Ethnographic observations of ordinary routines and social support networks have been used in previous research to uncover the ‘secret life’ of the city; those aspects that are neglected in official data collection and policy responses but which, ironically, are not a secret to each of us in our everyday lives (Jarvis et al. 2001).  This paper adopts a similar approach as a means to critically examine whether, and in what ways, ‘intentional communities’ cultivate a more harmonious, creative and just means of coordinating home, work and family life.  There is striking evidence of renewed interest in new forms of intentional community today, including cohousing, housing cooperatives, eco-villages and communes: these ‘alternative’ settings are undoubtedly ‘testing and demonstrating’ innovative approaches to social and spatial organisation (Forster 1998). Yet our understanding of this phenomenon is inhibited by the enduring prejudice and stigma of 1970s stereotypes.  Countering these stereotypes, this paper investigates two of the most iconoclastic intentional communities to have endured since the early 1970s; Christiania (an urban autonomous community in Copenhagen, Denmark, since 1971) and Tuntable Falls (a rural communal ecovillage in Nimbin, NSW, Australia, since 1973).  The picture of an alternative way of life that is painted in both these iconic communities typically calls attention to the political struggle to function against the grain of private property and competitiveness.  Less well known are the creative initiatives and networks of collective support that residents of intentional communities routinely engage in to resolve the multiple threads of their home-work-parenting identities. The questions at the heart of this paper seek not only to uncover the ‘secret life’ of intentional community, but also to expose the ‘arrested development’ of mainstream individual private dwelling.