Honestly, I was dragged kicking and screaming into my first intentional community scene. My son's father had lived on a kibbutz in Israel, during high school for a year. And when we got pregnant, he had a meltdown and went, Oh my god, I really want to do this community thing, if I don't do it now, I'm never going to do it! He saw that as a big choice point for him.
And I was not buying it! I had all of the stereotypes in my head about community: that it was the sex-drugs-rock'n'roll hippie commune, nobody ever bathes, there's lots of drugs, you know. All of the really bad stereotypes, I had in spades.
And so he pretty much convinced me to just go look and give it a try. And I had been involved in lots of different kinds of activism work, sustainability stuff, feminism, gay rights stuff, race relations, a whole series of things when I was in college. And when I got to East Wind for the first time, it took me about 24 hours to figure out that these people were doing what I was talking about doing.
And there was a way that having particularly the income-sharing set-up really empowered some interesting social relationships between people. And they were growing a huge percentage of their own food, really doing the low-resource-use, low-money version of life. And I felt pretty inspired by that, and I also got pretty quickly that as a soon-to-be brand new parent who had never spent much time with children, it would really help to be surrounded by parents. And so that was a big piece of it, too: whoa, these people have something to offer that I'm really going to need, in another 8 months or so.
So there were those things that got me hooked initially. And it wasn't really about community initially for me. It was more about being able to live my activist ideals, and I think after I'd been there for a while, I figured out that living my activist ideals was community. But I didn't really put those pieces together, initially.
I ended up at Dancing Rabbit after visiting probably 50 or so communities around the country, and I've been involved for the last 6 years with the Fellowship for Intentional Community. And for me, Dancing Rabbit has managed to hit the sweet spot between practicality and idealism better than any group I've seen. It's a group of really idealistic people who have a really big vision for really sending a ripple out that is designed to change the world in some significant ways.
And usually when you bump into people like that, it's pretty flighty. It's like, I have these ambitions about changing the world, but it's not really grounded. And Dancing Rabbit has managed to ground it. And there's people here who are really doing that at a level of daily life practicality that I haven't seen in too many other places, and I really appreciate that.
And I also just have a sense that this is my tribe, in a lot of ways, the people connections here are really good for me. And a lot of activist circles tend to train people into being somewhat disconnected from each other, like it's about the issue, not about the people. And I miss the people part when I'm just doing straight-up activism. And being here, I get to do both, and I get to have both of those things on a daily basis, and I really, really value that.
I think that one of the other things that that balance between the practical and ideal gives us at Dancing Rabbit is that it's not a very high-judgment zone. There's a lot of different ways that people can put things together, and a lot of different ways that they can express their environmental values, and there's not a sense that one-size-has-to-fit-all here, or that this is the dogma about how things are supposed to be happening ecologically, it's really about, Let's find how many different creative ways we can put it together, and that's pretty cool.
So as far as how Dancing Rabbit mixes the practical with the ideal, my sense is that it has a lot to do with Dancing Rabbit being a very relational culture, where things are not black and white. There's not a lot of rules. We have a box that we've drawn with our ecological covenants. But within that box, how people manifest their version of the ecological covenants varies a lot.
And there's a lot of negotiation that goes along, where you really talk to your neighbours about, Does this seem like this would work for you if i did this thing right next to your house? And you have to be able to navigate really caring about each other. And there's a way that i think sometimes idealism moves us away from being relational, because we get really focused on the concept that we want to be having in the world, and there's not a dedication to things being relational. And so we kind of get lost in our heads a lot, and get harsh, and get disconnected from each other. And so, at Dancing Rabbit, we've found ways to insist that things are high communication. And I don't exactly understand how that all trickles down, but somehow that has allowed us to really manifest things in a really practical way.
We also do a lot of just bouncing ideas off each other. One of the guys here was building a cob house last summer, and I remember a couple of nights in a row, we had these great conversations about how to do roof-stuff. And we ended up with this totally off-the-wall idea, and the next day he was out there trying it! And it was watching that ability to have a whole bunch of people who are creative and really dedicated to the same values bouncing off each other constantly, and then somebody just goes and tries something, and suddenly there's a new way to do something out in the world. And that's really exciting to me, and that's really interesting, and I think that's part of why we hit the sweet spot, is that constant bouncing off each other.
I think that being able to communicate really well if you're going to live in community, and being able to take other people's feedback is really important. And to take it as a personal growth opportunity, rather than as an opportunity to get defensive with each other. I think that that's huge for making community really work. I think being curious about other people's perspectives is really important, and being willing to try things out that maybe you wouldn't have tried on your own and if you were living in isolation. I think that those are really important characteristics.
And I think that having -- something that's sort of hard to name -- some sort of zest for life, just being really dedicated to living your life fully, and letting that guide where you go in your life, I think is really important. I also think that having a sense of whatever your North Star is in your own life, what's that piece of your vision of making the world a better place, and letting that pull you along, I think makes a really big difference, as well.
Humour! I think the other thing that's really important is having a sense of humour about things, because it's so easy to get worn down by the closeness of living together, and if you can't keep some perspective on it, and keep some humour on it, I think you get lost really fast.
I think A, #1, difficult thing about community is conflict, and I don't think we navigate it very well as a culture. And so, people come into community, and your stuff comes up, and you can't really get away from it. Like, a lot of times in people's lives, if they're set up with a 9-to-5 job thing, you can leave your conflicts at work, and go home. Or you can escape your conflicts at home, and go to work. And you don't get that space, living in community. And so, you really learn how to work things out, and we don't have very good models of how to do that, in general. So I think that's the A-#1 growth edge that I think communities are still in. And I think we're doing pretty well with figuring stuff out, but it's not simple stuff. And a lot of people give up really fast. That's the #1 thing.
I think the most challenging thing for me personally has probably been giving up a certain amount of independence. I'm a very, very independent person. I'm one of those people that likes to do what I do when I do it. And it's been a really big growth process for me getting it that it's actually more valuable to not just do what I want to do when I want to do it, but to actually take into account what's going to work for other people around me, and sometimes I get really impatient with it.
It comes out a lot with parenting. Being a parent in community, even if it's not true, you feel like you're under the glass, all the time. And I don't always want to be responsive to other people's criticisms or questions about my parenting, and that's really tough, it's really intimate for a lot of parents. So I think that's personally one of the things that's been really challenging.
I feel like we're slowly expanding into being a village, but there's some basic aspects of village life that are kind of missing, and I think it's at those ends, the extremes, I feel like we're still a really solid group of friends, and we have a lot in common, and I'd like to see us stretch more. And one of the ways that comes out really concretely is having more space for people who are working class, and not necessarily trained in the middle-class polite ways of communicating, and that sort of thing. So I think I'd like to see us push the envelope a little more on our diversity, which we're slowly doing, but I'd like to speed that up a little bit.
There's a number of reasons why I think that my community, and I think communities in general, would be served by expanding our demographics a bit. One of them is that I think there is a really wide range of work that needs to happen in community, and that different groups of people tend to have their favourite things that they've been trained into, or things that their parents did that they passed along to them, and I think the more diversity you have, the more full range of ease you have in what's actually happening in the community.
And I think there's a lot of reasons why we aren't a particularly diverse movement, at this point. I think that one of them is that the community requires a high degree of communication and a high degree of sensitivity and that that has gotten defined in very middle-class ways, as far as what is acceptable behaviour. And so I think that being able to expand out to include people who communicate in different ways is going to open up the movement to a lot of different people being able to play in a way that's really comfortable for them, rather than having to squish into the middle-class white box in order to do it.
I have a lot of friends who are people of colour, and they're really amazed that I am so gung-ho about intentional community, and as I've had conversations with them about what's important to me about community, one of the things that we've realized is that a lot of them never lost community, as far as what their families passed down to them. A lot of my Black friends and Hispanic friends, they still get those needs met in their really big extended families, having neighbours that really look out for each other, and White people are really bad at it, in general.
And so I think that the movement is partly very white because White people are having to learn skills that the rest of the world still has, in a lot of ways. And so, I actually really get why people of colour don't necessarily want to play with this movement, that I'm really dedicated to, because why would you want to play with somebody who's taking baby steps in something you have in your bones? I think it's really uncomfortable for a lot of people of colour to watch White people having to struggle through our learning curves on this stuff. And so I don't necessarily think that it's a bad thing, but I think that if the people in the communities movement could have a little more humility about it, I think it would be a really good thing.
My sense is both from my own experience living at East Wind and other income-sharing groups that i've gotten to know pretty well, is that since labour tends to be counted like one hour is one hour, and people are credited either through some formal system or some more casual system with work, no matter what kinds of work it is, that it flattens a lot of the gender dynamics that are in our culture in general, where "women's work" is devalued, traditionally. The domestic stuff is just not nearly as well compensated for in our culture, in general. And so you end up with people making decisions not based on what is really inspiring and interesting to them, and what they feel called to do with their lives, but based on the dollar.
And when you are in an income-sharing group, there's not that motivation. And so what I saw, and what I see in a lot of these groups is that people find their niche and find what's really interesting to them, whether that's cooking 3 days a week and getting to explore being a chef for a group of people, or raising kids, or maybe it is management. And out in the world at large, particularly women and people who come out of backgrounds where education isn't just an assumed in their family background, that they would never go into management stuff, because it's just not their world, or it feels so hyper-competitive out in the world in general that it's not appealing.
And so people are really able to find their work selves and their contribution selves in a way in income-sharing groups that I think is really fabulous. And I think that the mixing up of domestic and income-producing work allows people to break out of those gender-rigid boxes that the culture in general still has pretty strongly. We've made gains, but I don't really think we're there yet. An so I think income-sharing groups are way ahead of the culture in general.
I think income-sharing has different challenges, depending on what kind of income-sharing you're doing. The group that my husband is part of is called Sandhill Farm, and they basically operate as an extended family. They sit down and they talk about where money's going and have really deep regular conversations about things. And I think that money is such a touchy topic for a lot of people, that I think the challenging part is that you feel constantly exposed, and ripped open, and pressing on your own tender spots in the area of money. And I think it's really growthful, but I think it's really hard on some people.
With the kind of income-sharing group that I've been a part of, where there's been a whole system set up, one of the things that I think that was hard about it for me was that the work that was available that was income-producing work was relatively limited, and we had a nut-butter factory and a hammock factory and a rope-sandal factory, and if you weren't into that work, but you were inspired about something else that could potentially be producing income for the community, it was a pretty big deal to figure out how to add that into what was a really well established and very functional system on its own, but adding new stuff was really tough. So i think there's a way that it can decrease the innovation and the exploring yourself, as someone who produces money. And I know not all income-sharing groups do that. There's plenty of hybrids out there for how that could be put together, but that was definitely something that I think would have felt stifling to me, had I stayed there for too much longer.
One of the really unique things about Dancing Rabbit is that we're basically a budding village of co-ops that overlap and intersect. So there are several eating co-ops and those people eat meals together a couple times a day, and then there's a bunch of people who don't eat with a co-op at all. And then there's the Dancing Rabbit vehicle co-op that most of the people at Dancing Rabbit are a part of, and we collectively own 3 vehicles. And then there's a whole bunch of different co-ops. There's the shower co-op that uses the showers at the common house, and some people are part of it, and some people have shower facilities in other places, either in their personal space, or we do have one income-sharing group here that has their own house that has a full batch of that stuff.
And so, when you look at the structure at Dancing Rabbit, it's really hard to draw it in bubble diagrams, because you have layers and layers and layers of different co-ops. And it's really exciting for me, because what it lets people do is really pick those places where they want to be communal, and where do they connect most easily in their lives? And what would they most want to share with people? And for some people, I think it's primarily an economic decision, they have bought into certain things so that they don't have to build a house that has all those fully-featured things, and so that makes it financially accessible, to be part of an intentional community for them. And for some people, it's more social! They eat in the food co-op because they really like getting together with people twice a day and sharing meals with each other.
And I think it would be really challenging -- there are groups that have done it! -- but I think it would be really challenging to be 500 to 1000 people and have one community that operates in a monolithic way. And so what we have is a model that really allows a whole bunch of different types of sharing to happen, and a whole bunch of different types of private spaces to happen, simultaneously. And I think it's one of the things that makes Dancing Rabbit really vibrant. And I think it's probably going to contribute long-term to our member retention, as well. Because if there's something about DR that's not working for someone, they might be able to switch that aspect of their lives, and still be able to contribute their piece to the whole, and i think it's really cool.
As far as the ideal population size, I think I have two very different sets of opinions about that, or two different pieces that I think are really important to take into account. One is, what your land can reasonably support. I'm a sustainability-oriented person, and I think that a lot of communities have over-stretched their land, no differently than the way that cities over-stretch land, in general. And so I think that being tuned into, What is the land saying that it can handle? I think is really important to me.
As far as the social relationships go, I feel like I really like small or big, and they've got different advantages to them. When you stay small, say, 35 people or less, you're able to know everybody pretty closely and pretty intimately, and so there's a way that you can stay really tight with everybody, and really in tune with everyone. And I think when you get between 40 and 75-80, somewhere in there, it's kind of an awkward stage, because it's a little too big to stay really connected, but it's a little too small to get lost in the nice anonymity of things, where you don't actually feel that impacted by people that you're not as close to.
And so I think once you get up above 80 again, it does feel more of a village scale, at that point, where you're able to have your pockets of closer friendships, and you get your intimacy needs met with those people, but you also get the advantages of having a bigger group, where there is more possibility socially, for different kinds of activities, having different types of interactions happening with different people, and you can afford to do more, as a community, as far as really interesting resource-sharing. That's the size group where you really get into, you can afford a hot tub! And you can afford x, y, and z, more expensive equipment without it being challenging for any one person. So I'm an advocate of less than 40, or more than 80.
There's been actual research done about village scale, and it seems like the best thing economically is somewhere between 500 and 1000, as far as being able to have village-scale. Somebody can be a baker, if that's what they want to do, and really be able to do that, and not have to be a baker, and 3 other things in order to make it work, and the village can have its own baker. And so I think that that research is good and interesting, and so I hope I'm still around when Dancing Rabbit hits 500, and I get to see what that's like, because I think that that's a really cool scale.
Definitely, groups' approaches to membership and new members makes a big difference to the flavour of the culture. At Dancing Rabbit, because we're intending to be a village of between 500 and 1000 people, we are looking for a lot of new members! And so we have a very active visitor program, and pretty proactive invitation to people to come and look and spend time here. We also do tours every Saturday during the summer. And so there's a lot of public coming in and out.
And I think for a community that is as proactive about it as Dancing Rabbit is, it definitely affects the community. Part of it is that the population is rarely stable for very long, which means that you're constantly integrating new faces, and constantly answering the same 10 questions that the last 16 people have asked, and it can definitely get draining on people. So there's that part of it. And Dancing Rabbit's not the only one. When I lived at East Wind, it was very similar. There were just a lot of new faces around all the time.
And particularly with a group that is as mission-driven as Dancing Rabbit is, we're in this to change the world! And to be doing our piece to be sending that ripple out. And it means that we get a lot of press, we do a lot of interviews, you're constantly on display. And that's part of what people are asked to be okay with when they move here, even if they're not going to be the one in front of the camera and answering the questions, and doing all that, they still have to have their lives be display material to some extent.
And I think that it takes a certain type of person to be okay with that. And so, we tend to attract those people, that are more outgoing, and that have a flair for a bit of exhibitionism. I think that's part of who we attract. Or at least people who are willing to be tolerant of that to some degree. So that definitely affects it.
And i think that groups that are smaller and wanting to stay smaller, there's a depth to the long-term connection that I don't know we're ever going to get at dancing rabbit. If you can spend 25 years with the same group of people, basically the same 6 to 8 to 10 people, there is a type of bonding and connection and real sense of being there for each other that I think is harder to get in a group like the one that we have where there's a constant changing batch of characters.
I think that you also get some pretty deep power dynamics in groups that are like Dancing Rabbit is, where there is the people that have been here now for ever, in the Dancing Rabbit timeline, and the people who are newer coming in, and I think that there are challenges on both sides of those dynamics where there's the people who feel like, boy, they wish there were other people who knew as much as they did, and they didn't have to be constantly bringing other people along.
But they also have a certain amount of power, just by speaking in the group, that whether they want it or not, that's a reality of being around for a long time. And new people can have a hard time even figuring out what's going on at a meeting, because they haven't yet sussed out what all those dynamics are, who all the players are, and who has history with who, and all that kind of stuff.
So I think there's some interesting things that happen in groups, where if you're together with the same group of people for 20 years, everyone's on much more of an even playing field at that point. So I think the power dynamics get accentuated in groups like ours.
I think that we are very fortunate at Dancing Rabbit that the people who have the longest-standing power in the group are really aware of it. I don't actually know when the last time was that there was a formal conversation about it, but i think that the founders here are pretty self-aware and are trying to make consistent efforts to not necessarily diminish their own power, but bring other people up and through the ranks, and have things evened out and back out of roles, so that they don't become essential or irreplaceable in people's minds, and those kinds of things.
I do think that it's important to talk about it, and I do think it's important to be aware of it. And I don't think there's a way to change the fact that different humans exert different amounts of influence on a group, and that's really what power dynamics are about, at some level. It's really about influence and how much people take your ideas seriously, and that kind of thing. And there's a lot of ways that people get power in a group. I think it's an unavoidable swath of group dynamics, and I think that the more people that are at the top of the spoken or unspoken hierarchy can be aware of it, the better it's going to go for other people.
And I think that other people not being timid is really helpful. I don't think the people that have been around for along time here want them to hold themselves back and not feel like they can participate. So I think the more pro-active the people can be, the better it is for everybody. But it also takes time for different people to want to step in.
I do know groups that have regular conversations about it and get very explicit about it and really put things in place to try to mitigate the power dynamics in some way. And there's always a little bit of awkwardness, I think, trying to wrench it in some way. And I don't know that that's a bad thing to do. I think that sometimes you need to go through a little bit of awkwardness to in order to even things out, and I think that that can be a good thing. But I do think that groups need to think about it and be aware of it. Because the groups that don't are the ones that really get themselves into trouble.
So at Dancing Rabbit, we have specific visitor periods each year that people come for one to three weeks, and there are a bunch of orientations that happen during that time, which are pretty important, because they give people a sense of, How do the economics work? What does sustainability mean? What is consensus? How does the food scene work? All that kind of stuff. So there's that nuts and bolts training aspect of the membership process. And then somebody can request to become a member.
It's a combination of writing letters stating your intent and being interviewed and getting a chance for actual face time and getting feedback from the current members once you've been here a little while about how they feel like you're fitting in and what you could be working on and what you could be doing differently and then watching how that person responds to the feedback. So all of those things are part of the membership process.
We operate by consensus at Dancing Rabbit, so you have to be consensed upon by the membership, and that's not as scary as it sounds, because I think people rarely get an outright 'no' from Dancing Rabbit. Even though it would only technically take one person to block someone from becoming a member, it doesn't actually happen that often that somebody gets an outright no. Sometimes they get an extension. Let's try it for a little longer because we're really not sure how well this is working and we think it might be okay, but we're not sure.
A lot of groups have less formalized and less steps involved with their membership process. At East Wind you basically come for a 3-week visit, and then you apply to be a provisional member. And assuming that a number of people don't object, you get to stay for a year. And at the end of the year, you get voted on. And sometimes people do get a no with that, but it's very light on the process end of things. And it's pretty much the, let people sort it out for themselves for the most part, unless somebody is really controversial, and then sometimes people do get turned down.
Some groups like at Sandhill, there's not really a formal process, it's really relationally based. People come in, they try living there for a little while, the group talks about it. And then the group at some point gets comfortable at some point to say, Hey do you want to become a member? And so it's much less formalized, which I think smaller groups can get away with doing.
So one of the most important relationships in how communities set themselves up is between the group's decision-making process and their membership process. For consensus-based groups, it's really important that there's some kind of membership selection process happening, because one person who really isn't able to hang with the consensus process can be really, really challenging for the group.
For groups that operate more on a voting system, there's often more casualness about members, because you can get away with that. I guess somebody isn't very process-savvy and isn't really interested in talking about stuff and being creative in a meeting setting, that's okay, because that's not a requirement for that group to be able to function smoothly, given their decision-making process.
And sometimes when groups go from being a straight-up consensus model to something less than consensus, their membership process often changes naturally over the course of the next couple of years, as the community is readjusting to what the new reality looks like.
And at Dancing Rabbit at some point I think we are going to go through some kind of transition like that and our membership process will process, it will certainly shift, whether it gets lighter, or less formalized, or something at that point, i don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but we anticipate there will be some shift in both of those things at some point. Right now, we're still pretty selective. And we're a consensus-based group that really values social relationships, and we're small, still. But that'll change.
The thing about our culture is that the basic social unit is the nuclear family. And at the heart of the nuclear family is the monogamous couple. And in community, there's more going on than that. So relationships within community tend to be significantly different. Part of the difference is that within a paradigm that our culture uses for that monogamous couple thing is the idea that your partner is supposed to really fulfill a whole bunch of needs. You've got economic security, you've got your basic social needs getting met, you've got your emotional support, you've got your professional support, you've got your child-rearing support, if that's part of what you're doing as a couple.
And in community you tend to end up with a lot of people who play a bunch of different roles in your life. You've got the same kind of constant access to a whole bunch of different adults that within that nuclear family thing you really just get with one person. And the standard that our culture has around relationships is almost an impossible standard to meet for any one person. And it also tends to set up a thing where we get into a relationship in order to fulfill a lot of different -- not just needs, but neediness. You're supposed to be getting all these different things met with this one person.
And the relationships that tend to do really well in community are ones that aren't based on that neediness. Because as soon as you get into the community setting with your relationships, you've got lots of different people available to meet your socializing needs. And if you got into your couple relationship initially to get that stuff met, it suddenly starts feeling pretty empty. Because you don't need that person anymore to be filling your primary social needs, you've got maybe 10 people, maybe 40 people who are available to be meeting those needs on a daily basis.
And so a lot of relationships fall apart when people move into community as a couple, and those tend to be relationships that are needs-based, or not as healthy. And the not so healthy part comes out of, if you have bad dynamics with one person, and that's how you basically relate to other people, and you take it into community, you suddenly multiply your bad dynamics by 10 or 20 or 30 and you're completely and utterly miserable. Because it's one thing to try to mitigate that with one person, but if you've suddenly got bad communication with a whole bunch of people, things tend to get really rough, really quickly. And so a lot of unhealthy relationships fall apart when you get into community.
Now, there's another whole category of relationships that really thrive in a community setting. And those are relationships that are based on things like, being in service to other people. If you're in your relationship because you get support for whatever your heart's work is, those relationships tend to do really well in community. If you're in a relationship because you're really supporting each other's growth, those relationships tend to do better. If you're in relationship, and you're not fundamentally jealous of your partner spending time with other people -- and I'm not even talking sexual time, just time with other people -- then those relationships tend to really flourish.
And there's an incredible freedom that comes from doing those kinds of relationships in community, because suddenly you don't have to be everything for your partner anymore. And the things that you're really good at, you can do more of, and you can get even better at in that relationship. And you've got role models for those others things that you maybe haven't learned those skills with so well in yourself. You can expand who you are in your relationship, but you've got to not be jealous of your partner getting those needs met with other people.
So healthy relationships do really well, and unhealthy relationships tend to melt down really fast in a community setting. So that's my basic take on how couples operate. And it's basically because community is a different paradigm for what the basic social unit is than nuclear families are. It's just a fundamentally different way of coming at things. And you can still have nuclear families within community that can do really well, but they've got to be motivated by different things than what our culture tells us we're supposed to be getting from our standard couples.
So there's also this really amazing thing that happens for parents. I have a son who's now almost 12 years old, and he's pretty much been raised in community for his whole life. So when it comes to the parenting stuff, I'm speaking from direct experience with this one.
And one of the things that happens in community is that just like our extended family networks used to function, where you had access to aunts and grandmothers and grandfathers and all of these other people who had been through child-rearing, and you could kind of lean into them, and they could help you out in touch moments, they could help you understand what was happening with your kids. Community provides an opportunity to do that, where you don't necessarily have to do it with your blood family. And part of what that means is that you can do it with people that your values align with, not just related to.
And so, one of the stories that I tell about my son is that when he was between 6 and 8 months old, he had a series of fibral seizures. Fibral seizures are not dangerous, but they are scary as hell. Suddenly your tiny baby who cannot speak yet is in full-blown seizures, and it's really awful to watch. And when we were going through that with my son, we were living in a communal building where there were 5 other moms readily available.
And so in the middle of the night, when he started having seizures, i would send his dad to go get somebody else, and literally, we had this group of moms that would just show up in the middle of the night and hold vigil with us while we waited for him to get through it and when we waited for him to really come back to consciousness afterward. And they kept me from freaking out. And they kept me from rushing him to the hospital every time and having these huge bills with something that was not at all dangerous. But I had never been a mom before, so I didn't know that at the time.
And that kind of support is absolutely invaluable, you can't put a price tag on that, as a parent. And then there's all the other things: diaper rash, my child's biting other children, and parents can just go, Yeah, we've been through that, and it'll pass. And being able to be that relaxed around parenting, particularly when they're little, is really huge.
The other thing that happens is, just like in couples that are living in community, with your kids, you don't have to be everything to your children. When your kids are 6 months old, they think you're god, goddess, whatever. They've got this perception of you that you are larger than life and everything. And as they get older, they start to have a whole bunch of different needs and interests that it's really impossible for 1 or 2 people to be able to thoroughly meet them with.
And so when you've got access to 20 adults, different adults can take on different kinds of relationships, and what you end up with is a really full -- not really parenting, but a really full adult-child connectivity that happens in community that's pretty unusual. And again, people can get that in cultures where extended families are more of the we way we do things, but we don't do them that way anymore. It's really about these two people are responsible for these children. And to be able to have access to other parents is really great.
There are some things that are really hard about parenting in community. And one of those things is that it's almost like your parents live next door, and they're watching every thing you do. Because there's all these people that really care about your kid, and care about you, and have reasons to be connected with you, and they don't always agree with what you're doing as a parent, and they feel like they have some license to tell you about it.
And if you can approach it from the perspective of, This is a really great growth opportunity, and I'm going to improve my parenting by really deeply listening to people's feedback, then it can be really great. But it is really hard to do in the moment. And there's just a little bit of tension that i think is there for most parents in community that's pretty unending, pretty constant. So that thing is hard.
The other thing is that challenging stuff can still happen. Abuse still happens. It's not like living in community is some kind of a silver bullet, where your kids are absolutely going to be safe. And nothing bad is ever going to happen. and no challenging dynamic is ever going to happen. What I do think community has going for it, though, is that really difficult situations, really nasty abuse tends to not last, because it's really hard to have secrets in community. And so I think that things get interrupted more quickly.
But sometimes people relax too much and open the door for bad things to happen to their children more, because it's like, Well of course I can trust everybody absolutely, even if it's a community where there's strangers coming through constantly and you've got a constantly changing cast of characters. There tends to be a little too idealistic of a relaxation that happens for a lot of parents in community.
And I don't think bad things happen any more frequently in community, but they can still happen. And it's almost harder to take when something like that happens in community, because you have so many hopes that get triggered for people when they move into a community situation. Like, Now I'm going to have this idyllic life, and suddenly something really bad is happening with your kid, and that's really tough.
One of the topics that often comes up when we talk about community is polyamory. And part of why it comes up is because it's part of the stereotype that a lot of people have about communities, is that everybody's sleeping together. And while there are communities that make it part of their explicit work to be really deeply exploring relationships, and that often includes polyamory for those communities, that's a pretty small percentage of the Intentional Communities movement. And there's some really interesting things happening in those communities.
And one of the things that you find is that you get to really look pretty deeply at what your jealousy triggers are. And that those, particularly when sex is involved, tend to be pretty deep triggers for people. But they also have wider applications, because our jealousy stuff can get triggered with friends, and with seeing other people spending time with our children, and that cliquey, almost junior-high-ish thing, where people find themselves having pockets of friends and then when a new person comes into that mix, what happens to the social dynamics, and things can get upset. And so the triggers that get explored when you're working with polyamory, are triggers that are really worth exploring, because they touch on so many other levels of social relationships, but if you can work on it when there's sex involved, you're doing some really deep work. And so I think there's a lot of benefits to doing that.
And I think that one of the things that happens with polyamorous relationships in community is that people are kept more honest, because there's a lot of people who are paying attention to each other, and who really care about each other, and if you start behaving in some really wacky way, people are going to notice. Some people are going to be like, What's up? and Do you need some support with something? And I think that there's an opportunity to explore things also in an environment where people are a lot less likely to "take sides" in conflicts between any kind of couple, but also within polyamorous relationships and the social support that happens for those. Because most people are at least on friendly terms with, if not actually friends with, multiple people that are involved in the polyamorous scene. And so rather than finding divisions getting more created, there's a way that you can really support everybody looking at themselves, and looking at how they are in relationship, and doing some really deep work.
And so I have tremendous respect for the groups that are actually getting in there and really doing some good polyamory explorations. I think it's a great thing.
So the other thing is, when people come in, and they don't have a partner. And it tends to be that there's a much smaller pool of people to choose from. If you're in New York City, you have a million people to be scoping out as partner prospects. And here and in a lot of communities, it's a pretty small pool. There may be 10 single people of the appropriate gender for you to be scoping out, instead of a whole bunch. And that's sounds hopeless to a lot of people. That sounds like stepping into the desert. If you pick 10 random people in your life, what are the chances that one of them would really be your partner?
And one of the things that I think is important to keep in mind is that if you're part of a community, particular communities that are mission-based communities, that have something going for them that they're working on creating together beyond just We want to have a good neighbourhood, is that you tend to have very close values matches, much more so with that small group of people that you would with...
So it's the difference between you may not have 150 people to choose from, you've got 10, but those 10 people, it's like they've already been pre-screened to be much more likely to be a good values match for you. So I think that relationships that start in community are often more solid, and you end up with less stuff to sort out later when you're like, Whoa! I didn't know you believe that! Or, I didn't know that that was important to you! That stuff tens to be pre-sorted, to some extent.
Having said that, for some people, and I think particularly gay and lesbian people, it can really feel like the desert. A lot of people have left community because they were there for 3 years, they felt like it was working really great for them, in all ways, except that they never really found a good partner match for themselves. And that's something they feel like they need in their lives, and they want to fulfill that piece.
And so I think that it's, for communities that want to be big, I think that that's one of the pressures to get big, fast, is so that the partner pool is bigger, and so that people can find what they're looking for in a mate.
