"I have something a little better than my friends," Jessica continues. "They like to come over." She also has friends in the House: "A lot of [students] have become really good friends of mine--most of the kids are very nice."
The major drawback of the situation, for Jessica and three-year-old Alexandra, is that the Masters Dowling are very involved in House activities. Asked what advice she would give a friend entering a similar situation. Jessica replies. "I'd say, I think you're going to have fun, but you've got to be ready for your parents to be really busy."
Their absences effect on Jessica and Alexandra has also been a cause of concern for their parents. John E. Dowling '57, who is also an associate dean of the Faculty and professors of Biology, says he has encouraged Jessica to attend football games and other Harvard events to help counter the problem. Last year, he adds, the family had season tickets for pro hockey for the first time, and used the games as "family time."
Like some other parents, Dowling says that students overwhelming acceptance of their children has surprised them.
"I thought that the undergraduates would be annoyed a bit" by the children, he recalls, "but the students very much welcomed the little ones in the House."
When Alexandra was a few months old and they were living in North House, he remembers, a students saw Jessica wheeling the baby in the courtyard and pinned a note to her, offering to baby sit. "She turned out to be not just a babysitter but a good friend," he says.
The younger Dowlings typify a split in attitude toward House life that runs along age lines. "The little ones have a hall they love it in the dining hall and they get an enormous amount of attention." Dowling says. Older children, parents agree experience some confusion as they grow closer to college age and students become more like peers and less like authority figures.
And Dowling recalls a situation two years ago, in which a resident tutor's 13-year-old daughter was made uncomfrotable by a student in the House who become attached to her and followed her around.
"This is a problem I think as the girls get a little bit older," he adds, but says he hopes it will not become an issue again. He would like to have Jessica attend and area high school, he says, and boarding school "is something that we certainly aren't enthusiastic about."
Neither, apparently, are the Kielys, Masters of Adams House Christina, a 14-year-old, and six-year-old Mimi both attend local public schools.
As for other House residents, "they're friends," Mimi remarks, and Christina says that when she was younger. "I made lots of friends with students." She doesn't seem to enjoy it as much now, and says that she wants to attend another college.
"I'd like to see somewhere else in America," she explains, adding that she's been around the world with her parents--last year to China and France--on leaves of absence and vacations.
Neither Christina nor Mimi seems to find her way of life especially radical: others in the same position agree.
Hilary Liller, who lived in Adams House from 1968 to 1974, from when she was two until eight, remembers, "I enjoyed it for the most part." Now a senior in high school, she finds Harvard "just too big" and has applied to smaller colleges, and says that the experience had no profound effects on her or her older brother.
At that time, however, children were less involved with students than they are today. Until 1970, for example, women were only allowed to eat in the dining halls twice a week, so the children ate at home, says mother Martha H. Liller, an astronomer with the Harvard College Observatory.
The children living in the Houses now, from Jonathan Flick in sweats, with his keys on a string around his neck, looking like any other student playing on the Quad, to Jessica Dowling in purple tights and a denim skirt, seem more mature than other children their age. The younger ones are unusually chatty, but without exception, the children their age. The younger ones are unusually chatty, but without exception, the children come across as very bright and self-sufficient.
Kristine A. Anastasio '85 says, "I think it's great--this is such an isolated environment and it's good to have people with real families living with us."
"They add a certain element of liveliness," adds Alan B. Langerman '85, explaining. "College students are boring--they talk, they tap on glasses. Little kids come running into the dining hall and they're exciting and fun to watch."
Not everyone is this enthusiastic, but it is hard to find a student who admits actively disliking younger neighbors. "I'm indifferent to it," says Robert Brown '85. "The only difficulty I see," he adds, "is that I almost ran into one once--I have trouble looking that low."