- Some people call my family's living situation nontraditional, but I disagree.
- Initially, we rented out rooms in our house to non-family members for extra income.
I didn't set out to run a compound-slash-finishing-school in the middle of the suburbs, but here I am. Some people would call my living situation "nontraditional," but I think the opposite.
While we didn't set out to live like this, it definitely has its benefits for my family.
We didn't seek to be a multigenerational household
My previous wife and I were house shopping and found something bigger than we needed. Not huge, but four and a half bedrooms in 2000 square feet designed with the master on one side of the common areas and the other bedrooms on the opposite end of the house.
We thought, "We'll rent those out until we have kids and grow into it." Both happened, but not the way we expected.
Our first roommate was a friend who got divorced a few days after we got the keys. A new relationship joined him a year later, and they got their own place not long after that. This was a theme for a while: boarders who came in for a few months fell in love and went on to a happily ever after.
Then DJ, the 7-year-old son of a cousin who became medically incapable of caring for him, came. At the time, we had two roommates: a librarian from Bulgaria and a physicist who was the younger brother of a friend. Shortly after DJ moved in, my favorite aunt moved back to the US after 12 years in Japan and took the third room.
And so it went. The librarian moved out. A baby of our own moved in. My brother came home from the war, and we built a room in the garage where he could stay while he relearned how to be a civilian. DJ graduated and went to Toronto. A niece and a friend graduated from college and moved in until they fell in love with their respective partners and moved on.
Who lives with us now
At present, our household consists of myself, my second wife, my younger brother, my aunt, my youngest son, and DJ's half-brother, who moved in while attending college. In a month, my parents are moving in.
Meals are my favorite times. My wife is an excellent cook, and I'm no slouch. Planning for them is a process, a daily one at that, but it's worth it for our children to grow up around a table with that many people to talk to, learn from, and be loved by.
Having extra adults around is also helpful. If I'm late doing something, there's always somebody home to welcome our youngest and help get him situated. Homeschooling during COVID was a group effort, with each person in the house contributing their time and expertise.
In the cons column are complexity, privacy, and crowding. It is harder to keep things running smoothly. Family meetings feel more like board meetings. If anybody raises their voice in an argument, the whole house knows about it. It can be hard to get a moment to myself, even early in the morning or very late at night.
I think our family is very traditional
Like I said at the beginning, some people call this a "nontraditional" living arrangement, but I disagree.
The nuclear family is a cultural fad. A flash in the pan. For most of the 200,000 years homo sapiens have existed, we lived in larger constellations. Our "houses" included grandparents, unmarried siblings, aunts, uncles, and various assorted children.
I didn't set out to live in a truly traditional family, but I am very glad to have ended up in one.