[afaxwebgirl]

My parents had to share a house with a couple when I was a small child. It was not ideal. Shared kitchen. Other shared spaces. Unless you are all on the same page about things, you are basically taking on extra parents. Other people telling you how to do such and such in raising your child which may be ideas that you're not on par with. When you have your own home, you can amicably disagree and go to the privacy of your own house. When you live with these folks, the disagreement may not be as amicable especially if they see that you're not implementing their ideas of what they think is best for your child.

Then there is the whole issue of cleanliness. What one person thinks is clean could be light years away from what you think is clean and tidy. This would cause untold levels of stress and discomfort on both ends. I'd rather have my own domain even if its only a travel trailer, than share living space with a bunch of people continuously giving their "advice" on what they think is best.

[crazygringo]

Yup. Disagreements over tidiness, food, kitchen usage, what is appropriate for children, the list goes on and on. Different families come from different cultures, have different values, etc. It's incredibly difficult to find a bunch of other families you're "on the same page with" where you actually want to be co-parenting with and hanging out with all the time.

It's one thing when you all grow up together. There's a baseline level of compatibility and trust that can make it all work. But in today's world where you often have to move every five years for a job, or for a better school, etc., spontaneously joining groups of families and having it "just work" is a tall order.

[ryandrake]

I can't even agree with one spouse about a lot of these things, let alone a bunch of co-parents from different walks of life, in some sort of community house. No way that's going to work. I would not be able to even deal with having my own parents live with us and "help" with our kid. While I love them, the things they consider important about child-raising are not all compatible with the things I consider important and I am certain we would clash all the time.

[geverett]

I'm reminded of this Atlantic article that says 'You can try to micromanage your child’s care—whether they eat sugar, whether they get screen time, whether someone insists that a child apologize after snatching another kid’s toy—or you can have reliable community help with child care. But you can’t have both.'

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/01/intensive...

Personally I'm ok with flexing my standards a bit for the sake of having a great community - I'm on the cleaner side but I don't mind doing a little extra tidying as long as it feels like a balance. I've lived with my friends and their kids and while we don't have the 100% the same parenting styles we all respect what the others bring to the table.

[mihaaly]

And there are enstranged families. A sort of common occurrence nowdays, but not unknown in the past either (concealed, suppressed, being a shame, common occurrence of the present is perhaps due to less stigma nowadays). They do not want to live or even be in contact with those who gave you (you gave to) their values, efforts, view of life. Lived together for years and years in dependency. People with very strong ties, like it or not.

And co-living should work better with strangers of mixed mentality?

Yes, this must be for people with highly common way of current thinking (current, momentarily, as people do change when they go through significant life experiences, like raising children or joining a community).

[spacemadness]

It seems everyone’s trying to fix one part of the system without seeing the system as a whole. Build more housing is all you need to do, live in communes is all you need, etc. That’s great for easy blog fodder. I definitely think community is vital, but the system you live in can easily poison it or make it unworkable. Also the article seems to mention actual intergenerational families in India then asks why aren’t families living with other families which is a weird conclusion to make from that.

[drewcoo]

Community and selfishness don't mix well.

And with more than 2 co-parents, a quorum might form that excludes you.

[magicalhippo]

My company has a cabin us employees can use. Only thing we have to do is reserve it and clean up before we leave.

Cleanliness has been a huge source of frustration, as you say there's a huge chasm between what some people considers "clean enough".

And that's not sharing it at the same time, like in a community home...

[SoftTalker]

Easily solved by hiring a cleaning service to come in between bookings. Anyone renting apartments or even doing AirBnB knows you cannot rely on tenants to leave the place anything better than "broom clean" and often they don't even do that.

[dheera]

I can't imagine sharing a kitchen with anyone but my own partner. Cleanliness is the bare minimum, but design and aesthetics is a big part of it.

I'm very particular about how my kitchen (and living space in general) looks. I coordinate the colors of appliances with the cabinetry, the styles of all the cutlery, the locations and labelling of everything. Fonts, typography, margins all matter in those labels. I sometimes design and make my own containers for things. I like bottles of ingredients being in aesthetically-pleasing arrangements by color shade.

But I'm also an introvert, an artist at heart, and it helps me save money. When my kitchen is an evolving work of art, I'm drawn to spend more time in that space, and that inspires me to make more food for myself, at 1/5 the cost of food outside. If my kitchen looks like an aesthetic mess because the person I share it with does not give a shit about design, I would be more likely to go spend $30 on food outside, and that adds up pretty quickly.