It takes a village to raise a mother: Cohousing communities are rewriting the rules of motherhood

The author's experience of mothering changed dramatically after she moved from the Swiss Alps (pictured above) to Cascadia Commons in Portland, OR

Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of stories and photographs about daily life in dozens of different cohousing communities. Authored by Dave Wann (author of Superbia!), the book is scheduled for release in fall 2005 (Fulcrum Books).

Last summer my friend Claire and I were sitting on the grass at the park, talking while our 3-year-old daughters played. When the two girls began throwing cedar mulch at each other, I asked my daughter Lila to stop. “Why can't they throw mulch?” my friend Claire asked. “It's not going to hurt anyone, is it?”

She was right, but I knew that back at Cascadia Commons, throwing mulch would ruffle some feathers. Even though we weren't there, I was parenting for the community, to keep things consistent for my daughter, and that's when I knew cohousing had gotten into my blood. It hasn't been easy evolving into a “communitarian” – those moms on Oprah complaining about their lonely lives don't know how easy they have it. Busting out of my cocoon is hard work sometimes, especially since I have children.

When I first learned about cohousing on the Internet, I was living in a rural village in the Swiss Alps. It may sound ideal, but it was one of the most numbing periods of my life. I was the new mother of a baby in an expensive country where the stores always seemed to be closed, where it almost always rained and where, because of the language barrier, my hard-working husband was the only person with whom I could enjoy an adult conversation. Every morning when I woke up I promised myself I only had to make it until the end of the day without collapsing into depression. I did this every day for almost two years.

So, when we returned to the States and the chance to live at Cascadia Commons in Portland, OR, came up, I all but held a gun up to my husband's head to make it happen. I was pregnant with my second child Raina while Lila, my first-born, was charging, horns down, through her twos. The cohousing websites and listservs offered me a lonely mother's Utopia: in cohousing, the children run around together in a safe, car-free environment giving moms a breather. There's ample opportunity for casual conversation with (English-speaking!) neighbors and arranging free child care with a neighbor is usually a breeze.

All of that, and so very much more, is true. Now, on most days, such as when Lila runs off to a neighbor's, leaving my house blissfully silent, or when somebody takes the baby so I can clean house, or when I'm hanging out on a porch commiserating with other mothers while the kids play, I can't imagine living any other way. But the cohousing literature doesn't warn of the pitfalls and challenges. Sometimes I've put my head in my arms and wished I could turn back the clock to the day we signed the escrow papers, run pell-mell from this strangling experiment and into the comfortable cocoon of a suburban tract home.

Thirty watchful neighbors

We moved to Cascadia in November 2002 just as Lila hit two and a half. I was navigating stormy, uncharted territory in the world of discipline in front of more than 30 watchful neighbors – or at least I often think they're watchful when I'm feeling bewildered and insecure. I also learned, to my occasional consternation, that when Lila would spend ample time at other people's houses I had no control over how much TV she watched, how much sugar she ate or the fact that she would pick up phrases like, “I'm too fat” or “Shut up.” And, of course, the more people you live among, the more opportunities your child has to embarrass you.

When someone here is having a bad cohousing day, they use the word “fish bowl.” To me, cohousing communities seem like a modern-day version of the covered wagons circled up. To get to our cars, the common house or the trash dump, we walk past each other's porches and in full view of the rest of the community. For the most part this is good, because bumping into one another and chatting is what makes community living fun. But there was a day when, say, my 3-year-old was screaming and writhing maniacally, that I would rather have not had to pass by almost two dozen occupied residences on my way home. And another day when in the throes of hard labor and practically breaking windows with my screams that I would rather have not been wheeled to the ambulance past all of my neighbor's houses.

Cohousing presented an interesting birth scenario for us, especially since we planned on a natural home birth. I anticipated a quiet, intimate experience with my husband and daughter. I'd had a healthy pregnancy and then went into what felt like a normal labor. Then I hit transition, that stage right before the baby is born where snakes grow out of women's heads, and I started to scream. And scream. And scream. Lila woke up to find me in the guest room, eerily lit with candles, leaning over a birthing ball and screaming bloody murder. She ran back to the bedroom and quivered under the blankets until my husband called our neighbor Pat at 3 am to whisk her away. A short while later my birth attendant was at my side, coaching me through one birthing position after another, as if she were flipping through the pages of "The Joy of Labor," while we tried to get my 10-pound, stuck baby unstuck. Many hours later after making no progress, I finally threw in the towel and my husband called the hospital.

The problem was, I couldn't stop screaming as blinding pain kept running me over like a herd of stampeding buffaloes on fire. Going to the hospital meant traveling a 100-foot stretch of sidewalk from our front door to the waiting ambulance on a Wednesday morning. I suggested that we sneak around the back of the house through the wetlands to another street to be picked up, but this proposal was promptly vetoed. The bemused paramedics waited until a contraction was over to get me on my way, but the contractions were coming too fast and I screamed all the way down the sidewalk. My upstairs neighbor Judith, a labor and delivery nurse with a natural bent, assured me later that no one heard me. Even Minnette, my next-door neighbor, said she heard no screaming during the night. This leads me to believe I am either unbelievably lucky or my neighbors, wishing to preserve my dignity, are unbelievably kind.

Bringing Raina home

Even though the birth went much differently than planned – except for the part where I brought home a perfect baby girl – living in cohousing soothed so many post-partum psychological wounds. Judith listened patiently and attentively as I replayed the scenario endlessly, searching for what might have led to a C-section. My neighbors organized and brought us a hearty meal every night for more than a week and took my toddler off for play dates. And Raina kept warm under a quilt of squares made by members of the community. My birth experience left me feeling humiliated, defeated and beaten, but the warmth and acceptance of my neighbors lifted me through it.

I had raised Lila through infancy in almost total isolation, but Raina quickly bonded with a surrogate "grammie" and a couple of "aunties." Soon after birth she was lighting up with recognition whenever they came around. When Raina hears the children playing in the living room during a community meal in the common house, she squawks like a stranded nestling until I, or one of her aunties, reunites her with the flock. As an only child, I am both warmed and fascinated as I ponder how growing up in community will shape my children.

The shaping will come easily for them - the children here seem right at home in a community setting. For those of us like me, however, who grew up as suburban latchkey kids, getting used to group dynamics can be a little bumpy. With so many generations and parenting styles in the mix, sometimes we moms have a lot to endure. I can't stand it when people test my daughter on her numbers, colors or letters, yet this seems to be the way many adults interact with children (Imagine someone saying to you, "Hello Jane! Can you tell me the square root of 49 today?") I bristle when I hear someone correct my child or tell her not to do something that I allow, such as riding her bike barefoot or eating something that has fallen on the floor.

For the most part, thankfully, we moms are all on the same page when it comes to things like television, sugar consumption or supervision. Niggling differences, however, exist. Our family has weaned itself off television - although I confess to occasionally popping a children's DVD into my laptop. But my visions of a TV-free childhood for my daughter vanished once we moved into cohousing. Watching movies at other kids' houses is one of her favorite activities. For me, it's not the movie content that bothers me so much as the passivity television induces. Another mom isn't bothered by television itself, but carefully screens content and doesn't allow her daughter to watch a vetoed movie at another house, and she's pretty irked if it happens anyway.

Our after-school care cooperative faced a particular challenge with some former tenants at one household, where bad sitcoms, computer games and junk food were available every day after school. Naturally the older kids preferred to zombie-out there. It took concerted efforts by other moms to sometimes entice the kids into other activities.

Raising a sugar-free child in our community is like trying to put Winnie-the-Pooh on a diet while at a honey farm. I feel justified giving the kids something sweet when it's the only sweet thing Lila has had that day. Then the cheeky little devils will move on to the next mom's house for a repeat scenario. The non-parents know how to make friends with a child, of course - with popsicles, fruit drinks or chocolate-covered ice cream bars. The worst was our "progressive" Christmas party last year during which the party roamed from house to house, where decadent desserts were the main course at almost every stop. At the fifth house Lila, sufficiently gorged, spit her mouthful of chewed M&Ms into the candy bowl in front of the entire group. We were new to the community at the time and that wasn't exactly the first impression I wanted to create.

My neighbor mom Sonja and I talked about making a request to the community to not feed the kids sugar, but quickly concluded that would be quixotic. Also, while they may get too much sugar on some days, on other days they can forage for strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, snap peas, green beans and cherry tomatoes to their hearts' content, right on our property.

Learning to let go

When it comes to supervising our kids, most cohousing parents feel like cohousing was designed just for us. Getting used to keeping tabs on my kid at first, though, was like looking after a caffeine-addicted ferret. Community rules, um, I mean policies, say that young children are to be supervised at all times when outdoors. Dutifully, at first I sat each day on the edge of a neighbor's concrete porch holding my newborn, until my butt went numb, so I could watch Lila on the common play structure. Or I followed her hither and thither, all the while pleading uselessly for her to come play at home. Meanwhile I was neglecting cooking, cleaning and resting. I went so far as to convince my husband to build a swing set in our tiny backyard to entice Lila to stay home, but around that time I simply gave up and cut her loose to roam with the pack without me. "Let her go, she'll be fine!" said the other moms who had agreed to the rule in the first place, and they were right.

As Lila sheds the remains of her babyhood I have had to let her go, and because I live in cohousing I can do that much more fully than my suburban neighbors up the street can. My child doesn't have to play in the street, be confined alone to a fenced-in backyard or have me arrange play dates for her every day. When she's running with the tribe of 6- to 10-year-olds, I know that the other adults keep an eye on the pack if for no other reason than to shoo them out of gardens or coax them out of trees.

All in all, I feel blessed on most days to be raising my children in cohousing. It couldn't be better for children, and happy children make for happy mamas. In fact, the single moms here complain that their children spend more time running with the gang than they do at home. (I'm a stay-at-home mom - you won't hear me making that complaint.)

Rewriting the rules of motherhood

Still, there are some days when I mutter "What a royal pain in the butt" under my breath. That's when I feel like trading in my two-bedroom condo for a large, secluded tract home where I don't risk hearing a complaint or being asked to do something I don't want to do whenever I walk to check my mail or take out the garbage. But I'm growing up and learning useful things such as how to maintain affection for someone's else child who's bugging the hell out of me, how to say no when someone wants me to say yes and how to let community life rewrite the rules of motherhood. There are no modern-day Dr. Spocks penning pithy books on mothering in community. It's like learning to skydive while in freefall - we're figuring it out on the fly.

The other night while chatting with neighbors, I let Lila get a little too hungry and tired before taking her home. She went off like a time bomb and I ran with the double stroller to get her and Raina home. My husband was out of town. Shakily I got my 3-year-old indoors, as she blistered my ears with screams and thrashed about like an angry shark accidentally pulled on board a fishing boat. My infant was still strapped into the stroller outside, and I panicked that she'd be terrified alone in the dark. "How am I expected to handle this alone?" I whimpered as I wrapped my arms tightly around Lila to subdue her rage. When she calmed a little, I raced outside to get Raina before the cougars or wolverines beat me to it. And there stood my neighbor Lauri, who has no children, holding my baby and swaying her back and forth.

That's when I realized I'm not expected to handle this alone and that conventional "modern" mothering flies in the face of nature. Living in a tiny Swiss village gave me a glimpse of a forgotten world where families live close to each other to help out with raising children. I've realized that motherhood is too big a job for one person to handle and that I really need this small group of people, warts and all, that I call community.