Twila was very close to her grandmother, almost more so than to her mother, when Twila married her high school sweetheart. Within a short time,Twila and her husband took over her husband’s family farm, living alone in the main farmhouse. Twila and her husband planned to have children as soon as they came along. But in the meantime, Twila felt lonely with just her and her husband in the big, old farmhouse. So Twila proposed to her husband that they invite Twila’s grandmother to join them. Fortunately, her husband agreed. That happy event was how Twila and her husband raised their children with Twila’s grandmother, their children’s great-grandmother, in their home.
Generations
We generally think of the family unit as spouses and their children. Yet children beget children. While some married couples have little contact with their parents and no contact with and little memory of their grandparents, other families can hold closely not just two but three or even four generations. Families can even recall and celebrate a long line extending back several more generations. You and your spouse should recognize and embrace the structure you believe to be best for your family, whether consistent or inconsistent with social, cultural, or familial expectations. But recognizing, remembering, and venerating generations can add substantially to a good family life. A good family life doesn’t have to mean just you, your spouse, and your children. A good family life can include grandparents, great-grandparents, grandchildren, and other relatives extending or broadening the family line.
Configurations
The causes and configurations of multi-generation households vary. Some households find it necessary or appropriate to have an adult child in the home with an infant child, making it a three-generation household. The reasons can include an unwed or divorced child needing housing and help with the child, a married child with a child or children escaping domestic abuse, or a married child with a servicemember spouse away on duty likewise needing help with their child. In other cases, the family may have a large-enough home to readily house their adult child, the child’s spouse, and their child or children, while the adult child or the child’s spouse completes an educational program and qualifies for full-time career employment. A three-generation household may, in other words, be a temporary accommodation. In other cases, though, a three-generation household may just make good economic, social, family, or even business sense, such as when the family owns and runs a farm or similar operation, employing adults in multiple generations, and has housing designed to accommodate multiple generations.
Grandchildren
Grandchildren make their own contribution to the family household. As just discussed in the prior section, in some three-generation households, the spouses are still raising their own children when one of their children brings their child, the spouses’ grandchild, into the home. Grandchildren in a family home in which the spouses are still raising other children can make for a delightful family life. The spouses’ other children, referring to the grandchild’s young aunts and uncles, may be excellent caretakers and stimulants for the grandchild. The grandchild is even more likely to be an excellent stimulant and object of affection for the young aunts and uncles. The key dynamic, though, likely involves the relationship between the spouses and their adult child who brought the spouses’ grandchild into the home. Do not let the circumstances of the grandchild’s conception or the adult child’s need for housing too deeply affect the quality of that important relationship. Once the adult child and grandchild are in the home, attention should turn toward supporting their care and relationships, and managing necessary and appropriate terms and conditions for their stay. As hard as some such situations can be, everyone must make the best of it and should enjoy it to the extent that they can.
Grandparents
One can also look at the phenomenon of three-generation households from the grandparent rather than grandchild view. Grandparents can make a substantial contribution to a good family life, whether they live with the family or live nearby to make frequent visits. Grandparents can be especially reassuring to children. The steady presence of a grandparent who resides in the home, and the care the family shows the grandparent, can help children to see and attend to the needs of others in the family rather than just their own needs. A grandparent in the home may also be able to give greater attention to children while less child care, correction, and discipline, giving the child a more-constant source of interest, sympathy, and amusement. Some grandparents also make excellent care providers for their grandchildren, freeing the children’s parents to work, housekeep, shop, visit, travel, exercise, or engage in other healthy and helpful activities. Grandparent care can, conversely, add to a family’s responsibilities, duties, labors, expenses, and burdens. They may also have health issues, personal habits, or peculiar moods or behaviors that the family cannot or does not desire to readily accommodate. You and your spouse should consider carefully the impact of inviting grandparents into the home permanently or for long stays. While you and your spouse may have or feel an obligation to care for grandparents, others may have similar feelings and obligations, too. Better options than having a grandparent in your family home may exist. Take one another’s counsel, and let others with relevant experience help you decide.
Conditions
As just indicated, if you and your spouse are considering a three-generation household, examine the causes and configurations to discern the wisdom of doing so. But also consider the appropriate terms and conditions. Whether you are welcoming one or more of your parents into the family home along with your children, or you are welcoming your adult child into the home with your grandchild, you and your spouse may need to set expectations for all household members and hold all household members accountable to those expectations. For example, grandparents may need peace and privacy from the energy and attention of grandchildren. Your grandchild may need peace and security from the boisterous activity of your own minor children. Your adult child with your grandchild may need accountability for the grandchild’s principal care or other boundaries to maintain a balance of interests and care in the household. Watch conditions carefully for emerging imbalances. An extra generation in the household can tangle things swiftly in a way that can be harder to untangle than issues encountered in a traditional two-generation household.
Care
Your family’s main concern with a third generation in the household, whether grandparent or grandchild, may be for that extra generation’s care. Elderly grandparents may have significant or emerging medical needs and attendant disabilities. You and your spouse may not be equipped to evaluate and accommodate those needs. Get professional help doing so, either from the grandparent’s own medical care providers or from local government social and agency services. Frequent evaluations and reevaluations may help ensure that your home is safe and appropriately equipped for grandparent care. Social workers, care managers, and other professionals may also help with insurance coverages and government assistance programs. You and your spouse are likely much better equipped to help your adult child with the care of your grandchild because the two of you have already borne and raised a child or children. Still, get the help you need from medical care providers, social workers, agencies, or others to make that grandchild care work well, too. Don’t take the full burden on yourselves when you may find substantial support from others.
Modifications
Families welcoming a grandparent or grandchild into the home sometimes need or desire to make home modifications. Those modifications may be substantial, including such things as an addition to the home, sometimes referred to as a mother-in-law suite. Or they may be relatively insubstantial, such as switching around bedrooms for greater privacy of the new household entrant. Recognize that any change in living arrangements can affect everyone in the household. Accommodating the new household member inevitably requires sacrifices, sometimes by children rather than or more so than by you and your spouse. Help children and other household members understand the need and justification for these changes, and how long they may endure. If you can, find something that compensates the affected family member for the inconvenience or sacrifice, not because you should or must bargain with them but out of respect and appreciation for their willingness. When making major home modifications, keep in mind that the arrangement may be shorter in duration than you expect. Do not overbuild for what may turn out to be a very short stay. If substantial modifications are necessary, explore ways to make them inexpensively and temporarily, or to incorporate them into a larger plan for permanently improving your home.
Relationships
You and your spouse may do well to monitor not only your family’s ability to care for a grandparent or grandchild in the home but also the condition of the relationships within the household. Any new household member is likely to cause some change in all household relationships. A grandparent or grandchild in your family home may, for instance, significantly or subtly affect your relationship with your spouse, triggering stress, strains, disagreements, and even jealousies. Be both quick and sensitive to address any issues between you and your spouse because the quality of your spousal relationship will be key to any multi-generation arrangement working. But a grandparent or grandchild in your home can also affect your relationships with your children. Your children may, for instance, feel deprived of your full or adequate attention. They may also harbor jealousy and resentment toward the new household entrant on whom you and your spouse necessarily shower your attention. Help your children adjust. Tell and show them that you know and appreciate that they are making accommodations and sacrifices, too.
Conclusion
Sooner or later, three-generation households typically find their natural conclusions. The adult child who brought your grandchild into your home may complete the education or military service, gain the job, or find the housing that the adult child needs to reestablish the adult child’s own household with your grandchild. Help your adult child recognize and respect when the time has come for doing so. And then, help your adult child and grandchild make the move to their own household. The more respectfully and collaboratively you can work through your adult child’s difficult transition back out of your home, the sooner and better it may occur. But if it needs to happen, then see that it happens. Likewise, when the time comes for a grandparent to move to independent living, assisted living, or institutional care, help the grandparent do so. Enlist social workers, agency support, and the help of your siblings or other family members from outside of your own household. Share both the joy and burden. It’s a family affair, and you do well to keep it that way rather than shoulder the whole burden.
Reflection
If you and your spouse had the need or opportunity, could you accommodate a parent or grandparent in your home? What terms or conditions would you need to impose for such an arrangement to work well? Would doing so require significant home modifications? Would the duration of the stay justify those modifications? Does a significant possibility exist that the stay would be significantly shorter than you anticipate? If you and your spouse had the opportunity or need to accommodate a grandchild in your home, could you and would you do so? What in your view would justify having a grandchild come live with you? How would it affect your other minor children in the home? What home rearrangements or modifications would it require to give your adult child and grandchild sufficient privacy? Is your home reasonably able to accommodate those needs? How long would the arrangement last? Would the arrangement have a clear conclusion? Would you be willing to hold your adult child accountable to leaving when the time had come? If you already have a grandparent or grandchild in your home, on a scale from one to ten, how would you rate the experience? Would you recommend the same arrangement to a friend? What would you caution them to consider? Do you need to make adjustments in your current arrangement? Has the time come for it to end? If not, can you see a conclusion nearing?
Key Points
A healthy three-generation household can enrich family life.
Families find multiple causes for grandparent or grandchild additions.
Grandchildren can make delightful additions when well managed.
Grandparents can also make significant family contributions.
Hold household members accountable to terms and conditions.
Ensure that your family can care for grandparents or grandchildren.
Monitor all family relationships closely to address undue stress.
Find the right time to conclude grandparent or grandchild residence.