Cohousing-L Mailing List: None of our business?

[Catherine Harper (tylik]

I'm going to step in and play devil's advocate here -- at least a little.
A couple people have responded to a number of these scenarios saying that
they couldn't see how they were the group's business.  Well, regardless of
some of the more unusal aspects of my community, we're terribly close
knit, ceaseless gossips, and to a large extent do live in eachother's
pockets.  (This applies pretty equally to the monogamous and single
members of the community as well.)  There's a difference between something
being objectively one's business, and it being a subject of discussion and
possibly concern in the community.  So keeping things in mind...

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, Joani Blank wrote:

> 1. A  young single mom is dating someone from outside the community
> steadily. He often spends the night at her house, and most weekends she is
> with him while her son is with his father.

Who is this guy?  How does he (or does he?) relate to people in the
comunity?  To me this brings up the whole dating outside the community
thing (I'm not saying dating inside the community is preferable) -- does
he fit? is she going to end up wholly or partly leaving the community
because of this?  Heck, if she's away most weekends (not clear but implied
by the post) how involved is she with the community? -- I can especially
imagine resentment coming up over allocation of work, if she's busy with
her son weekdays, and gone weekends.

> 3.  A man in the community has a collection of erotic art hanging in his
> home. 

In my current situation, shrug...  But I can imagine being more concerned
if I were a parent (and even as it is, I'm sure there are things that
could make me uncomfortable -- and at least change the way I regarded this
person, though it would have to be kind of extreme).  And what if I'm
worried about custodial disputes with an ex spouse, or am in some other
situation where I am sometimes the caretaker of a child where there are
issues at stake other than my personal taste?

> 4.  A single woman has two or more boyfriends who often spend the night
> after an evening date with her. 

I see this as similar to #1 -- could be a complete non issue, or it could
not, depending a lot on how much we'd be interacting with these people.  I
have been in social situations with people who were (as jokingly described
by a friend of mine) members of the "soulmate of the month" club -- who
would bring in a partner every couple of months who people were expected
to treat as their life partner...  who would then disappear, and be
replaced by a new one in a few months. It was a strain. 

> 9. An adult in the community is overly affectionate with the children  to
> the point where parents are uncomfortable about having their kids spend
> time with this adult. 

A few people have responsed regarding the implication of pedophilia.  From
the standpoint of trying to deal with this issue in a community setting, I
wonder if the most difficult case of this is the ambiguous one -- someone
who is being affectionate in a way that makes you uncomfortable, but not
so much so that you can pinpoint what bothers you about it.  Or not so
much so that everyone sees it as an issue.  

> 10. There is a very effeminate man or masculine woman or someone who openly
> identifies as transgendered or transsexual in the community.
>
> 11.  You have reason to believe from the sounds issuing from one house that
> the monogamous, married couple who lives there engages in somewhat "kinky"
> sexual practices. 

I've deleted a number of posts because I was having trouble working up an
argument for anything other than "breathless gossip".  But I'm going to
pull these two out, because I think I'm not mentioning something that
applies to some of the others, too.

If I'm a parent, are these things that I'm comfortable talking about with
my children?  There's a big difference between these things happening
inside my immediate community or at some greater remove -- it becomes less
possible to just shrug and say "I dunno why they do it, dear, some people
are weird", and to say much other than that I'm going to need to confront
my own feelings on these subjects.  (And even a parent who is personally
pretty liberal might get tongue tied thinking about potential custody
dispoutes, or even just what happens if seven year old Suzy starts talking
about the neighbor's whips and chains at school.)

It seems sometimes that there is a general rule that many things we say
about privacy and tolerance fall apart when we start talking about
children. 

> 12.  Several people in the community know that an ostensibly monogamous man
> or woman is having a "affair" unbeknownst to his or her spouse.  

Ooo, this kind of thing just burns me.  I hate feeling like I'm being
tricked into helping someone keep their dirty little secret, whatever it
is -- I don't want to be party to it.  (The cases that spring immediately
to mind do not involve affairs, but the same feeling applies.)  What I
would do -- if anything -- would depend on my relationships with the man
and his wife.  If I'm close to either or both of them, and really know, as
opposed to suspecting (and it's not information I'd go out of my way to
obtain), I would talk to one or the other (probably the husband first all
else being equal, because after all, he already knows).  Being the
messenger sucks, but otherwise I'd feel guilty by association. 

> 13. Some parents in the community think it is okay for kids to learn a lot
> about sex uality at a young age, or to see sexually explicit videos when
> they are in elementary or junior high school; others do not. 
> 
> 15 A couple with a 16 year old daughter lets the daughter's boyfriend spend
> the night  at their home with her. 

I'm putting these two together because when you are in a close community,
the parenting decisions of the other members of the community are the
context in which your own parenting decisions occur.  I think the parents
need to talk about this kind of stuff -- it's nice when they can come to
some kind of agreement, but even when they make different decisions, there
needs to be some about of understanding of and respect for the decisions
other parents have made.  

For the most part, I wouldn't want to violate the limits a parent has set
for their child.  But more than that, kids are always aware of the rules
that are being applied elsewhere, and will interpret their parent's own
decisions in light of those rules.  Whether a parent is going to seem
strict, fair, or completely draconian is going to mostly come from what
other parents in the area are doing.

When I think about raising children, one of my biggest questions is what
kind of a community I'd be raising them in, and while I think respect and
sensitivity can get past a lot of differences, I also think that there has
to be some common ground.  (Gah.  The little boy who lived at the bottom
of the hill, and used to come over to play with our kittens and sell us
things for all the various school fundraisers was told by his mom not to
speak to me after I mentioned I wasn't Christian...)

                                Catherine