Dominus points out that we create “ad hoc communities based on proximity and built up around mutual affection.”   If you want an example, she notes, “walk into any watering hold at 7:30 pm.”   The people we meet there aren’t “close” relations; they’re consequential strangers.  So we may not be aware of how much we depend on their presence.  But then one day you go into your bank, and your favorite teller has been transfered.    A coffee shop closes.   Or, in the story Dominus reports,   Dick Sebastian–a man from the dog run who once surprised you with a sketch of your dog–announces that he’s planning to move.   Dominus quotes Jessica Pell, one of the women who knew Sebastian:

Ms. Pell, who is single and works for herself, said that right now, Mr. Sebastian represents stability to her. She’s there every day; he’s there every day, often with Susie, always with Kitty, a border terrier, attending to the story line of Ms. Pell’s life, picking up on the details that other good friends, absorbed in their own narratives, often miss.  “Susie and Dick never forget,” she said. “They’ll ask you the next day, ‘Are you feeling better?’ Or, ‘How did the meeting go?’ ”

Come to think of it, none of my close friends clip articles about CS for me the way Joan does.

Case in point: parenting guru Ron Taffel and I live very different lives and have rarely spent time in person.  But because we’ve worked on two books together (Parenting by Heart and The Second Family), over the years we have become each other’s sounding board.  We talk, we exhange tid bits of our lives, and we indulge our mutual fascination with culture and trends.   So I wasn’t surprised to learn that in his new book, Childhood Unbound, Ron (without using the term) exhorts parents to call on their consequential strangers–that is, to step outside their intimate spheres to connect with other parents, with teachers, with various characters in the community.   While Ron focuses on families, the same benefits accrue to individuals, to members of organizations and corporations, or to entrepreneurs who reach beyond their inner circles.  Living today is too hectic, too complex, and too uncertain to go it alone.  And loved ones, as valuable as they might be, are not enough. 

Ron and I also agree that we have something to learn from the younger generation when it comes to connecting.  For years, he’s been warning parents not to underestimate the power of the peer culture–a force he dubbed the “second family.”    In Chapter 7, I write about the same group, the Millennials–those Masters of the Internet (now 6 to 26) who didn’t know life before the digital revolution (or barely remember it). Cyberspace is part of the air they breathe. Online and in real life, they’ve already made more connections than some of their parents and grandparents will have made in a lifetime. If the future is about creating community in a hundred different ways, these kids are already there.

Check out all of Ron’s  books–he’s one of the most original and expansive thinkers in the parenting genre. He puts it all in context.   Childhood Unbound should be read by every parent and grandparent–to understand what “childhood” really means today–but also by anyone who cares about the future of this planet.