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Multigenerational Living Often Makes Sense. That Doesn't Make It Easy

49 points by laurex 3y ago

spenczar5 3y ago
I don’t totally know what to make of this article. The author seems to have a very difficult relationship with his mother. Generalizing that to all multigenerational homes is an overreach, isn’t it? Like, I know plenty of parents who have difficult children. Their families alternately give them purpose and stress. Is that an indictment of living with your teenage kids (versus, say, boarding schools)? Or is it merely a feature of humans? I also know people who don’t live in the same house as their aging parents, but are nonetheless constantly stressed, frustrated, and annoyed by them. Living together might amplify issues, but I don’t think it is the author’s real problem.
- benwerd 3y ago
  This. My father has been living with me, my partner, and my son since last year, following my mother's death. It's a similar situation to the one described here, where he helped with the downpayment and we pay the mortgage, taxes, and bills. And, sure, there was some friction and growing pains as we all (re-)learned to live with each other. But it's been fine and good, and it lets me support him in a way I couldn't otherwise. It's definitely a different dynamic to if we lived in separate places, but it's not a bad dynamic at all.
  - janeerie 3y ago
    Very similar situation here (except both my husband's father and mother live with us). Yes, there's occasional friction, but we make it work. My father-in-law makes dinner, gets the kid on and off the bus, runs the errands, etc. At this point, doing the nuclear family thing seems quite intimidating.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    A big part of it is remembering at all times all the balances. It's quite easy to forget something like "paid the down payment" or "helps with dinner" when you're dealing with the frustrating side of things, but those can be major. And the kids get a closer experience with grandparents, which has a value all its own.
- tokai 3y ago
  Not really. Problematic relationships between parents and their children are very common. It's a valid point against multigenerational homes.
  - kristofferR 3y ago
    And I'd argue that multigenerational homes makes problematic relationships much more likely. Annoyances that are easily tolerable when you meet up occasionally are massively amplified when you encounter them all the time. I have a lot of friends that I love, but very few I would tolerate living for months with... And you can choose your friends, you can't choose your parents/kids.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      You can't really choose friends though. You can turn down people to not be friends but not unilateraly "choose" them to become friends.
  - busterarm 3y ago
    I'm the fulltime caregiver for an 80+ year old parent with NPD and dementia after a stroke. She had to move in with me after essentially becoming destitute. It's been extremely trying and I wouldn't wish my situation on anyone. There is no upside, other than knowing that I live by my values. Many, many days it feels like that's not good enough for what I have to endure.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  That's what makes it a good article. Multi generational living isn't all good, and it isn't all bad. We are culturally trained, in the West, to value our privacy and independence and autonomy, which creates challenges for sharing living space with both your parents and your own children in middle age. But some of the anecdotes show some of the real benefits, too. Like grandparents picking up children from school and cooking for the family. Like the built in socialization and connections that can get lost when living far apart. I think this article just shows the good and the bad. In the end, I suspect multigenerational living is something like exercise or flossing or eating healthy. Something that can be annoying in the short term. But has benefits that pay off down the line.
adolph 3y ago
! Easy != Better
namuol 3y ago
> My wife and I are covering the mortgage for a house on which my mother placed a seven-figure down payment Oh, okay.
- blitzar 3y ago
  Multigenerational Wealth Often Makes Sense. That Doesn't Make It Easy.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I've read articles in the New Yorker that are literally just this. Woe is me, being rich is super hard!
- dbetteridge 3y ago
  To be fair in Canada that might just be a duplex
  - namuol 3y ago
    Maybe it’s just me, but I suspect most Canadians don’t have parents with seven figures laying around.
- rrr_oh_man 3y ago
  Nice catch!
- dang 3y ago
  Please don't do this here.
  - namuol 3y ago
    Good call. Let me say what I really mean: What’s missing from the content of the article is just how unobtainable housing is, broadly speaking, and how this is impacting the choices families make. A multigenerational house that can actually accommodate multiple generations of people is both rare and prohibitively expensive. Developing new housing for this purpose is usually illegal where most “nuclear families” live. As difficult as it can be to live with your parents in a society where this is unusual, it’s simply not possible for the people who would benefit from it the most. I thought that might be relevant.
MasterYoda900 3y ago
You will see arguments from both sides in this thread. “I couldn’t wait to live on my own” and “I appreciate the fact that my folks are allowing me to live with them. This enables me to cut my expenses and to save faster.” There is no right or wrong opinion. Everyone’s situation is different. Both sides are right. That said, I have a bone to pick when people are inconsistent with themselves, using daycare as an example when people have cheaper alternatives, and then have the gall to complain. “Why is daycare so expensive???” “You could ask grandma to move in with you” “Absolutely not, we enjoy our independence” “Would you pay higher taxes to allow the government to set up a network of publicly funded childcares?” “No” “If you refuse all solutions, stop complaining” Or… “I will never be able to save for a home at this rate” “You’re living on your own on a single income and you’re still young. You could move back with your parents, whom you get along well with, for a few years.” “Absolutely not. I enjoy my independence.” Unfortunately, you can’t always have your cake and eat it too. You will pay a price, one way or another. With respect to multigenerational living, that price will either be the living costs of assuming the burdens of a household as a single individual, daycare costs, or a measure of independence. If you don’t have family nearby that’s understandable. A lot of people don’t have a choice and their grievances are legitimate, but many do have reasonable alternatives they’re unwilling to take advantage of for flimsy reasons and then complain about the consequences of their actions. Adults assume the consequences of their choices. When they have such a choice, of course.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  What do you do when the elders don't want to be involved and want to live solo independent lives in their golden years? One of my parents is dead, the other lives with us because of poor financial choices; out of three grandparents my kids have, they are all living their own lives and don't want to be involved. And before we had children, we asked. Everyone was very enthusiastic about participating and helping until the kids showed up, and then we were on our own. Bamboozled!
  - MasterYoda900 3y ago
    Then you don’t have a choice and your complaints are legitimate, because you didn’t cause this situation. It’s not your fault. I’m not saying people never have good reasons to complain.
dimitrios1 3y ago
Very glad this topic is coming up more. It was the default living arrangement for the majority of human history, and still is for much of the world. Here in America, and for much of the industrialized west, the ideal of the nuclear family (non-coincidentally invented during the rise of industrialism) is quite frankly too narrow. With their deep protestant roots, Americans would do well to look at how families were organized in the Bible and see that the ideal of rugged individualism and nuclear family 2 1/2 kid white picket fence households clash with that greatly. Critiques of the article: Multigenerational is too narrow in this sense. It doesn't have to be explicitly in the same house. It could be the same household. It could be a commune, or a clan. I think its best if you pursue this you still have separate living quarters, but have dedicated common areas. Of course it may be the case that its not be feasible (space limitations), but it goes on to my next point, this article is trying to frame multigenerational housing as a solution to a problem, not to view it from a standpoint of the problems we are facing are because we moved away from multigenerational housing/local communities. Secondly, must everything have to be viewed in such a utilitarian context? It's exhausting, quite frankly. Not everything has to be viewed as some scale of benefits, and if the scales are too unbalanced then it's somehow "unjust". Perhaps taking care of your mother is a noble thing to do, and yes, it will exhaust you, and yes you might not get out of it the measure of benefit as she is, at least materially.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I think a very "unAmerican" truth is that sometimes things suck, and they're still the best option and have to be done.
rrr_oh_man 3y ago
> Given a choice, why would anyone choose to reinhabit their childhood trauma just for cheaper rent? According to the APA, trauma is "an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster". I really, really dislike it when that word is being thrown around for everything and, subsequently, nothing.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  I agree, but there's more to real trauma than the three quoted. Neglect is trauma, emotional abuse is trauma as is physical abuse.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  I’ve spoken to my therapist about the definition of trauma and what makes trauma legitimate. At the time she’s responded that trauma isn’t about the event but the emotional response to the event. So for example, there are people with ptsd just from seeing 9/11 on the tv from across the country with no personal loss or knowing anyone personally affected. And there are people who were raped as children but don’t have lingering trauma over it. (Edited to add: this was in context in that as a child I was treated in objectively horrifying manners but I don’t have flashbacks, nightmares, or other signs of trauma about the worst parts of it— actually everything wrong with me stems from shit that is objectively not as bad!)
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I think a lot of people (bad therapists included!) like to identify trauma, and use it as an excuse for "how I be the way I am" instead of identifying it, working through it and changing self to overcome it. And once you get to "self-diagnosed trauma" the rates of this skyrocket. And why you see so many dismissive "get over it" responses.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
As workers get squeezed more and more, you'll see this come up more and more...
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
The individualism and “nuclearization” of the western family is the root problem. It assumes that every family wants two parents and the children in the house together as the optimal arrangement It also assumes that individuals prefer to live alone and not with friends or extended family I think the extreme end of this are homes for a married couple with no kids that have a gym, a pool, a garden and basically all of the other things that would’ve otherwise been community places. The happiest people I see are the ones who live communally. For example, I have a friend who is Catholic and she lives with four other Catholic girls in what’s effectively a woman’s long house. This is an optimal situation for her because she’s not married and doesn’t prefer to live alone because she benefits from the community they create. Obviously, some people prefer to live alone. I would have claimed was me up until I was married but in fact, I actually hated living alone. It was just what you do and so you work to make it as comfortable as possible. I currently live alone but would much rather live with my friends but that’s just not something people seem to want. We created a socio-economic trap where long term social groups atrophy or never form because we’re over producing things to cushion the loneliness we forced ourselves into.
- munificent 3y ago
  Another way that the nuclearization gets reinforced is that learning to get along with people different from us and be comfortable sharing a space with someone and making compromises is a skill that must be learned and practice. But when everyone's living arrangement is atomized and when consumer corporations tell us that we should have every personal whim catered to, we fail to develop that very important life skill and it becomes much harder to live with people than it would be otherwise.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    I think this fits. In an effort to eliminate every possible thing that will cause you discomfort, you end up getting rid of the primary thing which can bring you joy. I have three kids and it’s a common experience I have with people with no kids that they only ask me about the difficult challenges, lack of sleep, etc… I’ve literally only met a handful of people who asked me about the fun and joy of kids.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
> Despite being so on trend, I don’t feel especially cool living with my mom. And even an hour from sunrise, I’m already exhausted. That's not because you're living with your mom, it's because you're your mom's full-time caretaker - in addition to that of your children. But to echo someone else, this author sure does complain a lot about things like "took over school pick-ups" - your responsibility as a parent - while living in a home their mother spent north of a million bucks on. I mean, it's fine, everyone has the right to complain about things that are bothering them, and it's good that he's complaining outwards [0], but I'm betting a lot of people here are in more difficult situations than he is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_theory_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_theory_(psychology)
- bombcar 3y ago
  Someone who is truly happy is likely to be happy in any situation. Someone who is unsatisfied, is likely to be unsatisfied in any situation. You can't fix internal problems with external solutions.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    You cant fix internal problems with external solutions, but not all problems are internal. Most are a combination of the two, a miss-match of internal and external conditions. I think there is a lot to be said in favor of stoicism and introspection, but it is not the solution to every problem.
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    That doesn't mean that external problems don't exist or that they don't have different orders of magnitude. Not having food in the fridge is a lot different than not being able to afford a house with 4 bedrooms over 3 bedrooms.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      It's unlikely (though possible!) that the person who is sad in the house his mom paid a seven figure downpayment on is going hungry. Though he may have no food in the fridge and instead door dashes everything, I dunno.
test6554 3y ago
If you can't walk around in your underwear, is it really living?
- Tade0 3y ago
  Your parents likely saw you in less than that multiple times - I think you're in the clear here.
  - imbnwa 3y ago
    I've never understood the implied assertion that there's a sufficient continuity between vastly different stages of physical development from a parent's perspective; which is the only one we grant an exception as in all other cases the law, at least in America, clearly denies that continuity. At any rate, the reverse is usually not true: I don't want to see my parents walking around in their underwear.
  - test6554 3y ago
    How about in-laws?
kristofferR 3y ago
I think like there's a massive difference between having been independent for years and then moving back with your parents for economic reasons, and never moving out from your childhood home. The best part of moving out for me was becoming an independent adult - making decisions for how I wanted to live, cooking my own food, buying my own art/furniture etc. Inviting (girl)friends over without worrying about anything. In short, being the master of my own place and life. I feel like gaining that independence is massively more difficult for people who continue living with their parents into adulthood.
apavlinovic 3y ago
As someone who lives in eastern Europe, where "multigenerational living" is the norm, what the hell is this author talking about? His issues with his mother are not a generalised problem with multigenerational living, nor the majority of people living in these arrangements experience it. The aggregated knowledge of all the members of a household is invaluable, and much of this article reads like "I am not used to having family around me, so I will write about how terrible and anguishing this makes me feel." We even have a saying in our country, which goes along the lines "It takes an entire village to raise a child", and it holds.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  It's The Walurus. It's basically a Canadian knockoff of The Atlantic or The New Yorker. They all tend to subsist off long form articles heavy on pathos and ethos and less on logos. It helps drive engagement statistics that way They all basically follow the narrative writing format used in Expos 10 and 20
- izacus 3y ago
  Even in Eastern Europe you should be aware of the concept of "not everyone's experience is the same". Yes, even here in Eastern Europe there's plenty of people stuck in really toxic and problematic relationships when they live together with parents, many of them leading to divorce. Don't overgeneralize your small bubble. For anything.
- varjag 3y ago
  From a fellow Eastern European, it's the norm only because people are poor.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  It might be the norm, but that doesn't mean it always works or is the right way to live. Some people have terrible parents or difficult children. You may think it's great, but I was raised in that environment and I did not like it. Ditto for community life that you allude to. The bit that you don't mention is the pressure to conform or 'go along to get along' that environment breeds. Give me the anonymity and personal freedom in large city any day. Here's another saying: "Hell is other people."
jimbokun 3y ago
> One 2016 study indicated that about 10 percent of non-institutionalized elders in Kingston, Ontario, and Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, reported a family member being violent toward them—defined in the study as “[being] screamed at, insulted, threatened, cursed, talked down to or physically hurt”—in the preceding six months. I feel like we need a new word for physical violence. When I see "violent", that's what I assume it means, and 10 percent of elders being physically attacked is a crisis. But raising your voice one time in an argument with a parent, who might also be yelling at you, while not good, I don't see in the same category. That can still be an arrangement that's good for everyone involved to continue, if everyone can apologize and agree to do better. I don't see physical violence in the same way. Once that line is crossed, it's probably better for the living arrangement to change. "insulted" The Mom in this story calls everyone "stupid" at some point or another. Doesn't mean that the relationship with every family member she calls "stupid" at some point needs to be cut off. Although she should try to stop using that word so much.
- times_trw 3y ago
  We had perfectly good words for it. If we added new words someone would come along and claim them too. This is what happens when you move from a society which values dignity to one that values suffering.
  - the_third_wave 3y ago
    It is also what you get when language evolution makes was for language revolution - or revolutionary language - where language modification is used as a tool to achieve a means to achieve an ideological goal. When 'language is violence' but actual violence is 'mostly peaceful' or 'context-dependent' language loses its purpose.
    - times_trw 3y ago
      On the contrary it servers it's purpose perfectly and lets you know exactly what the speaker means when they use those words.
- 3y ago
seydor 3y ago
Family structure may be the factor determining entire political systems ,(according to emmanuel todd). The nuclear family may have been an abberation in human history, leading to the highly technocratic individualized societies of western europe+usa. I wonder if immigration and a certain regression to the norm will lead to political change
scythe 3y ago
Pretty much every variation of "live with more people in the housing unit" makes financial, societal and ecological sense. The problem is always that then you have to live with those people, for various values of "those people". Insert Huis Clos quote here.
steveBK123 3y ago
Multigenerational living is a historical norm until societies reach a certain level of economic output and then people tend to switch to paid childcare. It also only works well when people have kids at a certain age across generations so that health active years & need years align. I saw this with my dads family that came over from the old country and had a wide range of ages. The oldest had live-in grandma help raise not only their own kids, but because of modern American medicine and old world early marriage/kids.. she helped raise her own great grand children. So in a total boomer move, that aunt got free childcare and never stopped working, even as she used her own mother to take care of her grandchildren so that her kids could also have free childcare with no cost to her. And in the end when the benefits no longer accrued to her, she put grandma in a home.. My father however was a decade older than that sister and had kids at a more American age. So me & my siblings experience with that same grandmother was mostly of her last decade of ill health and dementia. Had she lived with us it would have mostly been my mother taking care of her mother in law, begrudgingly.

49 points by laurex 3y ago

I don’t totally know what to make of this article. The author seems to have a very difficult relationship with his mother. Generalizing that to all multigenerational homes is an overreach, isn’t it? Like, I know plenty of parents who have difficult children. Their families alternately give them purpose and stress. Is that an indictment of living with your teenage kids (versus, say, boarding schools)? Or is it merely a feature of humans? I also know people who don’t live in the same house as their aging parents, but are nonetheless constantly stressed, frustrated, and annoyed by them. Living together might amplify issues, but I don’t think it is the author’s real problem.

benwerd 3y ago
This. My father has been living with me, my partner, and my son since last year, following my mother's death. It's a similar situation to the one described here, where he helped with the downpayment and we pay the mortgage, taxes, and bills. And, sure, there was some friction and growing pains as we all (re-)learned to live with each other. But it's been fine and good, and it lets me support him in a way I couldn't otherwise. It's definitely a different dynamic to if we lived in separate places, but it's not a bad dynamic at all.
- janeerie 3y ago
  Very similar situation here (except both my husband's father and mother live with us). Yes, there's occasional friction, but we make it work. My father-in-law makes dinner, gets the kid on and off the bus, runs the errands, etc. At this point, doing the nuclear family thing seems quite intimidating.
- bombcar 3y ago
  A big part of it is remembering at all times all the balances. It's quite easy to forget something like "paid the down payment" or "helps with dinner" when you're dealing with the frustrating side of things, but those can be major. And the kids get a closer experience with grandparents, which has a value all its own.
tokai 3y ago
Not really. Problematic relationships between parents and their children are very common. It's a valid point against multigenerational homes.
- kristofferR 3y ago
  And I'd argue that multigenerational homes makes problematic relationships much more likely. Annoyances that are easily tolerable when you meet up occasionally are massively amplified when you encounter them all the time. I have a lot of friends that I love, but very few I would tolerate living for months with... And you can choose your friends, you can't choose your parents/kids.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    You can't really choose friends though. You can turn down people to not be friends but not unilateraly "choose" them to become friends.
- busterarm 3y ago
  I'm the fulltime caregiver for an 80+ year old parent with NPD and dementia after a stroke. She had to move in with me after essentially becoming destitute. It's been extremely trying and I wouldn't wish my situation on anyone. There is no upside, other than knowing that I live by my values. Many, many days it feels like that's not good enough for what I have to endure.
jimbokun 3y ago
That's what makes it a good article. Multi generational living isn't all good, and it isn't all bad. We are culturally trained, in the West, to value our privacy and independence and autonomy, which creates challenges for sharing living space with both your parents and your own children in middle age. But some of the anecdotes show some of the real benefits, too. Like grandparents picking up children from school and cooking for the family. Like the built in socialization and connections that can get lost when living far apart. I think this article just shows the good and the bad. In the end, I suspect multigenerational living is something like exercise or flossing or eating healthy. Something that can be annoying in the short term. But has benefits that pay off down the line.

adolph 3y ago

! Easy != Better

namuol 3y ago

> My wife and I are covering the mortgage for a house on which my mother placed a seven-figure down payment Oh, okay.

blitzar 3y ago
Multigenerational Wealth Often Makes Sense. That Doesn't Make It Easy.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I've read articles in the New Yorker that are literally just this. Woe is me, being rich is super hard!
dbetteridge 3y ago
To be fair in Canada that might just be a duplex
- namuol 3y ago
  Maybe it’s just me, but I suspect most Canadians don’t have parents with seven figures laying around.
rrr_oh_man 3y ago
Nice catch!
dang 3y ago
Please don't do this here.
- namuol 3y ago
  Good call. Let me say what I really mean: What’s missing from the content of the article is just how unobtainable housing is, broadly speaking, and how this is impacting the choices families make. A multigenerational house that can actually accommodate multiple generations of people is both rare and prohibitively expensive. Developing new housing for this purpose is usually illegal where most “nuclear families” live. As difficult as it can be to live with your parents in a society where this is unusual, it’s simply not possible for the people who would benefit from it the most. I thought that might be relevant.

MasterYoda900 3y ago

You will see arguments from both sides in this thread. “I couldn’t wait to live on my own” and “I appreciate the fact that my folks are allowing me to live with them. This enables me to cut my expenses and to save faster.” There is no right or wrong opinion. Everyone’s situation is different. Both sides are right. That said, I have a bone to pick when people are inconsistent with themselves, using daycare as an example when people have cheaper alternatives, and then have the gall to complain. “Why is daycare so expensive???” “You could ask grandma to move in with you” “Absolutely not, we enjoy our independence” “Would you pay higher taxes to allow the government to set up a network of publicly funded childcares?” “No” “If you refuse all solutions, stop complaining” Or… “I will never be able to save for a home at this rate” “You’re living on your own on a single income and you’re still young. You could move back with your parents, whom you get along well with, for a few years.” “Absolutely not. I enjoy my independence.” Unfortunately, you can’t always have your cake and eat it too. You will pay a price, one way or another. With respect to multigenerational living, that price will either be the living costs of assuming the burdens of a household as a single individual, daycare costs, or a measure of independence. If you don’t have family nearby that’s understandable. A lot of people don’t have a choice and their grievances are legitimate, but many do have reasonable alternatives they’re unwilling to take advantage of for flimsy reasons and then complain about the consequences of their actions. Adults assume the consequences of their choices. When they have such a choice, of course.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
What do you do when the elders don't want to be involved and want to live solo independent lives in their golden years? One of my parents is dead, the other lives with us because of poor financial choices; out of three grandparents my kids have, they are all living their own lives and don't want to be involved. And before we had children, we asked. Everyone was very enthusiastic about participating and helping until the kids showed up, and then we were on our own. Bamboozled!
- MasterYoda900 3y ago
  Then you don’t have a choice and your complaints are legitimate, because you didn’t cause this situation. It’s not your fault. I’m not saying people never have good reasons to complain.

dimitrios1 3y ago

Very glad this topic is coming up more. It was the default living arrangement for the majority of human history, and still is for much of the world. Here in America, and for much of the industrialized west, the ideal of the nuclear family (non-coincidentally invented during the rise of industrialism) is quite frankly too narrow. With their deep protestant roots, Americans would do well to look at how families were organized in the Bible and see that the ideal of rugged individualism and nuclear family 2 1/2 kid white picket fence households clash with that greatly. Critiques of the article: Multigenerational is too narrow in this sense. It doesn't have to be explicitly in the same house. It could be the same household. It could be a commune, or a clan. I think its best if you pursue this you still have separate living quarters, but have dedicated common areas. Of course it may be the case that its not be feasible (space limitations), but it goes on to my next point, this article is trying to frame multigenerational housing as a solution to a problem, not to view it from a standpoint of the problems we are facing are because we moved away from multigenerational housing/local communities. Secondly, must everything have to be viewed in such a utilitarian context? It's exhausting, quite frankly. Not everything has to be viewed as some scale of benefits, and if the scales are too unbalanced then it's somehow "unjust". Perhaps taking care of your mother is a noble thing to do, and yes, it will exhaust you, and yes you might not get out of it the measure of benefit as she is, at least materially.

bombcar 3y ago
I think a very "unAmerican" truth is that sometimes things suck, and they're still the best option and have to be done.

rrr_oh_man 3y ago

> Given a choice, why would anyone choose to reinhabit their childhood trauma just for cheaper rent? According to the APA, trauma is "an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster". I really, really dislike it when that word is being thrown around for everything and, subsequently, nothing.

HumblyTossed 3y ago
I agree, but there's more to real trauma than the three quoted. Neglect is trauma, emotional abuse is trauma as is physical abuse.
SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
I’ve spoken to my therapist about the definition of trauma and what makes trauma legitimate. At the time she’s responded that trauma isn’t about the event but the emotional response to the event. So for example, there are people with ptsd just from seeing 9/11 on the tv from across the country with no personal loss or knowing anyone personally affected. And there are people who were raped as children but don’t have lingering trauma over it. (Edited to add: this was in context in that as a child I was treated in objectively horrifying manners but I don’t have flashbacks, nightmares, or other signs of trauma about the worst parts of it— actually everything wrong with me stems from shit that is objectively not as bad!)
- bombcar 3y ago
  I think a lot of people (bad therapists included!) like to identify trauma, and use it as an excuse for "how I be the way I am" instead of identifying it, working through it and changing self to overcome it. And once you get to "self-diagnosed trauma" the rates of this skyrocket. And why you see so many dismissive "get over it" responses.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

As workers get squeezed more and more, you'll see this come up more and more...

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

The individualism and “nuclearization” of the western family is the root problem. It assumes that every family wants two parents and the children in the house together as the optimal arrangement It also assumes that individuals prefer to live alone and not with friends or extended family I think the extreme end of this are homes for a married couple with no kids that have a gym, a pool, a garden and basically all of the other things that would’ve otherwise been community places. The happiest people I see are the ones who live communally. For example, I have a friend who is Catholic and she lives with four other Catholic girls in what’s effectively a woman’s long house. This is an optimal situation for her because she’s not married and doesn’t prefer to live alone because she benefits from the community they create. Obviously, some people prefer to live alone. I would have claimed was me up until I was married but in fact, I actually hated living alone. It was just what you do and so you work to make it as comfortable as possible. I currently live alone but would much rather live with my friends but that’s just not something people seem to want. We created a socio-economic trap where long term social groups atrophy or never form because we’re over producing things to cushion the loneliness we forced ourselves into.

munificent 3y ago
Another way that the nuclearization gets reinforced is that learning to get along with people different from us and be comfortable sharing a space with someone and making compromises is a skill that must be learned and practice. But when everyone's living arrangement is atomized and when consumer corporations tell us that we should have every personal whim catered to, we fail to develop that very important life skill and it becomes much harder to live with people than it would be otherwise.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  I think this fits. In an effort to eliminate every possible thing that will cause you discomfort, you end up getting rid of the primary thing which can bring you joy. I have three kids and it’s a common experience I have with people with no kids that they only ask me about the difficult challenges, lack of sleep, etc… I’ve literally only met a handful of people who asked me about the fun and joy of kids.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

> Despite being so on trend, I don’t feel especially cool living with my mom. And even an hour from sunrise, I’m already exhausted. That's not because you're living with your mom, it's because you're your mom's full-time caretaker - in addition to that of your children. But to echo someone else, this author sure does complain a lot about things like "took over school pick-ups" - your responsibility as a parent - while living in a home their mother spent north of a million bucks on. I mean, it's fine, everyone has the right to complain about things that are bothering them, and it's good that he's complaining outwards [0], but I'm betting a lot of people here are in more difficult situations than he is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_theory_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_theory_(psychology)

bombcar 3y ago
Someone who is truly happy is likely to be happy in any situation. Someone who is unsatisfied, is likely to be unsatisfied in any situation. You can't fix internal problems with external solutions.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  You cant fix internal problems with external solutions, but not all problems are internal. Most are a combination of the two, a miss-match of internal and external conditions. I think there is a lot to be said in favor of stoicism and introspection, but it is not the solution to every problem.
- antisthenes 3y ago
  That doesn't mean that external problems don't exist or that they don't have different orders of magnitude. Not having food in the fridge is a lot different than not being able to afford a house with 4 bedrooms over 3 bedrooms.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It's unlikely (though possible!) that the person who is sad in the house his mom paid a seven figure downpayment on is going hungry. Though he may have no food in the fridge and instead door dashes everything, I dunno.

test6554 3y ago

If you can't walk around in your underwear, is it really living?

Tade0 3y ago
Your parents likely saw you in less than that multiple times - I think you're in the clear here.
- imbnwa 3y ago
  I've never understood the implied assertion that there's a sufficient continuity between vastly different stages of physical development from a parent's perspective; which is the only one we grant an exception as in all other cases the law, at least in America, clearly denies that continuity. At any rate, the reverse is usually not true: I don't want to see my parents walking around in their underwear.
- test6554 3y ago
  How about in-laws?

kristofferR 3y ago

I think like there's a massive difference between having been independent for years and then moving back with your parents for economic reasons, and never moving out from your childhood home. The best part of moving out for me was becoming an independent adult - making decisions for how I wanted to live, cooking my own food, buying my own art/furniture etc. Inviting (girl)friends over without worrying about anything. In short, being the master of my own place and life. I feel like gaining that independence is massively more difficult for people who continue living with their parents into adulthood.

apavlinovic 3y ago

As someone who lives in eastern Europe, where "multigenerational living" is the norm, what the hell is this author talking about? His issues with his mother are not a generalised problem with multigenerational living, nor the majority of people living in these arrangements experience it. The aggregated knowledge of all the members of a household is invaluable, and much of this article reads like "I am not used to having family around me, so I will write about how terrible and anguishing this makes me feel." We even have a saying in our country, which goes along the lines "It takes an entire village to raise a child", and it holds.

alephnerd 3y ago
It's The Walurus. It's basically a Canadian knockoff of The Atlantic or The New Yorker. They all tend to subsist off long form articles heavy on pathos and ethos and less on logos. It helps drive engagement statistics that way They all basically follow the narrative writing format used in Expos 10 and 20
izacus 3y ago
Even in Eastern Europe you should be aware of the concept of "not everyone's experience is the same". Yes, even here in Eastern Europe there's plenty of people stuck in really toxic and problematic relationships when they live together with parents, many of them leading to divorce. Don't overgeneralize your small bubble. For anything.
varjag 3y ago
From a fellow Eastern European, it's the norm only because people are poor.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
It might be the norm, but that doesn't mean it always works or is the right way to live. Some people have terrible parents or difficult children. You may think it's great, but I was raised in that environment and I did not like it. Ditto for community life that you allude to. The bit that you don't mention is the pressure to conform or 'go along to get along' that environment breeds. Give me the anonymity and personal freedom in large city any day. Here's another saying: "Hell is other people."

jimbokun 3y ago

> One 2016 study indicated that about 10 percent of non-institutionalized elders in Kingston, Ontario, and Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, reported a family member being violent toward them—defined in the study as “[being] screamed at, insulted, threatened, cursed, talked down to or physically hurt”—in the preceding six months. I feel like we need a new word for physical violence. When I see "violent", that's what I assume it means, and 10 percent of elders being physically attacked is a crisis. But raising your voice one time in an argument with a parent, who might also be yelling at you, while not good, I don't see in the same category. That can still be an arrangement that's good for everyone involved to continue, if everyone can apologize and agree to do better. I don't see physical violence in the same way. Once that line is crossed, it's probably better for the living arrangement to change. "insulted" The Mom in this story calls everyone "stupid" at some point or another. Doesn't mean that the relationship with every family member she calls "stupid" at some point needs to be cut off. Although she should try to stop using that word so much.

times_trw 3y ago
We had perfectly good words for it. If we added new words someone would come along and claim them too. This is what happens when you move from a society which values dignity to one that values suffering.
- the_third_wave 3y ago
  It is also what you get when language evolution makes was for language revolution - or revolutionary language - where language modification is used as a tool to achieve a means to achieve an ideological goal. When 'language is violence' but actual violence is 'mostly peaceful' or 'context-dependent' language loses its purpose.
  - times_trw 3y ago
    On the contrary it servers it's purpose perfectly and lets you know exactly what the speaker means when they use those words.
3y ago

seydor 3y ago

Family structure may be the factor determining entire political systems ,(according to emmanuel todd). The nuclear family may have been an abberation in human history, leading to the highly technocratic individualized societies of western europe+usa. I wonder if immigration and a certain regression to the norm will lead to political change

scythe 3y ago

Pretty much every variation of "live with more people in the housing unit" makes financial, societal and ecological sense. The problem is always that then you have to live with those people, for various values of "those people". Insert Huis Clos quote here.

steveBK123 3y ago

Multigenerational living is a historical norm until societies reach a certain level of economic output and then people tend to switch to paid childcare. It also only works well when people have kids at a certain age across generations so that health active years & need years align. I saw this with my dads family that came over from the old country and had a wide range of ages. The oldest had live-in grandma help raise not only their own kids, but because of modern American medicine and old world early marriage/kids.. she helped raise her own great grand children. So in a total boomer move, that aunt got free childcare and never stopped working, even as she used her own mother to take care of her grandchildren so that her kids could also have free childcare with no cost to her. And in the end when the benefits no longer accrued to her, she put grandma in a home.. My father however was a decade older than that sister and had kids at a more American age. So me & my siblings experience with that same grandmother was mostly of her last decade of ill health and dementia. Had she lived with us it would have mostly been my mother taking care of her mother in law, begrudgingly.