Multigenerational households offer advantages
flail financially trying to keep up with crushing rent and student-loan payments?
On the other end of the age spectrum, seniors who can no longer safely live alone shouldn’t dread the prospect of giving up their independence by moving in with their adult children and grandchildren. They have as much to give as they get.
Researchers pointed out that such living arrangements allow people to better share the cost of housing, food, transportation and responsibilities for child care and elder care (and looking after a clumsy mom).
In 1950, 21 percent of the U.S. population lived in a multigenerational household. By 1980, such living arrangements had reached a low of 12 percent.
But multigenerational households are trending up. By 2009, 51.5 million Americans — 17 percent of the U.S. population — resided in a home with multiple generations.
In 2016, a record 64 million people lived with multiple generations, Pew said in a report this year.
A central Ohio family is among them. Since 2014, Lisa Cini and her husband have lived with their two young adult children and her elderly parents in Bexley. Until recently, they also lived with Cini’s grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and passed away this year at age 96 after staying with them for four years.
For this month’s Color of Money Book Club pick, I’ve picked Cini’s account of how she makes their living arrangement work, “Hive: The Simple Guide to Multigenerational Living.” Cini is an experienced designer whose company, Mosaic Design Studio, develops the interiors for senior-living facilities.
Cini lovingly describes bringing all four generations of her family under one roof as a “4-Gen Social Experiment.”
The book is part memoir with family history and part road map to designing a multilevel home with a flow to accommodate the young and old.
Clearly not everyone can do what Cini and her family have done. But I was inspired by their determination to make it work and rely on each other.
Let’s talk about this trend. I’m hosting an online discussion about “Hive” at noon EDT on Oct. 4 at http://washingtonpost.com/discussions. Cini will join me to take questions about multigenerational living.