Like many Boomers, I grew up with women’s lib. I had seen how my mom, a spirited free thinker, nevertheless became a housewife whose freedom turned out to be doing everything at home and also working a full time job. I was certain I was never going to get married, have kids and get into that trap and I thought I had the new freedom to help me along.
But after fending off my cute husband-to-be for a couple of years, he prevailed in his insistence on giving me everything I wanted even those things I protested about. He convinced me that I could be married and be my own person.
Still, two-in-a-box was not going to be for us.
Communal living seemed to be my destiny. Even though my parents immigrated to the U.S., I was raised to eventually go live on a kibbutz, my mother’s unfulfilled legacy.
I went off and lived on a kibbutz for a few years after college and found a lot of good ideas there - you were friends with your neighbors, worked for a common goal, there were parties and holidays at home with the extended family, and the kids lived in their own house with nannies 24/7. You could be with them as much or as little as you wanted to be.
But when all was said and done it was hard to shake the freedom and multi-cultured society available in America. I found the mores and values of kibbutz life to be just too restrictive. I came back to the U.S. but the communal living paradigm stuck with me. In fact, my husband and I only lived in an apartment alone together for the first few months of our relationship. We quickly moved people in with us including my sister, Judy (see article above) who was also looking for that group feeling.
But he wanted kids; we were getting close to buying a house, having a mortgage and growing our business. I was headed for being a vegetarian, Californian version of my mother... and without her tremendous patience!
Before I could say “I will never be June Cleaver,” some friends introduced us to Morehouse which was everything I had been looking for! It was structured in many ways like a kibbutz, including having a house where the kids are raised together. But Morehouse had much more, including an emphasis on pleasurable group living, an interesting and dynamic philosophy of the perfection of life, members of varying backgrounds, and the idea that fun is the goal, love is the way.
The best part was that shortly after we made the move, my sister came too - she and I fulfilled our childhood dream of being able to live together our whole lives while having our own families and careers.
Of course like everyone, we hit relationship snags along the way. I remember first moving in, a fairly starry-eyed newlywed, mesmerized by all these fun people with whom I was now living, all of whom seemed to have so much more experience in ways to enjoy life. I wondered if I had made the right choice (in having picked my husband) and considered perhaps jumping ship and starting a relationship with someone else. It was Marilyn (see article below) who talked to me, so many years ago. Seeing my husband through her eyes reminded me what I loved about him and why he was then and still is the right one for me.
In this milieu, knowing that I had the backing of my blood relations and of the whole group, I decided to have kids - yes, two, much to my own surprise. I was fortunate enough that at the time there were many other kids being born and the whole “herd” of them lived in their own house, where they could enjoy each other’s company, color on the walls and do what kids like to do, with constant adult supervision by people who loved them just about as much as we did.
A couple of other times Jack & I got very close to splitting up. We even separated once for a few weeks. But the good part was that we still lived in the same community, just a building apart on common grounds and were able to share our friends, spend time with our kids and be together when we wanted to. Our friends were a close enough part of our lives that they could help us sort out our differences and eventually to reconcile. With the support of the group my relationship with my husband has flourished rather than diminished as is often the pattern with couples left to their own devices.
I attribute the great relationship we have had with our sons as they grew up and continue to have with them now as adults to having raised them in this group. Throughout their childhood we spent exactly as much time together as we wanted to and my husband and I did not have to sacrifice our relationship or private time together. As far as I can tell, happy parents make for happy children.