Redefining Family: What We Learn From Intergenerational Living

Just as no two families are alike, intergenerational households form, morph, re-form and often dissolve in their own ways for their own myriad reasons.

I was thinking about how different generations living under one roof can redefine the nature of family after I came across this lovely and heart-wrenching column by David French of The New York Times .

French tells the story of how an almost-tragedy - the serious health complications his granddaughter faced at birth - became the launching pad for a temporary realignment of his own family, and how it brought each of them to see one another in a new light.

Suddenly and without much planning, his daughter and her husband brought their daughter home from the hospital to live with him and his wife, along with their younger kids, as they coped with both a unique set of challenges, and the everyday chaos of ordinary life.

“For more than two years our house was bursting at the seams,” French writes. “Two grandparents worked full-time from home. A young mom and dad also worked and studied for the LSAT. Our college-age son, Austin, was in and out, depending on his school schedule. And our teenage daughter, Naomi, finished middle school and started high school. Add in two grandbabies and two poorly trained dogs, and ours was not the kind of house you’d drop by and discover a state of perfect calm and order.”

What French learned, as have so many others who share a home, even briefly, with members of different generations within their families, is that the roles we’re all accustomed to playing in each other’s lives can shift and adapt in ways that surprise us. They can be delightful, frustrating, humbling, but they almost always teach us something new.

As he writes: “One of the great joys of aging is watching the people you love grow into each of their new roles, like slowly blooming flowers that reveal petals of different hues. You see your older daughter as a mother, your younger daughter as an aunt and your son as an uncle.”

These interconnected but separate relationships - being an uncle, son, and nephew, all at once, all in the same place, for instance - help people gain a greater perspective and understanding of the members of their own families. No longer locked into one role in a household, it opens up people to learn from each other and, hopefully, appreciate each other in new ways.

Such arrangements are frequently temporary, which may ultimately be for the best. Just as watching your kids grow older and more independent is bittersweet but satisfying and natural, connecting with family across generations can be rewarding precisely because it is fleeting, just like growing older.