Reclaiming Neighborliness

If you close it (streets), they (kids) will come

On the one hand, obviously my kids make it harder for me to see my friends. I can’t head out during nap-time without a sitter. I can’t plan to take a rideshare car without toting three carseats, so I don’t take one at all. Our conversations with friends are more often interrupted (unless we invite over friends with a bunch of kids and let a cheerful chaos ensue).

But, in a recent, excellent essay by Stephanie Murray, she makes the case (which I can corroborate) that kids often make it easier for adults to make friends. She starts with the story of two British women who petitioned to close their road for two hours one June afternoon to make space for play.

As children poured into the street, some ran into classmates, only just then realizing that they were neighbors. Soon it became clear to everyone present that far more children were living on Greville Road than anyone had known. That session, and the many more it prompted, also became the means by which adult residents got to know one another, which led to another revelation for Ferguson and Rose: In numerous ways, a world built for cars has made life so much harder for adults.

The closed road was good for kids, because it let them play without having to be ferried anywhere by their parents. It meant they learned who they might already know in their neighborhood, and they could plan walking playdates going forward. It’s hard to pierce the closedness of suburban houses in communities without front porches.

My daughter was thrilled to learn one of her preschool teachers lives a block from us, which we discovered by happenstance when we biked by as she got out of her car. People have a slightly better chance to realize where we live if they see us tootling by on my very un-anonymous Bunch bike.

Back in the saddle at 7 weeks postpartum

Stephanie also highlights how kids grease the skids for adult socialization:

Children’s play alters the feel of the street, giving adults permission to engage in the sort of socializing “we’ve otherwise policed out,” Moran, of NYU, told me. Kids themselves function as a sort of “connective tissue for adults,” Moran said. This is true in the simple sense that when kids meet one another, their parents naturally connect. But children are also “very good at breaking down the learned reserve between adults.”

Children approach others, including in contexts where adults politely ignore each other. Children offer a natural starting point for conversation, “How old? What have they been getting into?” Children introduce us to unvetted, unchosen people.

To some extent, the presence of children also means adults have permission to not “be productive” while lightly supervising, and have more room for unstructured leisure and conversation.

Stephanie’s story makes me curious about where an influx of unexpected people in a space rapidly change the affordances of the space for its usual occupants. Children can convert the quotidian to the Carnivalesque (in Bahktin’s sense). The usual rules are suspended and a giddy freedom takes hold.

Where has the presence of a child/children given you greater freedom as an adult?

Where has a place you habitually frequent been changed by an influx of different people than whom it usually serves? Did anything stick?

How are your neighbors (wherever you live, house or apartment building) most likely to encounter you?