The Pandemic Forced Me Into a Multigenerational Home
But the arrangement does work.
Since the early days of the pandemic, I’ve been living with my in-laws in rural Connecticut. More recently, my husband’s sister and her nine-month-old son joined us. I’ve always tried to avoid the kind of multigenerational household I grew up in, but I’m finding the arrangement surprisingly satisfying.
In China, where I’m from, three or four generations commonly live together under one roof. At one point when I was a child, both my great-grandmother and grandmother resided with us. To say that I was over-parented is an understatement. To me, living with extended family just meant having more people in my business, complicating my decisions with their input and agenda. I ended up idealizing dwelling alone, needing and answering to no one.
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