Our kids love our multigenerational home.
Mary Fontana
I left home for college at age 17, then spent over a decade living several states away from my family.By my late 20s, I had built a life in San Francisco with my husband while my family was settled back in the Pacific Northwest.However, after four years in the Bay Area — with a 3-year-old and another baby on the way — we decided to move closer to family. A lot closer.Coming from big, close-knit families ourselves, my husband and I wanted our children to grow up with their cousins and grandparents nearby. Plus, worn out by the demands of working full-time while parenting small kids, we dreamed of having more childcare support.We bought a house with two separate living spaces in Seattle and invited my parents to move in with us. They have the ground-floor mother-in-law apartment, and my husband and I live upstairs with our two boys.Now we're coming up on our 10th year in a multigenerational household — and it's been wonderful.When we first moved in together, I worried about giving up some level of autonomy. In the years when I lived far away, I might go a month without speaking to my parents; now, they'd be able to hear my footsteps in the kitchen if I got up for a midnight snack.
