At midnight in late January, a plumbing emergency prompted a trek to Home Depot, where I was disheartened to see two families with young children on a school night. Obviously, I had no idea what the family situation was, why the parents were in Home Depot at that hour, or why the children weren’t at home with a responsible adult. Unquestionably, the children can’t be home alone. Usually when children die in a fire, no adult was present.

What I do know is that if these families lived with other people, or had neighbors whom they knew well and trusted, maybe those children could have stayed asleep in their beds.  Children who are out at midnight have little chance of success in school the next day.  On the occasions that I’m in a grocery store at 9 p. m., children are often there with their parents, a sight that always troubles me.  David Brooks, the conservative op-ed writer for the New York Times often writes about children growing up in chaotic homes having less chance of success in life. A predictable, well ordered home environment could go a long way toward stabilizing children’s lives and improving school performance.

For the 24 million children who live in single parent households, a well ordered environment may be a distant dream. The single mother that I met on the bus last week commutes four hours a day, (2 hours each way) to take her 17-month old child to day care on the south side and then get to work. She hopes for an opening at one of three north side day care centers. A four-hour daily commute, and caring for an infant, leaves little capacity to create a well ordered environment.

Barack Obama succeeded spectacularly in a single parent home due to his mother’s commitment to education and to his grandmother’s involvement. Natalie Angier wrote in the November 5, 2002 New York Times,  “The presence or absence of a grandmother often spelled the difference in traditional subsistence cultures between life or death for the grandchildren.” Weighing the Grandma Factor; In Some Societies, It’s a Matter of Life and Death. Western Union capitalized on this phenomenon a few years ago by creating a billboard showing a young mother holding a crying infant with the caption: Send Grandma.

The message is clear, throughout history, young families need help. Often, birth families function well, yet  sometimes they fail catastrophically. If your family is far away, or if it falls on the unhelpful end of the spectrum, having a community that fills the role of a supportive family can be a balm to your spirit and can even be life saving. Allowing someone into your family circle for friendship or a helping hand requires that you know them well and that the adults and the children actually like each other. The way to get to know people well, and to find out if you like them, is to gather casually, often and preferably in a variety of settings.

Culturally, there is a great yearning for the experience of a supportive community but this social skill has rusted. New Community Vision’s goal is to plant the seeds for cooperative living by facilitating gatherings community-by-community, month-after-month, throughout the country, to brainstorm for solutions to our universal problems of child care, elder care, housing, transportation, jobs and social isolation. Contact Terry Edlin to jump start your community with gatherings that support individuals and families and lead to healthy, vibrant neighborhoods. Sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss anything and to find out where and when communities gather.