Living with multiple generations

March 2007

THE DYNAMIC DOMICILE
Living With
Multiple Generations

By Sala Elise Patterson

For the first time, in a very long time, I’m living just a few hours’ drive from my parents. Suddenly close by, I find myself dropping in on my family quite often and noticing that the changes to the household landscape are many and complex. Much of this realization is due to the reality that I am now an independent adult. Going home and climbing into your childhood bed can be a serious shock. It’s like being snatched by your existential collar back into your adolescence. But what’s changed most in my parents’ home and most affected the household is that my aging grandmother has come to live with them. What I assume for my parents was a very simple decision – she is old and alone – wound up having unforeseen effects on everyone. Roles shifted, alliances were born. Who knew?

My grandmother’s presence first and foremost played out on my father – he became, at almost 60 years old, a son again. My grandmother still wants to tell him what to do. And I know he takes her seriously if only because she is still his mother and he her son. So that dynamic is still intact, but now there is another inverted force at play: He, rather than she, is the caretaker. He worries constantly about my grandmother’s safety, happiness and health as she once did for him. My father also took on, in some ways, the role of my grandfather, who passing away necessitated my grandmother’s move into my parent’s home. To the extent he can, my father takes pains to offer companionship to my grandmother at a time when he has a few personal battles of his own. I know it’s exhausting, but I also know he loves having his mother nearby. They hash out family drama past and present, old secrets are shared, and real emotions are expressed.

My mother’s life has changed drastically because, well, she and my grandmother are very different women, born during different times under different philosophies. My grandmother was, for the most part, a homemaker who governed and controlled every detail of the household while my grandfather concerned himself with breadwinning. The fact that my mother works full time, for example, and that my father sometimes cooks dinner or does the food shopping are things my grandmother is fundamentally against. My mother, in return, must field comments and kind suggestions about how she should be a mother and wife. Much of it is a manifestation of my grandmother’s compound frustrations: The house is not hers to run, and even if it were, she’d lack the energy to run it. So my mother is charged with respecting my grandmother’s archaic opinions but also with conveying to her mother-in-law, respectfully, that this is her house and she will run it her way.

My brother, who is living at home temporarily, loves Nanas presence. He’s the golden grandchild again, receiving gifts and adoration in abundance without any major expectations and demands. For my grandmother, he can really do no wrong, and I think we all need to feel that at certain moments in or lives. That is her gift to him. In return, he listens to her, drives her around to 99-cent stores, gossips with her and makes her laugh. All of this makes her feel needed and alive – no small thing when you are pushing 90.

Making room for another generation in the home is increasingly uncommon in this society. Increased mobility, ambition and modernization have pulled us away from family centers and toward commercial ones. In almost every other country I’ve visited, it’s the norm to see three or four generations peering down from balconies, flowing in and out of front doors, sitting on porches. What do we lose or gain by living together or apart? Do I want to live with multiple generations in the home that I create? If not, how close ore how far do I want my family to be from me? A lot of these decisions will be made by default by other choices my partner and I make, but by working together, being open-minded yet honest with ourselves an by avoiding impulsive decisions, I believe we will develop living arrangements that work out well from everyone.