f kids don't imagine that that's common. Please please don't imagine that. If everybody used your wise parenting standards and your setting limits don't believe that that works for other people. Other people could do exactly what you're doing and get completely different results. So you have to understand that one size doesn't fit all for almost anything.

And I don't think the family unit makes sense for everybody. I do think that some percentage of people would just be better off if somebody else raised their kids. Now I don't know if that needs to be the state because you know we don't trust the government. But here is what I think needs to be done. I think our housing and the way we design cities and towns is all wrong because what you would, here's a perfect situation. You live in a cul-de-sac where you know all the neighbors right? That's it. That's my whole solution. You can still have your family unit but maybe you're not very good at it but you're in a cul-de-sac where everybody's friends. You know their kids. You know the parents. Because even if your parents aren't working out as the role models how many of you have a role model that wasn't your parent? It was your friend's parents right? Come on. How many of you had your role model somebody else's parents or at least one of them right? So you can be very influenced by your neighbor. You just have to let it happen.

So the very best situation would be a tribe because I think we're still tribal by evolutionary you know that's where we are in evolution. The fact that the modern cities and everything modern life popped up we're not evolved for that. Best situation would be some hybrid that's kind of like a tribe but really it's a cul-de-sac meaning you can all go back to your house at night. You're still a family but the neighbors are raising your kids just accidentally.

Now let me say more about that. If you don't have a few other families to help you with the driving and the watching of the kids it's a real burden. When in my first marriage I was in this very lucky situation just insanely lucky where the two kids had exactly a match of the gender and the age in several other families that we were friends with. Amazingly I mean just amazing coincidence that the kids ages match. So you could have like the boys would have a sleepover at one of the parents houses and then the girls would have a sleepover at another parent's house and like three out of five parents would then have a free night. And the kids would be extraordinarily happy because they're with their best friends and you're completely safe because you know the parents personally. They're not with strangers. It was the best best thing.

Now in this case it was just a luck of who met who at the right times and stuff but we didn't live like right next to each other so there's a lot of driving. But let me tell you the optimal situation is families coordinating especially if the children are similar ages. Oh I should have thrown that in. I like having a mix of ages but for the kids benefit they just have to be with kids their own age. They just have to be like that's it's just too important. It's good for everybody but for the kids it's just essential.

So how many would fight with me over my main hypothesis that the family unit can work great for people who are good at it and in some situations especially higher income but for a lot of people it doesn't work. You're going to need a little help. You just need a little extra parenting. Yeah and probably all of you know that mom who is a mom to everybody. Do you all know one of those? It's like just somebody in your social network who is as much a mom to your own kids as you are because they just have that personality. Don't you want your kids to have as much association with that kind of experience? Of course you do yeah.

So Hillary was right about it takes a village but the thing that we get wrong is how we build homes. We build homes and apartments in a way that don't cause you to know your neighbors. As long as we build stuff that causes us not to socialize in our normal tribal way we're never going to be as happy as we could be or as effective.

All righ