Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: home schooling and cohousing

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

You wrote:

> 2. Aside from that, aren't most if not all of the rest of the residents
> away at work during your classroom time? Except perhaps another parent
> or two (probably women only) doing the home schooling?
>
Actually, this stereotype doesn't seem to hold up.  Quoting from a draft  
of Graham Meltzer's paper on his research of North American cohousing  
communities (I hope this is fair use Graham).

        To a large extent, this kind of support depends on diversity of
        employment and lifestyle.  It requires that not all adults commute 
        to 9 till 5 jobs.  In fact cohousing has considerable variability 
        of this kind.  Only about 52% of 637 adults surveyed are employed, 
        (40% full-time, 12% part-time) whilst 21% are self-exmployed (11% 
        full-time, 10% part-time), 9% are students, 5% are full-time
        home-makers, 5% retired, 4% unemployed and 4% have other means of 
        support.  A considerable proportion spend significant amounts of 
        time at home.  Some 16% make their living from home on either a
        full-time or part-time basis and another 22% are at home as
        students, home-makers, and the unemployed or retired.

(Graham was not addressing homeschooling explicitly here, but it is  
relevant to David's point.)

Stuart

Stuart Staniford-Chen
stanifor [at] cohousing.org
Cohousing Network Web Weaver
"Consulting Member" of N St and Marsh Commons Cohousing.