Tips for Multigenerational Households

By Jane Gross, New York Times 

December 8, 2008 

A post called “Boomerang Parents,” on November 18, prompted many readers who are sharing their homes with elderly parents to send along tips for avoiding the minefields and maximizing the pleasures of living in intergenerational households. 

We’ve turned to experts here before, geriatric professionals of various sorts, to explain the intricacies of long-term care insurance, geriatric care management, choosing an assisted living community and the like. But intergenerational living, however common it was in decades past, is no longer the norm and seems to me a subject best explored by the “real” experts — the families actually living this life successfully. 

For that I’ve turned to Elizabeth Mullins, 33, in Santa Cruz, Calif., and Bozena Smith, 60, in Concord, Mass. Both of these women, like the incoming First Lady Michelle Obama, integrated their mothers into their households at a time when their children were small, allowing Grandma to provide backup child care and an extra pair of hands in a busy household. 

Ms. Mullins and Mrs. Smith have other things in common: relationships with their mothers that seem uncommonly free of the baggage of childhood and adolescence and are built on mutual respect, adult-to-adult. Husbands who are totally on board with the living arrangement and themselves close and comfortable with their mothers-in-law. And the wisdom to carefully plan in advance for how they would all live together and then adjust as circumstances changed. 

Now for Ms. Mullins’s story. She is a full-time graduate student and her husband, Nick, 35, is a community college instructor. Her mother, Katie Goff, 66, relocated about an hour and a half away from them after going through a divorce, though she was then still working as a school librarian and teacher. Ms. Mullins says that all enjoyed the frequent visits and the chance to get to know each other in a new way and to “include her in our lives more casually.” 
Then, just as her mother was about to retire, Ms. Mullins and her husband announced they were expecting a baby, the family’s first grandchild, and the whole clan began considering living even closer than they already did. First, Ms. Mullins’s mother moved to her own apartment just five minutes away. All of them could see the benefits of Grandma’s helping with baby Natasha in the early years and then the couple reciprocating later, as her health declined. 
They considered condos in the same building, looked at duplexes, and eventually bought and remodeled a private home, with clearly defined living quarters for Ms. Mullins’s mother, who by then had a partner, Bob, 10 years her senior. Along the way, they kept asking each other questions: “What about our squeaky bed?” “What about toddler tantrums?” “What about money?” At this point, they’ve all been under the same roof for two years, “sharing one super soundproof wall, the big back room and the yard,” Ms. Mullins said — and a life that seems to be working for everyone. 

Here’s how Ms. Mullins did it: 

• “If at all possible, let the idea sit for a long time and through many, many conversations. You are re-making your family. It’s not something to rush if you can help it.” 

• “Figure out what is family time, personal time and big extended family time. For instance, we like to all have dinner together a few nights a week but my daughter, husband and I still want a few nights just to ourselves.” 

• “Divide up household responsibilities. Everyone in our household is responsible for something that helps the whole, regardless of physical ability.” 

• “Divide up utility bills, and rotate. For instance, Mom pays the water, we pay for garbage, we’ll switch in January (we have separate electricity meters).” 

• “Think about how much and what kind of space you will need. Maybe the house isn’t huge — ours isn’t, we share 1,800 square feet — but make sure there are places where you can be alone or places you can cultivate away from home to be alone (a favorite coffeehouse, for example) to make sure you are not cooped up with one another too often.” 

• “Devise a system to deal with household questions and problems. We have a monthly meeting, or more often if needed. Problems can be anything from leaving the hose out in the yard instead of putting it away to possibly getting a new family pet.” 

• “Be flexible. The plan for a living arrangement will need to change after living it for a month or two. And often, as the years go by, the plans will need to change again. We expect that though my mother is focused most on helping us raise a small child now, we will be more focused on caring for her as she gets older and has more need for assistance.” 

As for Bozena Smith, she was a computer programmer for many years and then a stay-at-home mom for two daughters, now 21 and 24 and out of the house. Currently she is compiling her mother’s memoirs of a childhood in Poland, the German occupation during World War II, the Warsaw uprising, her time in a labor camp and finally her migration to Chicago, where she worked as a keypunch operator. Mrs. Smith’s husband of almost four decades, also 60, is a scientist. Her widowed mother, Helena Rymarowicz, who is now 87, has been a member of their household for 23 years, after giving up a comfortable retirement in her native Poland to help raise her granddaughters and otherwise be part of the family. 

During the five years after Mrs. Rymarowicz retired, she visited her daughter’s family for three months at a stretch each year. Those visits persuaded everyone that combining households would work. “My mother has always been a supportive, upbeat, nonjudgmental and respectful parent and friend with a lively sense of humor,” Mrs. Smith said. “She is open-minded, adaptable, unconventional, patient and willing to admit mistakes, a model of positivity.” 
In addition, Mrs. Smith said, “having my mother living with us is a logical extension of my husband’s and my home-and-family-centered lifestyle. We have built strong family bonds day by day through quality time at home preparing and sharing meals, working on house and garden projects, and engaging in long discussions (including stormy arguments) on all manner of topics.”

Here are Mrs. Smith’s rules of the road: 

• “Use trial and error –¬ tweaking, refining and fine-tuning the rules and boundaries to help maintain harmony. We pay careful attention to one another’s needs, moods, strengths and weaknesses and act quickly, forthrightly and decisively to ensure that things continue to run smoothly. We are a rational, ‘conflict-averse’ household where we speak up for ourselves, support and listen to one another, and readjust our behaviors and attitudes for the greater good.” 

• “Define functions clearly. From the start, my mother had a well-defined function. It started with ‘helping raise the kids,’ but now that our two daughters are grown, she continues to contribute significantly to the smooth functioning of the household by doing the dishes and laundry and helping around the house as much as she is able (right now she is sweeping the floor). She literally will not allow us to help her with what she sees to be her chores, cheerfully and firmly claiming that we’ll take away her function if we do.” 

• “Avoid power struggles by agreeing by consensus on the ‘best’ way to do things. My mother is happy to do things our way sometimes rather than insisting on her way. She modified her way of making mashed potatoes, for example, and now even agrees that my way is better. Similarly, I bow to her superior way of making chicken noodle soup. These examples may sound trivial, but they illustrate that we deliberately choose to resolve conflicts, however small, to maintain a peaceful atmosphere at home.” 

• “Respect privacy. Before inviting my mother to live with us, my husband and I noted her respect for our privacy as individuals and as a married couple. The upstairs is my husband’s and my private area, and she does not go up there at all. To respect my mother’s privacy, we knock before entering her room. She senses when we prefer to be undisturbed and gives us our space by making herself unobtrusive and encourages us to spend time alone together. She treats my husband as lovingly as if he were her own son.” 

• “Encourage independence. While we gladly help my mother when she needs it, we expect, encourage and support her in being independent whenever possible. She arranges her own doctors’ visits, senior citizen events, rides and other appointments over the phone, even though she speaks with an accent and is hard of hearing. She is in charge of remembering to take her medications and ordering them from the mail-in service, and sorting through her own mail. Whenever possible, we use community resources such as the Council on Aging for rides to and from doctors and other appointments. We encourage my mother to participate in senior citizen events independently.” 

• “Socialize. During our daily walks, my mother and I catch up on what the other is doing and thinking. While we all have healthy social lives of our own, we enjoy coming together to relax at home at the end of the day. We go to church together on Sundays, where she has her own group of friends and acquaintances. Every evening I drop in on her at bedtime to say goodnight and linger awhile in her room. Weekend dinners are traditionally festive and leisurely, with the three of us cooking and enjoying our meals together. And since we live in the same house, we have many friendly encounters throughout each day.” 

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