The demand is worldwide. Anna Dillon, a 42-year-old Irish mother living in Abu Dhabi, decided to create a mommune in 2021 with American Emily Winchip, 40. Both are education professors.
Ms. Dillon has been in the United Arab Emirates since 2013, but divorced her husband in 2019. She said that during the first year of the pandemic, isolation was heavy and she had to take care of her. two children — a daughter, 12, and a son, 13 — are having a difficult time balancing a full-time work and social life.
Ms. Winchip, her colleague, faced a similar difficulty. She lived in the Middle East for 13 years, but when the pandemic hit, she was recently separated and left alone with her son, now 12.
“I told her I wish we lived in a place where the kids could play together,” Ms. Winchip said.
In September 2021, they began renting a three-bedroom apartment in a gated community, splitting the rent equally and taking turns cooking and babysitting for each other. The arrangement isn’t forever — Mrs Winchip and Ms Dillon both have new partners and plan to eventually move out and start a new life with them — but after experiencing the pandemic abroad together , they said that their partnership was broken. necessary.
Ms Dillon said: “I wish we had done it about two years earlier.
Back in Florida, Miss Gilder and Miss Batykefer weren’t going to stay forever in that four-bedroom house in Jacksonville. The duo hope to buy and remodel a fixer-upper of their own within the next year, and to keep costs down, they’ve signed an agreement with a television producer who believes the renovation process Their new mommune can make an entertaining reality TV show.
