Feeding the Communal Family: 'Family Time' and the Division of Household Labor in Cohousing

Gathering around the family dinner table is a strongly-held value in American culture (Kremer-Sadlik, Fatigante, and Fasulo, 2008) and many positive effects of family meals have been documented in the literature (Davidson and Gauthier, 2010). At the same time, expectations about family dinner can exacerbate the pressure on dual-career couples already in a "time bind" (Hochschild, 1997), and add stress to their marriages as women, especially working mothers, are more likely to feel overwhelmed by and unappreciated for these labors (Spitze and Loscocco, 2000). Yet most families, with some variation based on family structure and resources, mother's employment, and family functioning, do make time to eat together (Davidson and Gauthier, 2010). However, the quantity of time spent at the family dinner table has been in steady decline (Schor, 2005) despite its significance as a key activity for "family time" (Gutierrez, Price, and Arnould, 2008). The notion of family time is closely related to the concept of "quality time," both of which have received increased attention in response to the extensive growth in labor force participation among middle-class mothers (DeVault 2000). This attention couples concern that parents are not spending enough time with their children, with a romanticized vision of the past and an idealized image of the family (Kremer-Sadlik et al, 2008) where family meals are "cast as positive experiences central to family preservation" (Price, 2008, p. 189). In addition, the cultural pressure to achieve idealized experiences of quality time can add to family stress (Kremer-Sadlik and Paugh, 2007) and the reality of family dinner may more closely resemble a "6 o'clock crash" (Larson and Richards, 1994), fraught with conflict and fatigue (Gutierrez et al, 2008). Through an examination of communal meals in cohousing, a form of intentional community, this article explores the tension between the notion of the family dinner as family time and the opportunity for redistributing, and balancing by gender, mealtime household labor.Cohousing communities are resident-developed and managed cooperative neighborhoods where privately-owned (or less often, rented), self-sufficient household units are clustered around a "common house" with shared facilities including a dining room for "common meals" and assorted other amenities such as a children's play area, teen room, laundry, exercise space, and/or guest rooms (McCamant and Durrett, 1994; Meltzer, 2005). They typically range in size from fifteen to forty household units. Cohousing, a Danish model, was introduced in the United States in 1988 and has grown rapidly. Today there are over 100 established (i.e. built and occupied) cohousing communities in the United States and more on the way with over 100 other groups working on new projects. [1]The common house is the heart of the community where members come together to dine, share childcare, socialize, and hold meetings. Each home is self-sufficient with a complete kitchen, but many evenings community dinners are available in the common house with residents taking turns at cooking and clean-up. Common dinners play a significant role in attracting people to cohousing. "Cohousers" cite both social (e.g. friendship, sense of community) and instrumental (e.g. reducing individual household labor, balancing the gendered division of household labor) functions of common meals as motivations for pursuing a cohousing lifestyle. This article will: 1) explore the extent to which these expectations regarding common meals are realized, 2) examine the related tension between community participation and family time in one cohousing community, and 3) analyze the extent to which communalizing meals helps redistribute and balance household labor by gender. Social and Instrumental Functions of Communal Life Above all, people live in cohousing because they want to live with others who are also intentionally choosing to live in community. …