Community, family relations, children’s freedom

In her book Blood, Bones, and Butter Gabrielle Hamilton writes:

“. . . we ran in a pack — to school, home from school, and out after dinner — like wild dogs. If the Melman kids were allowed out, and the Bentley boys, the Drevers, and the Shanks across the street as well, our group numbered fifteen. We spent all of our time outdoors, in mud suits, snowsuits, or bare feet, depending on the weather. Even in the benign woods, we found rough pastimes. We trespassed, drag raced, smoked, and vandalized. We got ringworm, broken bones, tetanus, concussions, stitches, and poison ivy.”

My 1950s childhood was similar, even in the suburbs of Newark (Maplewood). On a Saturday morning, age 12, we’d set out on our bikes and our parents would just request (and hope) that we’d be home by dinnertime. Our pack of eight or ten would cover the whole town on our bikes. We’d meet up with foreign packs (the Tuscan Schoolers were exotic to us Jefferson Schoolers) at each playground in turn. With a dollar in our pockets we had lunch at Curly’s Pizza in the center of town. If we did get home by dinnertime, we went right out afterward. The best outside time was at dusk.

There was a lot of open space. The grassy parks segued into the woods. There were no adults anywhere near the bushes-hidden stream that ran through all the parks.

We didn’t really get too many broken bones or concussions, but we did get a lot of bee stings. They say it might have been the last “wild and free” generation . . . and the peak of the bee populations as well.

Things have gone too far in the direction of protecting the kids and controlling nature. For each atomized nuclear family each child has become just a little too precious. In Toni Morrison’s book Beloved it was called “thick love.” It can curtail freedom.

The solution (as usual) is the rejuvenation of local community life. Here’s why:

The over-preciousness is a function of our hyper-individualistic lifeways. Our circumstances are such that our emotional sustenance derives too much from the nuclear family. The sense of “We” is too limited. That whole situation is too intense, putting stress on the Significant Other relationship and the parent-child relationships.

People used to have more of a collective sensibility. That’s better, in just about all ways. In a tribe or a village (or, now, in a cohousing community) the younger generation that provides a sense of transcendence is, yes, primarily our own kids, and the cousins, but also to some degree the cohort of the whole community. If we are familiar with the children of the neighbors, if there’s stability and the kids all grow up together and we interact with them, if we have some real shared childcare responsibilities among us . . . the preciousness is not so terribly concentrated in our own.

That’s a benefit of real community.