Multigenerational households: the real sharing economy

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative Director
www.LopezMartiMiami.com/

• Ain’t the first time I rant about this.
• The multiple advantages of grandparents, parents and children living under the same roof.
• Given our current 80+ year life expectancy, add some children’s children to the equation too.
• The share of the U.S. population calling a multigenerational household home has more than doubled, from 7% in 1971 to 18% in 2021.*
• A scenario we Hispanics probably played a role in and are perfectly positioned to take advantage of.
• We seem to be wired for it.
• Did you know that Spanish tennis superstar Carlos Alcaraz, who counts Nike, Rolex, Calvin Klein, BMW, and Louis
• Vuitton among his sponsors, still lives with his parents**?
• I dare say that the trend has entered escape velocity.
• It will keep growing in a hockey stick fashion.
• Multigenerational households single-handedly solve lots of societal problems.
• A self-nurturing safety net that could prevent the government from spending billions, if not trillions, on entitlements and welfare services.
• Less energy consumption, lower utility bills.
• Free reciprocal childcare, babysitting, elderly care, school tutoring, you name it.
• Less latchkey kids.
• Better distributed household chores by more hands.
• More home cooking.
• Less need to own one car per adult.
• A shared pool of income with higher compounded savings for a rainy day.
• The very definition of synergy.
• I know, I know: the multigenerational household tends to be frowned upon in certain circles.
• Some people regard it as a backward cultural atavism from so-called “low trust societies”.
• It allegedly stunts personal growth.
• It is not good for the maturation of the self.
• It instills complacence and nepotism!
• People need autonomy, personal space.
• The types of societies that pay too much attention to bloodlines tend to be tribal, excessively traditionalist and even violent.
• Honor killings, arranged marriages, Romeo & Juliet.
• Fair enough.
• In any case, the demographic winter is coming.
• Couples are postponing motherhood, sometimes for good.
• Absent a black swan, in all likelihood immigration will remain verboten for a while.
• The pension/healthcare/social security systems of developed countries are running on fumes.
• The tax-paying workforce will not be robust enough to support it.
• Soon.
• Governments will lack the funds to support millions of retired elderly folk piling up in assisted living facilities, let alone onerous daily house calls by nurses and social workers to those who stay put at home.
• Only the lonely
• If you thought covid was tough, wait until the loneliness & despair pandemic kicks in.
• A wilting generation of childless, solitary, miserable people.
• How will we handle loneliness in a not-so-distant future of people in their 90s or even 100s?
• Artificially intelligent domestic robots?
• Immersive haptic alternate realities?
• Therapy dogs?
• While the multigenerational household phenomenon seems to be expanding organically, the political debate will not be easy.
• Socialists found out that lonely folk seek refuge in the faux family state bureaucracies.
• Let’s admit that dyed-in-the-wool capitalists, such as yours truly, are partially to blame too: a lonely populace seeks refuge in consumerism to fill the inner void.
• And then there are those who, for whatever reason, simply hate their families.
• Or the notion of family altogether.
• Biggie smalls
• When one resides in America one grows accustomed to BIG.
• Big elevators, big bedrooms, big bathrooms, big closets, big pantries, big sheds, big parking spaces, big sedans, bigger SUVs.
• One starts to believe this is the norm.
• Guess what: it is not.
• People in other parts of the world live and work in much closer quarters.
• Latin America, Europe, let alone Asia.
• Density is the norm.
• My point being: migrating our Uncle Sam lifestyle to multigenerational dwelling would be quite easy.
• We have plenty of room.
• Not sure developers, architects or urban planners read HispanicAd but, if you do, I suggest that you pay close attention to this trend.
• Same applies to Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ace Hardware, Ikea, et al.
• WeLive
• A few years back, infamous entrepreneur and WeWork founder Adam Neumann was planning on launching WeLive.
• You guessed it: co-living.
• Despite the fact that he couldn’t execute his vision because he was ejected from the helm of the company, he was definitely on to something.
• See, Neumann spent much of his childhood and adolescence on a kibbutz in Israel.
• A group of extended families living and working in cooperation.
• Disclaimer: as much as I am a fan of the multigenerational household idea, I can’t say I am too fond of the so-called “15-minute city”.
• Don’t want to be too quick to rule it out but I find it a tad dystopian.
  Too Truman Show.
• Clan destiny
• Human society has lived in multigenerational households for most of its history.
• Downton Abbey, anyone?
• Scotland was organized in clans for centuries and managed to give the world an awful lot of brilliant thinkers and inventors.
• Current population: roughly 6 million.
• Speaking of which, d’you know why teenagers develop animosity and defiance toward figures of authority, chiefly among them their parents?
• It is an evolutionary trait: when we were nomads roaming the Earth in small clans, it became a genetic imperative for the young and fertile to seek breeding partners outside their consanguinity, to avoid inbreeding and its various negative physiological consequences.
• Bad blood indeed.
• In other words, we are wired to rebel against our family right after puberty to protect the health and wellbeing of our descendants.
• In fact, some historians believe that the reason why the West became a global economic and scientific hegemon for so many centuries is the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church’s ban of marriages between first cousins circa 1000.
• That was then, this is now: what’s the point of having an 18-year old spending money on rent and junk food when they can live at home, eat decent meals and focus on his or her studies?
• In short, the very Hispanic tradition of the multigenerational household is a potential societal boon that should be easily adopted by other cohorts and ethnicities.

*Source: Pew Research Center;