Urban Tribes

[eredien]

This is mostly a post to the people I will be living with at some point within the next year, although others are certainly welcome to read it.

So sometime around late junior highschool, I noticed that more and more people I know had begun to form permanent social groups around friends. This, as anyone who has ever been a teenager will recall, is nothing new. Friends are the center of life, then.
But--and this is a large but--parents and the traditional nuclear family have started becoming less and less so. We've become so alienated from each other that people can make a movie about leaving a child home alone, and that child can go out and take care of themselves for over a month with the poise of an adult, and everyone expects this. (Home Alone, if you're wondering. I just read an article on this the other day, and have been thinking about it).
It's not that they don't love us in their way (one hopes), or that I don't love them in my own. But it's that no one does anything to bridge that awful disconnect, mostly because people aren't expecting that it can be bridged anymore--that stops people from trying. I know I've tried.

My own attempts at bridging this gap have been mildly disastrous by my own standards, and I know that from about the age of fifteen on I was more of a parent-figure to my sister than my parents were--they actually asked me to enforce their punishiments on her (which I refused to do) and to talk to her when there were problems (which I, on occasion, did. She somehow turned out to be a responsible, caring, free person and individual, and the person in my immediate family I like the most. Go figure).

So, we're expected to be our own parents from an early age. We're expected (and we expect) to grow apart from our parents.
People are not meant to live alone (I tried that for a while too. Ick). So what do we do? We form groups of friends-like-family. And we stick with them. What else have we got?

I put this theory forward for the past four years with other friends, with my sister, with adults that worked with kids, with teachers and adult friends I knew and trusted. There was a general agreement that this might be a trend. I thought about writing a book about it.

Well, it's a trend: there's a book. It's not mine, but that just saves me the trouble of trailblazing research and I will merely write the reviews.

It's called Urban Tribes, by Ethan Watters.

Canaday has it, but Rabidfangurl has it out, and I have dibs on it after her, but you can go read it. Or go to the blog. Or the book's website. Or both. They profile different things.

That idea of how we're family and know it? That's what this book is about. I think we all ought to read it. I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to read it, come to think of that.

Isn't this great?

Update: I just found out this guy will be in Boston this year to promote this book. BOSTON Tuesday, October 7 Harvard COOP, 7:00 p.m.

Comments

[khava.livejournal.com]

There's a lot to be said for the concept of urban tribes. But I want to point out that all this can be argued in the opposide direction as well.

I'm sure you've heard the term "extended childhood". Biologically, humans are equipped to be adults by age 13 or 14. They would be mentally equipped as well if society raised them with that expectation. Does modern society let them be adults? No, it shoves them in babysitting setups called high school where responsibility is never demanded of them - sometimes not even allowed. Then they're off to college, where the live for four years or more in an adolescent setup funded by their parents. After all this, at age 22 or so (an age when historically most women would be married with 3 or 4 kids, or else considered an old maid), they're pretty much unable to form a family - or at least don't think of themselves as old/responsible enough, so they go on living single (i.e. with friends) until their biological clocks tell them they have to have kids or else.

Average age at marriage and average age at first child is skyrocketing. In my opinion, this is not good.

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

Why is it not good? I can see that older parents might not have as much energy to keep up with young children, and that they might not have many years to get to know their grandchildren. But you sound like there's more to it than that.

[khava.livejournal.com]

Well, for a lot of reasons. Let me name some, in no particular order. And, just to make me seem not so extremist, I realize that there are many good reasons to put off childbearing to an older age, and my list is not meant to detract from those reasons but only to highlight the often-overlooked benefits of reproducing early.

1. Fertility in women begins to decline after age 25. It declines sharply after age 30. If I remember correctly, a woman age 31 has fertile moments in her cycle only half as often as a woman age 21. Recent research indicates that male fertility probably declines with age also. (Older males are also increasingly likely to have daughters rather than sons.) Putting off child-bearing could make it impossible to have children.

2. Because of decliningy fertility, older couples often have to resort to fertility treatments, which are expensive, uncomfortable or painful, and sometimes heartwrenchingly unsuccessful. When successful, there is a much higher risk of a multiple pregnancy, which leads to another heartwrenching decision - abort some of the fetuses or risk birth defects.

3. Pregnancies in older women have a higher rate of birth defects anyway, even if they are single births.

4. Single young adults are statistically more likely to do stupid things than married ones. Stupid things include driving really fast, drugs, etc. Marriage and children make people more responsible, which is good for them and for society as a whole.

5. You mention getting to know your grandchildren. But it's also being around to support your children and help them raise their own children. Raising kids is much easier if there are grandparents around for advice, babysitting, sometimes financial help, etc.

[daisho.livejournal.com]

Contrary to that, you have more people marrying late who decide simply not to have kids. This creates an ageing population, possibly with negative growth, that needs to be kept afloat by working-age people from elsewhere. In turn, this allows people from poorer countries to improve their lot by filling that gap. Some countries are moving towards such a position.

Personally, I have no problem with the upward trend in marriage age. Given the current divorce rates, I'd rather people were certain they wanted to be together before setting up home and having kids. The major down-side, particularly in crowded places like my small island, is more people living alone, and thus enormous housing pressure.

Taking on board the original point eredien raised, that pressure could be exacerbated by people wanting to move out of their parents' homes sooner, if their relationship is distant or even strained. In Britain, FWIW, that's not the case -- our young people are actually tending to live with parents far longer than they used to. It's a circular argument, though -- part of the reason for that is the high cost of housing here... <:)

[trifles.livejournal.com]

Well, I agree with you and Prisminawindow about the problems of high school and the advantages of the british system where you get to reevaluate at sixteen but it's not true that we reach physical maturity at sixteen anymore. It's not just that the physical process of puberty is beginning earlier but that the whole process is taking longer. Adult brain chemistry, structure and bone structure aren't setting in until the early twenties. There is a theory about this maybe having something to do with our having better nutrition and, thus, growing more. Two hundred years ago, people were considerably shorter so the body could shift over to finishing up the "adult bits" sooner and there would be less that needed changing. Nowadays, the theory says, the body has to continue other sorts of growing for much longer and the pubertal changes have to occur on such a larger scale that the whole process just takes more time.

From a social perspective, though, I definitely want to begin having children sooner rather than later. My parents are on the older end and it causes issues that healthy thirty-five year olds aren't thinking of when they decide to begin having the first of their three kids at that age. My dad had his first heart attack while I was in high school and the spectre of his possible death while I might still be dependent has been with my family ever since. I don't want my education to bankrupt my parents because only one of them is alive to be working and I don't want my father to die before I get married or his grandchildren are born because I know how important that is to him. I want my children and my parents to be intelligible at the same time-my parents young enough to still be mentally together by the time my kids begin adolesence. Agewise, those goals may be a tight squeeze. Also, I am already thinking about what will happen when my parents have to move in with me. I can't imagine that there will be much time between my marriage and the time when I will have to start talking to my parents about coming to live with me. I know that my dad began having his major health issues a little early in that he was still in his fifties but that's not too weird and the house upkeep is already getting to be more than the rest of us want him to be dealing with. Cass and I carefully arrange our coming-back-to-school stuff in such a way that we can keep my dad from carrying that heavy things without making it seem like we're emasculating him by preventing him from carrying stuff on purpose. I don't mean this to sound like this problem came up because I feel forced into taking in my parents because this is what I would want whether my parents agree or not. I get along really well with my parents. My mother is the only one I even sometimes clash with and forcing her to live alone would be cruel and pointless. She has some depressive tendencies now and I can't imagine how miserable she would be if she lived in a house by herself wihout my father. The birth of my children is the next major thing in life that she's looking forward to.

hmm...I have more to say about this but I've gotta go to an appointment and will run off at the mouth more later.

-Beth