Re: Balancing Children and Creating Cohousing
From: Denise Meier (dmmjncal.verio.com)
Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 13:20:02 -0500
> it takes to create cohousing. We don't even have a site yet. I have a
> 3-year old son and keep wondering whether it be better to forget about
> cohousing for now and spend more time with him.

This really resonates for me. We started meeting in spring of 1994, when
my daughter was 17 months old. We will be moving in in a couple of months,
and she'll be nearly 7. Lots of time in her early childhood was spent in
childcare while we were at meetings, or with only one of us because the
other was at a committee meeting, or trying to get our attention while we
were on the phone. While I remain firm in my conviction that cohousing
will be a great environment for her, particularly as an only child, I do
feel that we sacrificed a certain part of her early years. If I knew then
what i knew now, I would have backed down our activity level a lot sooner
than we did.

We really only pulled back when

1) the group was well on its way
2) other new blood stepped in with a lot of energy
3) both of us were hopelessly burnt out and just didn't care what
decisions got made as long as the thing got built.

So I don't know what to tell you. I think that in the early days my
husband and I were really instrumental in keeping the group going.
Probably, though, we could have done less than we did; one can become
convinced of one's indispensability, and it becomes a bit of an ego issue
(or it did for us, anyway).

One suggestion I would make is this: get some professional help (I
recommend Rob Sandelin) for your group's decision making and meeting
processes. We used to have all-day meetings twice a month, plus my husband
went to several committee meetings a week, and i can't for the life of me
tell you what all that time achieved. We were remarkably inefficient and
unfocused. If you can get to where you're focusing on what really needs to
be done, getting help and information from other groups so you don't have
to re-invent every single wheel, and focusing on finding a piece of land
first, you'll spend less time on this and get more done.

Once you find property, the shape and the focus of the group will follow,
and you will attract more people (hopefully people with time to work on
the project). The further you go along the path, the more attractive the
whole thing is to people, and recruitment will get easier (I suspect that
you'd have very little trouble selling out a project anywhere in the SF
Bay Area).

Good luck and keep us all posted

Denise Meier
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, Sonoma County
Northern California





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