I think this is probably true, and if true, is good news: as our community ages, if it manages to keep together, we’ll automatically get the “elder statesmen” who are ready to do generativity or guardianship.
In the meantime, it means that explicit community management, with funding and official status, needs to get attention.
By default, people’s youthful friend groups drift apart when they hit their late twenties or early thirties. I don’t think this necessarily has to happen. Part of it is the modern American (not universal!) nuclear-family structure, which says that thirty-something couples have to take care of children on their own without help from an extended family or friends, and that singles and marrieds, parents and childless, must live in physically distant locations and never spend time together. I think things like group housing, homeschool or daycare community centers, and child-friendly social events can mitigate the problem of divisions between parents and non-parents.
I think this is probably true, and if true, is good news: as our community ages, if it manages to keep together, we’ll automatically get the “elder statesmen” who are ready to do generativity or guardianship.
In the meantime, it means that explicit community management, with funding and official status, needs to get attention.
By default, people’s youthful friend groups drift apart when they hit their late twenties or early thirties. I don’t think this necessarily has to happen. Part of it is the modern American (not universal!) nuclear-family structure, which says that thirty-something couples have to take care of children on their own without help from an extended family or friends, and that singles and marrieds, parents and childless, must live in physically distant locations and never spend time together. I think things like group housing, homeschool or daycare community centers, and child-friendly social events can mitigate the problem of divisions between parents and non-parents.