Response to Emily Follin: Communal vs. Personal?

Emily Follin raised the question in her blog, The Evils of Utopia, "Which is better: being raised communally or being raised by your parents, thus forming a personal bond with them?"

I live with a family of hippies. Just recently--in the last few weeks of August--I attended what is called a Rainbow Gathering with them. How a Rainbow Gathering works: many hippies (anywhere between fifty and several hundred) come together in a certain area of the woods and build up a community from what they carry in on their backs and whatever they can find in nature. What does this have to do with anything? As many people know, hippies tend to live communally. This includes taking care of children communally.

Since there is so much to be done to make a community work, parents cannot always keep a close eye on their kids. To help out with this problem, one or two people will volunteer to take care of them. They are responsible for feeding them, playing with them, keeping them clean, and making sure they do not get into trouble (and disciplining them when they do).

I was responsible for child care during my time at the Rainbow Gathering, and I can say from first-hand experience that there are many positives aspects of communal child care. First and foremost, it relieves a lot of stress for the parents. When there is so much to be done, it helps not to have to worry about what your kids are up to. This is probably one of the reasons Plato advocated it; when a philosopher king is so busy solving life's quandaries, it would be hard to focus on raising a child. Another positive aspect: when children are being raised communally by one or two people, they are all answerable to the same rules. This means a lot less conflict between the kids. For instance, if one kid's parents tells him not to play by the fire, and another parents tells their kid it's ok, then the kids might fight about it. A final thing to advocate communal child care: if one person is responsible for all the children, then there is no doubt that all the children will be taken care of. In example, if one person is caring for all of them, then they all eat at the same time. If busy parents are looking out for their own kid, they might forget to feed them, or may simply not have the time or resources to.

Despite my advocacy of communal child care, I also believe that children being raised wholly in that environment would be disasterous. After all, it IS critical to form that important bond between parents and children. Studies such as Jeanie have shown that no connection to your parents can result in the inability to interact socially with others. Therefore, it is my belief that parents should raise their kids, but there are many times when raising children communally can be a good thing.