By William Ozier • Download article pdf: Family_Life_in_Eco_Village-EO-0310.pdf

Moving out of traditional society into the social milieu of ecovillage can be a risky endeavor, especially since many eco-villages are more or less social experiments and still finding their own way.

One of the toughest decisions one has to make in their life is how to raise their children. As a parent, you have to balance what is right for your child, and that includes balancing what your child needs right now with how you want your child to grow up.

For parents out there who are either living in eco-villages or trying to decide if an eco-village is right for your family, perhaps this article can help shed a little light on the decision for you.

I am not a parent, but I have had the privilege of living at two distinctly different eco-villages: the Arcosanti Project located in central Arizona, and the Lost Valley Educational Center located in Oregon.

The Arcosanti project, started in 1970, is a prototype “Arcology,” an environment that blends architecture and ecology together into one comprehensive design and system.

While Arcosanti may not incorporate many of the social, economic and decision making processes that many people infer the word “community” to mean, the simple facts are that more than 60 people live there, some with children, and their interactions and lives constitute a vibrant and socially rich community.

The Lost Valley Educational Center is a 20-year-old intentional community and aspiring eco-village with roughly 30 residents. Through my time at both places, I have had the opportunity to meet many parents and many children.  For this article, I interviewed them and let the parents, and the children, speak for themselves so that we can see this issue through their eyes.

Ivan Fritz, a computer technician for Skywalker Sound, grew up at the Arcosanti project where he lived with his mother. He spent his summers on the East Coast with his father. Now an adult, Fritz can give a life-long perspective of what it was like to be raised in an eco-village.

“As a kid, I loved living at Arcosanti because I had free reign to go anywhere I wanted, and the buildings were so cool to climb on,” Fritz said. “I remember when I was 6 or 7 that I spend all day sometimes ‘spying’ on people, just hiding and watching people work.

Another aspect that made it so nice for me was that there were always cool adults around to involve you in artistic endeavors or games, and there was always something interesting going on. Arcosanti was also very special because of the miles of undeveloped desert that surrounded it in which I could hike and play.”

As an adult, there are some aspects of it that Fritz can look back on with criticism, but he considers the positive experiences in his memory to outweigh those criticisms.  Considering the importance our childhood views have on our lives and relationships as adults, it makes you wonder.

From Fritz’s perspective, rearing a child at an eco-village would be almost ideal for a parent. He believes that with all of the close knit neighbors and friends a stone’s throw away (sometimes literally), someone is always around who can keep an eye out for your child’s welfare.

As a child, Fritz felt this support and care from the many adults in his community and thinks it helped him to live a freer and more exciting childhood, which in turn helped him to become a more “worldly” adult, in his own words.  Fritz’s perspective is one from a kid growing up in an eco-village, but do parents in eco-villages share his perspective?

Anna-Lies Amundson, or Ala, is 24-years-old and recently moved to the Lost Valley Educational Center with her 2-year-old son, ’Io. Amundson is no stranger to community living, having lived in eco-villages in Hawaii, where she enjoyed the paradiselike weather conditions and the camaraderie of community members.

As a parent, her fondest memory of living in an eco-village was ’Io’s first birthday; not only her whole community but also many neighbors from the local area came out to celebrate with her and her child.

In eco-villages Amundson felt most “herself.” Every parent tries to raise their children as a reflection of the best part of themselves, so when Amundson moved back to the mainland she definitely wanted to raise her child in the eco-village context.

’Io is not yet old enough to interview, but almost everyday I watch him run around the lawn after dinner, playing with another new young addition to our community, the kitty-cat Sid.

Amundson believes that her son is already more grounded, both literally and figuratively, than children reared in traditional environments.

He runs around barefoot feeling the Earth beneath his feet. With his range of freedom, experience and interaction, Amundson believes that ’Io is getting the kind of mental, physical and social stimulation that parents in traditional environments TRY to achieve by buying their children plastic toys, televisions, I-pods and video games.

Her son gets this stimulation, so vital for healthy development, in free abundance in a way that connects him with the world and the people around him.  Nature is his life-sized playset, and the people, animals and living things are his action figures.

So far Amundson has found no real drawbacks to rearing her son in an ecovillage, and as a mom she appreciates all the help she receives from her community members.

This help keeps her far less stressed than most young parents, and gives her the emotional energy and time to pay attention to herself, enabling her to be a more complete person, which she feels makes her a better mom for her child.  From a child’s perspective, it seems the most common drawback to eco-village living is the lack of TV watching compared to children from traditional environments.

While many parents may think that is a benefit, to children missing the latest episode of Sponge Bob—combined with the fact that an inordinate number of children from eco-villages place into accelerated programs in traditional schools—can make the children feel somewhat socially isolated at school.

Aside from a lack of TV, there can be other drawbacks to rearing a child in an eco-village. Many eco-villages are in rural locations, which can make good schooling hard to find, and most parents in eco-villages can’t really afford to send their children to private schools.

Home schooling is always an option, but not all parents have the ability or time to home school. Jim and Kelli Huth moved to the Arcosanti eco-village and then later had children, twins, affectionately referred to as the “Huthlings.”

When their double package of joy arrived, Jim and Kelli had all the usual stresses of first-time parents. Actually, they had double the stresses, but they had a supportive community of nearby friends and neighbors to help them with their own birth pangs as parents.  While they did have plenty of help and people to look out for the Huthlings, the children could not be constantly watched and Arcosanti is constantly under construction, so safety concerns were an issue.

Combined with the fact that the Huthlings extended family lived thousands of miles away, Jim and Kelli decided to move so that the children could be with family and in a safer environment.

Even though Jim and Kelli moved away from their eco-village, they still recommend the experience for parents. As a parent at Arcosanti, Kelli particularly enjoyed being exposed to parenting styles from other cultures, and having a more tolerant and socially safe environment to learn how to parent.

All-in-all, Kelli considered her experience at an eco-village as “amazing” and recommends it for parents, feeling the unique nature of the experience forms a gift for your child that you could not otherwise provide.

Another benefit of eco-village living for children is that they get exposed to adults in healthy social ways. Anisa Brooks was 7-years-old when she was at Arcosanti and says that she enjoyed “The people and calmness of everything, and how everyone you pass is like family a member to you.”

Anisa learned to be comfortable with people of all ages, not just children.  I’m no child psychologist, but there is a definite link between cross-generational interaction and intelligence, social skills and compassion in children.

This intergenerational contact is a much different way for a child to be raised than in traditional environments, where they are often taught not to talk to strangers and come straight home and not play in the street.

Fritz definitely feels that his positive exposure to adults as a child helped develop a much greater worldliness than other children who were raised in traditional settings.

While Anisa loved her time and interactions at Arcosanti, when asked about the drawbacks she admits she kind of missed not having a backyard like other kids, and it sometimes bothered her that some of the adults took advantage of having so few rules...a very insightful and mature observation for a young child.

Dave Tollas and Nadia Begin met (and fell in love and got married) at the Arcosanti project. When the stork brought them Tristan, their first child, Nadia said she couldn’t think of a better place to raise her child.

A decision she obviously did not regret, because when Dave and Nadia discovered they had a second bundle of joy on the way, their second son Sasha, they de cided to raise him at Arcosanti as well.  Giving birth to her children in her home at Arcosanti and feeling the love and support of her nearby friends and community members was one of Nadia’s fondest memories as a parent at an ecovillage.

Dave and Nadia have found many of the same benefits from raising children at an eco-village that many other parents and children I interviewed found: a safe and supportive environment for both parent and child, plenty of adults to help and look out for both the kids and the parents, a stimulating environment for the kids to play safely in, and a chance to raise their children in a way that teaches a lesson besides consumerism, selfishness and fear.

Nadia is careful to warn though that it may not be for everyone. No community is perfect, just as no place is perfect, and you have to be there for the right reasons for yourself first, and then for your child second.

Nadia believes that “you have to be ready to work on yourself if you want to be happy in a community.”

As someone who has lived in communities, one of them with Nadia, I agree with her advice. While Dave and Nadia continue to raise their children at Arcosanti, and advise eco-village living for parents, they do still miss some of the access to a greater range of choices, commodities and amenities for children, such as diverse choice of schools and cultural facilities that typical cities offer.

Amundson advises that parent in eco-villages should try to get their kids as involved in their projects as possible.  Depending on your exact form of livelihood at an eco-village, it may be far easier for you to bring your child to work with you everyday.

Not only can you spend more time with your child to watch over them, but also you can expose them to your intellectual and social activities and role model right behavior for them from the get go.

While it is true that with kids you have to curtail some aspects of your social life, an eco-village offers more opportunity to involve and engage your children in healthy ways in your social life.

One of Kelli Huth’s fondest memories as a parent at Arcosanti was being able to dance with her children while being surrounded by other happy dancing people.

This ability to include kids in your work and social life helps to alleviate a lot of the isolation that parents sometimes feel, provides more positive stimulus for the kids, and build a stronger sense of community for all the residents.

Many people in eco-villages reject the notion of the “American Dream” due to its connection with hyper-consumerism, economic oppression and the degradation of people and the environment. Sometimes, though, I think we forget that there are also many positive aspects in the American Dream that are worth taking to heart.

The image of the neighborhood with happy, healthy children running freely, playing in the streets and connecting with each other and the adults is also an iconic and intrinsic part of the American Dream.

Ironically, in rejecting the American Dream and moving to eco-villages, some people may have found a way to make that idyllic image actually come true for their families.