Is communal living the future of parenting? | Sophie Brickman

An intriguing new movement is experimenting with the kind of co-living that defined families for millennia. I decided to find out more

I first spoke to Prophet Walker about a year ago, when I was pregnant with our third child and fresh off a Covid-precipitated six-month stint of living with my parents. Whether it was the kindergartner getting sick, or navigating a crushing deadline with a preschooler underfoot, or juggling dinnertime while eight months pregnant and unable to reach the mac 'n' cheese that had been smeared on the floor unless I actually lay down on the floor - at which point I'd have needed a crane to right myself - I began to feel desperate for my parents' extra sets of hands, and wondering how on earth we'd ever made it work without them.

It took a pandemic for me to put my own living practices under the spotlight. Walker had been doing so for his entire life. He is now spearheading a movement to get people to recognize the myriad benefits of ditching that very American vision of two parents, two and a half kids and a white picket fence for the communal living that defined families for millennia.

Sophie Brickman is a contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times and other publications, and the author of Baby, Unplugged: One Mother's Search for Balance, Reason, and Sanity in the Digital Age