A Call For Yuppie Communes

Words By Reihan Salam

"Adultescents," "kidults," "the boomerang generation"--they all mean essentially the same thing: Something has gone terribly wrong with today's 20-somethings. They are--or, I should say--we are something less than fully adult. Piled into group houses and shared apartments, we are part of the Friends generation. Whether by choice or by circumstance, we've built lives around our friendships instead of creating new nuclear families. The numbers bear this out. According to the latest census stats, the median age of first marriage for an American woman is almost 26, up from nearly 23 a quarter-century ago. The percentage of Americans who've never been married is climbing fast.

So what's the cause of this alleged retreat from adulthood? For some, the culprit is the economy: This generation, "Generation Debt," is simply financially strapped. For others, the culprit runs deeper. Somehow this generation isn't prepared for the rigors of real adulthood defined by the holy trinity of the American Dream: a family, a career, and a house in the suburbs. And so the gentrified precincts of our brightest and biggest cities are full of recent college grads packed tenement-tight in "multifamily" buildings that include hardly any families at all.

But the problem isn't that we kids--the kidults--are rejecting adulthood. We're just delaying the holy trinity. So the Friends years are not an alternative to nuclear-family life. They're just a slow transitional period. ("It's only a phase, dear.") Eventually, we are still partnering up and settling the crabgrass frontier. We're still retreating into our private spaces. The difference is that while the size of the average American home has grown--from 1,500 square feet in 1970 to an insane 2,300 in 2005--average family size is down over the same period. The number of households with five or more people, full of the clamor of children, has halved, from 21 percent to 10 percent.

It's worth remembering that the small handful of would-be radicals who rejected "bourgeois marriage" in favor of friendship never thought of this choice as "transitional." In the essay "Lives of the Bohemians," from his book The Disappointment Artist, the novelist Jonathan Lethem recalls the Brooklyn, New York home of his youth: "Our home was soon a stopping-off point for former colleagues and students of my father's who'd arrived in New York and needed a place to stay, as well as for old friends from Greenwich Village." Lethem's mother, the kind of woman others orbit and buzz around, "made our kitchen table a site of meetings, transformations, flirtations, arguments." Slowly, the Lethem family brownstone became a quasi-commune, with all the attendant complications.

For all the failures of that time, it's clear to me that the Lethems were grasping in the direction of something noble. Far from rejecting the rigors of adulthood, they were seeking a more rigorous and rewarding way of life. The best of these homes were full of adults and children jumbled together always, learning and sharing as a matter of course.

If it sounds as if I'm calling for a return of the commune, that's because I am--or at least for some alternative to the arid emotional deserts that are our oversized, empty homes. Imagine friends and families living around a courtyard, occasionally sharing meals and keeping an eye on the kids. Cohousing--a movement that's taken off among boomer retirees--aims to do just that. It should go without saying that this way of life has massive environmental benefits. But the case is strong enough if we stick to the question of our cultural and emotional environment.

Real estate developers, always quick to spot a cultural shift, are carrying the ball further. In Manhattan, the latest ritzy condominiums come complete with common areas and are hiring "activity coordinators" to plan movie nights and mixers. There's some irony in this--if the prosperous folks who bought these condos weren't workaholics, they might make friends the old-fashioned way. Nevertheless, it's a start.

Let this be the generation that really does refuse to "grow up," and that holds fast to the friendships and communities that sustain us without retreating, tails between our legs, into private life.

Salam is an associate editor at The Atlantic. He is the author, with Ross Douthat, of Grand New Party.

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Comments

[django707]

Childish? I can't think of anything more adult than throwing off the imprisoning loneliness of the nuclear family. In America, we are starved for community and create ersatz communities wherever we can. This nuclear model is a perfect extension of unregulated capitalism which hardly appreciates any kind of communal environment. Part of our propaganda is to reflexively sneer at anything so ridiculously hippie as a commune.
But right now, out there in America, millions of nuclear families cower in fear and confusion, forcing smiles and spouting affirmations, lest the truth that they are alone devours them. Stay with your "friends" model. It will buttress you in terrifying times.

[thinkgra]

This is interesting. Pundits bemoaning people starting families before they are able to afford them, then FREAKING OUT when people choose to delay starting families and live in a way that minimizes their expenses.
Go figure. The world must be ending.

PS--as an only child, I loved moving to a communal situation and getting all the siblings I never had...plus I got to pick them out!

[mommadona]

OK
The basic rule:

Always knock on the bathroom door before entering.
If you didn't bring it, don't eat it.
Take what you need. Leave the rest for the next.
Wash up. Everything.
What goes around, comes around, so don't leave anything around you don't want coming around.

Mahalo.....

[aigeanta]

I'm fascinated with the idea of intentional communities, and came across a good website: http://www.ic.org/
which describes them as "ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, alternative communities, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision."

[kirkland]

Growing up is synonomous, somehow, with losing the ability ( or) desire to play. There are many of us who haven't grown up. In our forties, fities and I'm sure, beyond. I was speaking with a clinician and he shared with me the information that this was a huge and painful event for MEN---( especially) their women seeming to lose the ability( and feel )for play as their lives become responsibile for other lives. I get it....it feels real to me , whether you're speaking about women becoming rigid or men.The more isolated that we've become domestically the less flexible we've become---e­motionally­. Secondaril­y....livin­g in community of any kind demands that you loosen up and connect not unlike kids in a sandbox. If there is any truth to my feelings I think that this is a good trend. ( not *growing up*)
We are available to live much more deeply if we're fully available emotionally and otherwise, to experience(s) --- and we're more authentic and no doubt more fun. Being a grown up may be highly over rated and at the least....I see people inventing new ways of doing so , being so. People again living in community is great...MUCH better than the last census that indicated that more than 50% of us live in single person households. We are tribal creatures, pack animals.

[Dandy12]

The dynamics of relationships are changing quickly for a number of reasons. It is wise to know who you are before you get married and have children (a little later, two-three years ideally). Perhaps for a woman, the ideal age might be 28-35, and for a man a few years later. No longer should people think it's just great for high school boyfriends and girlfriends to get married soon after they graduate.

In this economy and in the future, a communal
"Friends" type of living arrangement will become more common. We will probably also see more extended families living under one roof.
These trends should be perceived as positive even though they may be motivated by having less available resources.

[AusJeb]

Part of the issue here is the myth of the nuclear family. If anything, experience has shown that a family consisting only of parents and children is an unstable, subnuclear unit. And, do any of us really live our lives according to such a narrow definition?

Family, even under a narrow definition, should include parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, their spouses, nieces, and nephews. Under a broader definition, family can include the friends that are closer than many traditional family members.

The idea of the "nuclear family" is a product of post-war, mid 20th Century affluence. We don't live in that world, and we aren't likely to live in it again anytime in the foreseeable future.

You are right to suggest other forms for how we might structure our lives. Cohousing is a good suggestion, even if it is only to tear down the fences seperating our backyards and houses. As shown on HBO's Big Love, that is one way that co-housing could be brought to suburbia.

[DANIELLECLARKE]

I already live at one i live with an 85 yr old woman and i sleep on her couch and we just took in an 77 yr old chinese man and soon we are getting a man without legs and so we share together and work together as a team to survive while i am the youngest in my 50's and i do lots of volunteer work for my favorite candidate Barack Obama. Try it you will like how life can be so great working together and sharing and caring as a team or family commune. We recycle every bit of trash and compost all our waste and use the compost to grow food in the warmer times. It also keeps the garage warmer through its decomposition process which keeps the potatoes in good shape from freezing. Ah yes i have been a communal living person my whole life since i had 6 brothers and sisters.

[rini]

When a large group of people start doing things differently, there usually is an equally large reason. I think it's the media culture and the economy.

I think people have a little more leeway in lifestyle now in many developed countries because of exposure to other ways of living through the media.

There is growing up and becoming responsible, which is important, and there is "growing up," which is all about fitting into certain niches. Personally, I hate the thought of "growing up." I haven't done it yet and I'm a forty one year old physician, wife and mother of two.