I have noticed something very clearly in my own family.

The exact same people can feel delightful one day and overwhelmingly heavy the next.

On a fairly organized day, everybody has eaten, the house has some order, the children have somewhere to go, I have space to think, and my husband and I are not both stretched thin.

The children are still children.

They still make noise.

They still interrupt.

Somebody still spills something.

Somebody still gets hurt at the most inconvenient time.

But I have more room inside myself to deal with it.

Then there are other days when ordinary family work lands on top of ten other pressures.

Then somebody calls, “Mommy.”

And somebody else calls, “Mommy.”

And suddenly the same family I love feels heavy.

That has made me think much harder about what family actually needs.

Family Already Has Enough Work

Family is already a big job.

A really big one.

To love people closely over years takes patience, correction, forgiveness, loyalty, teaching, care, protection, organization, sacrifice, affection and a constant willingness to keep coming back to each other.

Children have to be formed.

A marriage has to be tended.

People have bad moods.

Somebody gets hurt.

Somebody needs correcting.

Somebody needs comforting.

Somebody needs to be listened to when everybody else would rather have quiet.

You have to learn each other.

You have to forgive each other.

You have to figure out how to live in the same space without slowly driving each other mad.

That is family work.

And no system can do that work for us.

No beautiful house can make my husband and me stay close.

No abundance can teach my child patience for me.

No civilization can create family unity automatically.

We still have to talk, forgive, laugh, disagree, repair, have sex, stay interested in each other and keep choosing each other.

We still have to raise our children.

That work belongs to us.

So family should not also be carrying every other unnecessary weight on its back.

Make the Surrounding Life Lighter

All of that consumes energy that could have gone into the family itself.

If the basic conditions of life were already secure, the family would still have to do family work.

But more of the work would actually be about family.

Not scrambling.

Not constant maintenance.

Not spending the best part of your energy keeping everybody fed, housed, transported and functioning, then trying to form a good family with whatever is left.

What Should Be Provided Around the Family?

The abstract provision list is actually quite simple.

Abstractly, I compress all of that into nine provision domains:

And above all nine sits security of access.

The provision is not truly provided if the family can lose it the moment income falls, somebody becomes sick, another baby comes or circumstances change.

So I Am Building the Conditions Myself

Once I saw the pattern clearly, it became impossible for me to leave the surrounding conditions of family life to chance.

That is one of the deepest reasons Trott Bailey Family Civilization exists.

I am building the conditions I want my own family to live inside.

Foodway and the wider nourishment systems answer food provision.

Our family compounds answer shelter and space.

Baby World and Tideechi answer care around babies, birth and family life.

NoDumbDumbs answers learning and child development.

Yossam, FEX and LuvYou Care-Ports answer movement and travel.

Rest orchards, Sabenneries, water places and recovery grounds answer restoration.

Gardens, animals, beautiful architecture, travel, public life, events and family activity answer delight.

And the deeper money-free structure answers security of access. Access should not disappear because a family’s income changes.

The individual systems have different names, but underneath them they are answering the same family needs.

I Want More Than Relief

Removing pressure is only the beginning.

There is a difference between:

The second one interests me much more.

I am not trying merely to make family life less difficult.

I want to author the positive conditions around family.

Time for husband and wife to enjoy being husband and wife.

Time to talk.

Time to laugh.

Time to sit together.

Time to travel together.

Time to be interested in each other.

Time to think.

Time to invent.

Time to author ideas.

Time for parents to cook something beautiful because they feel like it, not because five hungry people are standing there and somebody has to produce dinner again.

Time for children to be children without every bit of their energy landing directly on already exhausted parents.

The family still does its own work.

But the civilization around the family can stop stealing so much of the energy needed to do it.

Then take it a million steps further.

For My Children and Their Children

I cannot leave this work in the hands of this silly world.

Why should every generation inherit the same unnecessary exhaustion and then call it normal family life?

I do not want that for myself.

I do not want it for my children.

I do not want it for their children.

I am looking down the bloodline.

My children will not remain children.

One day they may become husbands and wives.

They may become parents.

They will carry pieces of what they experienced with us into their own homes.

I want them to know what it feels like to belong.

To see husband and wife actually enjoy each other.

To remember travel.

Good food.

Beauty.

Laughter.

Arguments repaired.

People showing up.

Family being busy busy busy sometimes, but fundamentally good.

Then they build their own families.

Their children receive something from them.

Those children grow up.

They carry it again.

Give it enough years and one family becomes dozens of people.

Then hundreds.

Then thousands.

Not copies of each other.

But people carrying pieces of the same family culture forward.

That is what I want moving through my family long after I am gone.

So the principle is simple now.