Collective Parenting and Hyper Individualism

I grew up in the magical decade of the 1980s, part of a generation between generations. They call us Xennials - that handful of years between Gen X and Millenials that often gets left out of the conversation. We were the last generation to have an analog childhood, and the first to have home computers and cellphones in our teens.

When I was young, I grew up in a upper class neighbourhood full of families with young children. My three best friends all lived within two blocks of each other and we spent every free minute playing together. It was also that magical era where we all still had home phones, so we would memorize each other’s phone numbers and call as soon as we got home from school (there was no homework before high school back then). Politely, we would ask Mr or Mrs Whoever if our friend could come over to play; come over for dinner; have a sleep over that Friday. I might be making this up, but it felt like a rare evening where there wasn’t some board game or dress up event or park play happening during those primary years. We still had soccer practice or ballet lessons, but every spare moment was spent playing together.

I recognize now that this was not the norm for most people. We had the benefit of living in a safe neighbourhood, all within walking distance. If there was driving involved, we likely wouldn’t have seen each other so frequently. I cherish these memories of my childhood because they were happy and free.

As an adult, I can recognize the importance of this way of living, not only for kids but for the parents as well. My generation often jokes that our parents didn’t do a lot of parenting, but this network of parents all worked together to keep an eye on things, to keep track of where we were hanging out, and to provide the care that each of us needed regardless of whose child they were tending to.

When my oldest entered the school system, I expected to build the same type of network with local parents. I hadn’t realized that this dynamic didn’t exist in every neighbourhood. I was honestly surprised when I met other parents who weren’t interested in dropping kids off after school. When requesting play dates, we were often met with a decline because so-and-so had to go to some class or scheduled activity or family obligation.

I use the past tense here, but this is ongoing. I have been persistent because I see the benefits of distributed parenting networks, all providing the support for each other that we desperately need. I can see the institutionalization of care giving and education within the school system but also in extra curricular activities, and I am so hesitant to lean into this way of life.

I can see that this early childhood experience set a precedent for me and motivates a lot of my beliefs. The ideas around relying on less institution and building more communities, exploring ideas of communalism, or the ongoing search for community. I experienced such a beautiful and simple implementation of community care giving as a child, and it honestly boggles my mind that more people aren’t interested in sharing this load while simultaneously providing natural learning opportunities for our children as they explore the world with different people. And it’s free to boot!

I was chatting recently with Meghan about bell hooks on Instagram the other day and we were chatting about the institutionalization of the nuclear family - a big deep conversation that I won’t go into too much detail around here, but I do want to share this quote for the comment thread:

[W]e replaced community with little silo homes of complete privacy and gave parents total power over their young people bound by religious doctrines that used marriage as the sacred institution to keep us all tucked in tight.

(Meghan, The Unschool Files)

I really don’t like the idea of the nuclear family as an institution. It makes me really uncomfortable because it’s the one place that I’ve held sacred as “un-institutionalizable”. But the truth is that our little family units are held to the same laws and norms of capitalist colonial culture as everything else and it would be naively idealistic of me to think that my little fam is untouchable.

Meghan’s notion struck a hard chord for me when I extended the concept to this ongoing quest for community in the form of distributed networks of care givers. I had honestly convinced myself that people just didn’t like me, and while that may still very well be true, I think it’s probably more likely that people are building these “silo homes”. They are guarding their families; taking part in the institutionalization of childhood and parenting that is pushed on us by capitalism, colonialism, and christianity.

In other words, we keep to our own.

The pipeline of this phenomenon leading to the bolstering of hyper individuality and the alt right is quite apparent to me. Kids spend more time at home instead of out in the community, only participating in parent-approved adult-led activities that are deemed an appropriate use of time by an authority. Interactions are monitored, often supervised with adults stepping in when kids act “inappropriately” - a far cry from the freedom I experienced as a child.

What happens to kids when they don’t have that free play? What happens when they only participate in family approved structured activities?

They don’t build their sense of independence; their confidence. They don’t get to experience that network of caregivers - an opportunity to develop care and connection with people outside their nuclear family.

If it’s anything like what I’ve experienced in our family, the lack of network means that kids spend a lot more time online.

Without that network, without that community, we are perpetuating a culture of self-reliance over community. We enforce individuality over commonalty. And with this culture comes a whole host of other issues, both individual and societal including things like increased inequality, lack of social responsibility, social fragmentation, isolation and poor mental health. Existing in a culture that prioritizes the individual over the collective often results in policy makers only focusing on short term solutions with less civic engagement which in turn can effect issues like environmental policy. It’s hard to think seven generations ahead when you’re only thinking about what’s happening in your own lifetime.

There’s a clear path from self-reliance to self-importance, to prioritizing one’s self over the collective. It’s a dangerous path because we need each other; not just to survive, but to thrive.

Does it feel like a jump to say that less play dates means more environmental degradation? Yes, yes it does. But whether we want to acknowledge it or not, these things are connected. If we want to raise caring and committed individuals who are motivated to make the world a better place, we can’t do that in little protected nuclear family silos. We need to do it together.