Would you let your adult child or parents live with you?

[Skidmore]

15. I have already done this.

My children lived at home until they completed college and had found employment. I moved my mother in when she was diagnosed with cancer and cared for her at the end of her life in my home. I have opened my home to my sister, her husband, and their two children when they lost their jobs and they stayed for a period of time until they could find work and housing. I did this at a time in my life when I didn't have much myself, bu I would do it all again because the ties that bind us are greater than my individual needs. We have a responsibility to and for one another. In what world could I turn my back on the mother who gave me life and raised me and who had never asked anything from me? In what universe would it be acceptable for me not to provide the assistance my children needed to get them on their way? In what reality would I turn my back on a young family with toddlers and no home or income?

BTW, I have lived with a multigenational family for an extended period of time during my young adulthood. In the insistence on the nuclear family as being the desirable unit in this culture, we have deprived ourselves and our communities of much enrichment.