Carol Forsloff - “We love having our grandchild right here so we can watch her grow up,” said Laura Tyler, in answer to how she feels about her daughter, son-in-law and two-year-old grandchild living with their parents in a small three bedroom home in Washington State, a response that more and more reflects what is happening with families in America.Multigenerational families are increasing in response to the economy. Altair Customer Intelligence, a company involved in marketing research, has found multigenerational families now represent 14.4% of households in the United States. 20 million households have more than one generation represented in the family group, and four million of these represent three generations.
The fact that multigenerational families are developing at an increasing rate in the present economy means a different sort of marketing strategy to address family needs. Issues regarding Medicare, long-term care, and senior needs as well as the concerns of infants and young children are now seen in families that would ordinarily be recent empty nesters of the baby boomer age.
“Isn’t it more stressful,” Tyler was asked about her extended family living. “Sometimes it is, “Tyler explained, “But really the advantages weigh out the disadvantages for us. We just feel closer and feel like we are able to help our children, which makes us feel good. They add to our joy.”
For years historians have debated the American family structure and whether it was the extended family to the nuclear family, a pattern described by many. New information from revisionists maintain family structure has been relatively unchanged and for the most part nuclear for centuries. So this new increase in multigenerational living is a phenomenon that reveals the concerns of families today, as the format of the family changes depending upon the economic and social needs of any given time. What most sociologists and anthropologists say is that whatever the type of family, during difficult times these are the people members reach out to during a crisis.
Legally Socialable, a features site concentrating on social and legal aspects of American life, quotes Frances Goldscheider, a Brown University sociologist, as saying this: “We haven’t seen anything like this since the Depression,” said Frances Goldscheider, a Brown University sociologist who has studied families and living arrangements. “Overwhelmingly, it’s the recession’s effect on people’s ability to maintain a house. You have the foreclosures on one hand, and no jobs on the other. That’s a pretty double whammy.”…
But experts tell us it is more than the economical factors have increased a pre-existing trend as baby boomers care for aging parents and new immigrants from Hispanic and Asian communities arrive with a culture that has had a history of several generations under one roof.
Whatever the reason, the trend toward multigenerational households will have a political impact and social impact as well as one on business, as more and more people decide that the family unit is the safe place to find respite in the ongoing “storms” of unrest, concerns for an aging population and economic pain
