Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Parenting in Cohousing

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Lyle Scheer <wonko [at] monkeyhouse.org> 
wrote:

>
> Seems like quite a generic parenting question, no co-housing required.
>

Well, no, because the question is how the community should handle common
resources in the context of the generic parenting question.  Common
resources are a co--housing specific issue.  If your teen is watching too
much TV at timmy's house, you can talk to timmy's mom, or just keep Joey
from visiting Timmy.  In this case, the role of "Timmy's Mom" is being
played by, say, 50 other adults.

>
> o Dealing with a request from a parent to the community regarding access
> restrictions.  Seems rather straightforward, and the community can
> choose to accommodate the parents request or not, depending on how it
> might affect other users usage.  ...
>
> I'm not quite sure what there is here to discuss.
>

You just identified what there is to discuss: "a request from the parent to
the community", the response to which is not at ALL straightforward.  Of
course  the "community can choose"...that's the question I think Sharon is
posing: how does YOUR community choose in these cases?

We have lots of experience with parents making requests of the community (as
well as the community making requests of the parents).  I don't find
resolving this to be at all "straightforward".  To the contrary, these
questions can become heated and divisive. :-(

- Diana (Mosaic COmmons, Berlin, MA, where we still have units for sale!)