4 / JUNE 2022 PRIME
ALL IN THE FAMILY The return to a multi-generational home By Nancy Ruby
L
ately, I’ve been noticing a similar response from people when I share that I am now living with my daughter, her husband, and my new grandson. The familiar response is “I wish my mom could live with me.” The question I ask you now is how did we get so far away from the multi-generational household?
Are we so triggered by unresolved family issues that we, as a society, decided that living with our parents was a no-no? A conflict? A lack of independence? THE NUCLEAR FAMILY Since the “nuclear family” developed between 1950 and 1965 (a married couple and their children) the family structure we’ve held up as the cultural
ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together. David Brooks wrote for the Atlantic in March 2020: “People who grow up in a nuclear family tend to have a more individualistic mind-set than people who grow up in a multigenerational extended clan.
People with an individualistic mind-set tend to be less willing to sacrifice self for the sake of the family, and the result is more family disruption. People who grow up in disrupted families have more trouble getting the education they need to have prosperous careers. People who don’t have prosperous careers have trouble building stable families, because of financial
