Extended Family Living

The subject of extended family living has been ruminating in my head for a couple years now. As I struggled with the demands of working and caring for family, and later on as I struggled with the demands of being a stay-at-home mom, I kept bumping into the same thought: "I don't think things are supposed to be this way." I know women who become disheartened because they don't understand why they struggle so much to keep up with housework, children, and the demands of running a house even though they have all modern conveniences, when women used to make their own clothes, work in their garden, make everything from scratch, hand-wash their clothes and so on.

There's something wrong with comparing ourselves to our fore-mothers though. Women didn't do all these things alone. They did them in community. While women used to walk miles to get water, when they walked to the river or well, they walked there with other women, chatted with them while they filled their jugs, and walked back together. Today, women in developed countries need only go to their kitchen faucet to get water, but she likely stands in her kitchen alone. Women gathered berries, made clothes, and pounded grain for flour, but they likely did this with other women, while they all kept an eye on the children playing close by, perhaps taking turns helping mitigate conflicts or helping the children with some small task (if the older children didn't do this).

It seems in many cultures the grandparents care for the emotional needs of the children, giving them much of their time and attention, while the parents attend to much of the physical work that needs to be done. I have heard of one tribe that views the parents as not having enough wisdom in order to teach the children, and this culture very clearly views it as the grandparents' duty to attend to the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional needs of the children, and it is the parents' clear duty to attend to their physical needs.

As I thought about these things more and more, I decided that I wanted community--and not the community that is a group of friends that get together for coffee and playdates regularly from all their different areas of town (though that IS nice), but I wanted even more than that. I wanted the kind of community where the neighbor that you know lives 10 steps away from your front door and you are involved not only socially, but also in the nitty-gritty tasks of daily life. It seems to me that in this country of excess, where people love their privacy and having everything in their lives precisely to their liking, that we have lost something. We live our lives exactly to our choosing without interference from others, but at what cost?

I saw a documentary called "The Lost Boys of Sudan" which documented the transition of Sudanese orphans to refugees living in the United States. They encountered electricity, indoor plumbing, telephones, computers, refrigerators, and many other things for the first time. These boys had walked barefoot across a country to escape death and civil war and had lived and survived by working together and looking out for one another. Sometimes they didn't have enough food to eat, and they had no modern conveniences but they were together. The film documents another thing that many of them encountered for the first time after coming to live in the US--loneliness and depression. They weren't used to living with only two or three other people, everyone working different schedules and basically doing their own thing. They were used to living in community.

I think all my pondering might have began the day I read an article in Mothering magazine about an extended family who decided to live together. The dad, mom, and their children lived in a house; one of the sets of grandparents had their own house; and the other grandmother had her own house. So these three groups of people sold their houses and built their own "complex" as they affectionately named it, where they all had some of their own private spaces, but also had some communal space where they all gathered for meals and hanging out regularly. They also came to some sort of agreement about how bills and groceries, cooking, and all those things of living together would be managed.

Being too poor to buy a house I thought that this dream of extended family living might be far off into my future, but, I'm happy to report that it has actually happened for me! A few months ago my wonderful in-laws decided to move to town and to rent an apartment in the same building as ours. Here's how it works for us.

I'm cooking for my family anyway, so I just plan on cooking for two extra and we have dinner almost every night together. Depending on our schedules, we sometimes hang out in the evening, playing a game or watching a movie. They contribute some money to the grocery bill and often help with dishes. I try to respect their "me-time" and not send the kids to their apartment all the time, though sometimes they go there to hang out when I'm making supper because I figure they'll be coming over in just a little while anyway. My in-laws love kids and are really good at entering their world and playing. Periodically, they'll pop-in and want to take the kids outside to go for a walk or go to the park or something so I end up having an unexpected hour or two to myself! I volunteer at Elizabeth Ministry and am there most Thursday mornings, and while I used to bring the children, my father-in-law now babysits on those days (and I'm able to get a lot more work done when they are not there).

I think this arrangement is good for the children because it seems they get the benefit of everyone's gifts. My in-laws are such nature-lovers and they have to get outside everyday. Although I theoretically know how good it is for children to get outside and explore nature, I'm so at-home in the cozy indoors that it takes a lot of effort for me to make myself take them outside. So now, they get out a lot more and explore the riverside, the plants, sunsets, and so on because of their grandparents' enthusiasm. My children also get more attention because my husband and I are not their sole source of it. Although I try to keep my priorities and not let the housework take precedence over their needs, on the other hand, supper DOES need to get cooked, and the house DOES need to be liveable, and there are just things that need to get done. So now, instead of feeling like I have to maintain an impossible juggling act, and feeling like I have to choose between my children or my other domestic duties, or my husband feeling like he always has to choose between playing with the children in the evening or having some time for himself, it seems it is easier to meet the needs of everyone with our current arrangement.

I think the arrangement is great for my in-laws as well. During the summer my father-in-law works on building their cabin in another state and my mother-in-law lives alone and works a lot. So now she gets a home-cooked meal most nights without having to cook it herself, or my father-in-law having to cook for just one or two and she doesn't need to spend her workweek alone until she can squeeze in time for a family visit on her days off. We can hang out for an hour or two and still have our day.

My in-laws and I are very similar in our views of raising children and they are very supportive of our unschooling. Our religious views differ, but I think we are respectful of each other's beliefs. We sometimes share our views of the world and God, but I haven't perceived any sort of expectation that I should "convert" to their way of thinking, (and hopefully they haven't perceived that in me!)

I'm curiuos about others. Have you ever considered or would you consider extended family living? Why or why not? Do the personalities in your family allow for such an arrangement? Do you do this already? How does it work for you?