, It's How Everyone Has to Live Now | Apartment Therapy

A Note From the Editor

During a recent Zoom interview, I was asked, “When was the last time you remember feeling truly happy?” The answer came to me like a reflex, so sudden that even I was surprised. “September 2020,” I said. Logically and logistically this doesn’t make sense, for I was on the verge of a painful breakup, I was working a job my heart wasn’t in, and I was existing in a pre-vaccine pandemic world in which Donald Trump was still the President. And yet, the memory of that month evokes a sense of warmth and security that I had never felt prior and have not felt since for I was living with two of my best friends in a beautiful house in rural Vermont.

I had lived with friends before, both in college and after college, but this felt different. We were under no financial obligation to live together; we chose each other's company only to fend off the isolation and smallness that pandemic life in New York brought forth. Also, we were full adults, with jobs and relationships and obligations, so we were coming at living together from a place of individual independence. When you’re in your early 20s sharing an apartment with a friend, there can often be a sense of childlike attachment and obligation. In Vermont, we could live our own lives, giving each other space but coexisting in a way that felt natural and low stakes. We grocery-shopped together and split the bill, we alternated cooking dinners for each other nightly. The parts of life that can feel daunting for a single person became easier when they were shared, and the lonely parts felt less lonely. Until that month, I hadn’t realized how much I craved conversation, laughter, or simple togetherness at the end of a draining day of work. So many times before, when I was on my own, I had been so tired by the time I closed my laptop that the idea of socializing felt impossible. In Vermont, I relished in the end-of-day ritual of company and conversation, which created some distance between myself and the strain of the workday.

My friends and I talk about that time with starry-eyed nostalgia. Remember the smoothies we used to make in Vermont? Remember the early morning runs, the evening walks? When we moved back to New York, we all got our own separate apartments in three different neighborhoods, but that time bonded us in a way that feels enduring, extending beyond the bounds of regular friendship. At one point last year, my period was delayed because of stress. I was dating someone older who often said he would love for me to have his child, an idea I did not find realistic or appealing. When I mentioned my late period to my two best friends, we joked about raising the child together. We could all ditch our leases and get a big place somewhere in Brooklyn. Two of us had full-time jobs at the time, so we would have adequate health insurance and there would always be someone to watch the baby. With this setup, the idea of being a mother became palatable. I wouldn’t raise a child with that fickle man I was dating, but with these two friends, who were reliable, who loved me and who I trusted with my life? It felt possible.

I’ve had countless conversations recently with people who feel similarly; women in their late 20s and early 30s living in big cities for whom the nuclear family dynamic feels restrictive and outdated. Some of them want children and some do not. Some can imagine the possibility of being wives, others struggle against the idea, but the general consensus is that the “normal” way of doing things isn’t a particularly tempting prospect. The irony is that normalcy is malleable, but it is often shaped by external, financially motivated influences. Meeting a partner on a dating app, scanning your eyeball to skip the line at the airport, and tracking your every movement with a clunky bracelet are all fairly new norms, mass adopted and driven by powerful tech companies. People have the power to shape norms, too, though it is a much slower-moving feat. If people can shape social norms in a significant way, no matter how slow-moving, I wonder whether we can reimagine the typical family unit in a way that might better serve the varied needs of individuals.

My mind always goes to communal living for a host of reasons—shared burdens, shared resources, a smaller carbon footprint—but mostly because communes offer the unique opportunity for a group of people to create and live by their own framework of values instead of being forced to adopt the values of society at large. For example, there is currently no required paid maternity leave or standard, subsidized child care in America. From a policy standpoint, this tells us that bearing and raising children is not of equal importance to maintaining a full-time job. In a communal living situation, the community might decide that the work of raising children is equally as valuable as the labor of any job, and thus, with material limitations, they could design a dwelling that honors those values, offering mothers or those who provide child-care adequate compensation in the form of money, or time, or security.

But this is also why communes get a bad rap as weird, crunchy granola breeding grounds for cults, because they often operate in a way that isolates their members from society at large for the sake of being able to live by their own rules. What if there were a middle ground? What if communal living didn’t have to be so analogous, but instead it could be re-imagined to meet the distinctive needs of modern-day situations? I will admit that my frame of reference is only my own, and as such, my alternative living ideas are catered to situations I am most familiar with, but I imagine there are countless scenarios out there that would be naturally suited for communal-style living. Here are a few that come to mind:

A group of child-free women in their late 20s and 30s located in major cities, living in a large shared space they would never be able to afford on their own. They share the burden of cooking and cleaning and they keep a running list of the coolest cultural institutions to visit in their city–museum exhibits, plays, the like. Once a week they gather over wine and a home-cooked meal to discuss the interesting things they’ve discovered at said cultural institutions, or to gossip about work and dates and life. Partners and friends can come to visit at any point, there is no isolation involved. The only rule is they are never allowed to ask each other, “So, when are you getting married?”
A set of sisters, with or without families of their own, find themselves constantly running to keep up with the duties of motherhood/wifehood/womanhood, so they decide to go at it together. They buy a house large enough to accommodate all of their respective families, with enough space so that each family can have a bit of privacy. The household duties are split between the women and the men—the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping, the child care. And the split it on a rotation, so no one person is stuck cooking every night of the week. The kids, if there are any, have built-in cousins who feel like siblings, perfect for those who decide to only have one child, for financial or personal reasons.
A handful of empty nesters who are not quite old enough for retirement homes but who miss the buzz of a fuller life move into a shared space. They fall into an easy rhythm, having done this whole share-a-house thing before, and they bond over new hobbies that keep them feeling young. They partake in each other's hobbies every other week, led by the person who is the unofficial expert in the hobby—bird watching, dumpling making, salsa dancing. All this newness keeps things exciting. Once a year, they go on a trip together, alternating who gets to choose the location. When their children or grandchildren come to visit, they’re treated like one giant family. And now their children have even more parental figures to love them, the grandchildren are even more spoiled.

Cheers, my dears, and as always, thank you for reading. If you have any thoughts on the perils and upsides of communal living, or if you have any book recommendations about the history of communes, I’d love to hear them. And if you liked what you read today, please consider sharing it with a friend.

Perhaps You Should…Partake in the Best Film Experience of the Year

For the past three years, I’ve made it a tradition to go see the Oscar-nominated live-action shorts at IFC. I’d never been especially interested in shorts before, but after the first go, I quickly realized this was going to become my favorite cinematic experience of the year. To pack such a powerful punch into 40 minutes or less is an incredible feat, and it’s interesting to see the different cinematic approaches and subject matters covered by each country that is nominated. The shorts are in theatres for another week, so go see them for yourself. And if you need convincing, here is one of the best ones from two years ago.

Bonus Content (Sardoodledum)

I’ve watched this video at least fifteen times in the last week, and every single time it makes me smile. The joy, the cuteness!

A Quote From A Book You Should Read:

“Giving up was the new normal, and I have to say it was catching.”

-The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

This newsletter is best served with a side of conversation, so drop your opinions, reflections, and thoughts in the comments below and let’s get to talking.

that's so interesting

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