There was a time when most households included a few generations of the same family. But as the U.S. became wealthier and people more independent, family members went their own separate ways.
Kathleen McNally, a 13th-generation resident of East Hampton, considers herself lucky to be part of a multigenerational household today. Mrs. McNally, 86, and her husband John, 88, live with their granddaughter Kaitlin Gatlin, her husband, Carl, and their children Makayla, 15, and Carl Jr., 13. The McNallys’ children, now in their 60s, don’t live on site, but a couple of them still live nearby.
“For me it’s worked out very good,” said Mrs. McNally of living with the third and fourth generations of her family. “They’re always here, or I know where they are, and if I need help I know I can get it instantaneously.” This has meant a lot to her as her husband’s health has declined.
The McNally-Gatlin clan is a local example of a national trend: Multigenerational living, which was decreasing in the 20th century, is on the rise again as families contend with increased housing costs and working parents seek both child care and elder care. It may not be for everyone, but moving in together can bring unanticipated rewards. It also requires patience and planning.
Mr. and Mrs. McNally have lived on the same plot of land on Miller Lane East since the late 1950s, when they arrived as a newly married couple with a baby girl, the first of four. The house they owned was modest, and eight years ago Ms. Gatlin and her husband, who had been living there for several years, replaced it with a larger, modular home.
“We decided we would rebuild,” said Ms. Gatlin, “and when we built, we would build a place that would be for the both of us.”
A modular house was relatively affordable, she said. The new home includes an area separated from the rest of the house that makes up her grandparents’ living quarters. A door connects Ms. Gatlin’s laundry room and the older couple’s living area, which contains a bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchenette.
A lot of people would consider this the ideal co-habitation scenario. Ms. Gatlin says they’d be right. “An opportunity to shut the door” is one both generations appreciate, she said.
In East Hampton, the McNallys and Gatlins are not the only multigenerational family living together, but they are one of the few who wanted to talk about it. While multigenerational living isn’t that common on the East End, it is becoming more so with the stratospheric level of the cost of housing.
In the Latino community here, some grandparents — especially grandmothers — come and go, flying to the U.S. and living with adult children in East Hampton for months at a time. They help care for their grandkids and the household, then return to their home country.
Ms. Gatlin, a teacher at the Country Day School, said there is barely a day when she doesn’t check on her grandparents, and that they serve as a support for her own kids. The kids say the situation works for them, too. Carl Jr. said his great-grandparents keep him company sometimes when his parents are busy, and that it’s not uncommon to get candy from them. Makayla said it’s good to have them right there in case of an emergency.
The McNally family has always been close, and living with older relatives is nothing new, said Mrs. McNally, pointing out that her own mother-in-law moved in with her family when her four daughters were teenagers.
“My kids learned from having Nana with us how to be helpful to old people, and they enjoyed her immensely,” she said.
Ms. Gatlin and her mother, Dorothy Field — Mrs. McNally’s youngest daughter — said something similar is happening with Makayla and Carl Jr. Ms. Field pointed out that the teenagers are kind and patient when they help their great-grandparents with technology.
“Without being judgmental or anything, they just step right in. It’s just naturally built in that they don’t go too fast,” she said.
Ms. Gatlin added that living with people in their 80s has made her children empathetic. “They understand how it is to take care of an older couple,” she said, adding that occasionally she has had to call an ambulance, and that she tries to model how to stay calm.
“So I hope those moments make them think, okay, this is how we deal with this,” she said.
Mrs. McNally, the matriarch, chimed in: “I think it humanizes the fact that old people are here and they’re alive and they’re people,” she said.
That appreciation of the old is not something all young people share, in an era when many grow up hundreds or thousands of miles away from their grandparents.
Sheri Steinig is director of strategic initiatives and communications for Generations United, a nonprofit that promotes intergenerational collaboration. The organization carried out a survey in 2011 that found seven percent of Americans were living in multigenerational families. In 2021 it did another survey and found that that number had shot up to 26 percent. Although the survey was conducted during the pandemic, when families came together in all sorts of unexpected ways, Ms. Steinig said respondents indicated “that it wasn’t a temporary situation, but this was becoming more of a permanent living situation by choice and by necessity.”
The main reasons families move in together, she said, are the lack of affordable housing and the need to care for children and older adults.
For families who are sharing the same living space all day, Ms. Steinig said, a few house rules are important.
For starters, she said, no one should “expect everything to be perfect.” She said communicating ahead of time about needs and expectations is key, “so that you’re discussing your finances, you’re agreeing on a budget, who will pay for which expenses.”
This helps in “getting all of that set up in the very beginning,” so that resentments don’t crop up later. The same goes for expectations around babysitting, housework, and how the space is shared.
“There are going to be challenges, and you just need to sort of think about how you’re going to deal with those challenges,” she said.
Anyone who lives with other people knows that doing so can bring conflict at times. That hasn’t been the case with Ms. Gatlin and her grandparents. She says the only difficult thing about living with them has been seeing her grandfather’s health go downhill.
“He has declined in eight years,” she said. “So for me to go over there every day can be harder, because I’m like, oh boy . . . I see that change.”
But knowing she is helping her grandparents as they age is also rewarding.
Mrs. McNally is grateful to her granddaughter and her husband, who she says helps her with fixes and chores. She wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“My friends at the senior center actually envy me because I get to stay in a comfortable little home and have my family around me,” she said, “whereas a lot of them are facing the thought of . . . ‘do I have to go to assisted living?’ “
Being with her family has helped her absorb some of the knocks of old age. But most of all, it has strengthened intergenerational bonds. “It gives me an attachment to the younger folks,” she said. “I have so enjoyed watching them grow.”