Reply to NY Mag: Daycare is Broken

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Is the best possible scenario living in a multigenerational household where the grandparents take care of the children while the parents work and then the children and grandchildren take care of the grandparents when they age?[/quote]

As another PP mentioned, parents have kids too late in life for this to be practical for more than a few years. Grandparents get too old to be actively involved. So then Mom ends up in a sandwich generation hell taking care of little kids and old parents.

Also the nuclear-family-centric attitudes toward this arrangement would be prohibitive, at least for typical DC white people. Everyone I know in that category is annoyed or stressed out by their parents after a couple days of visiting. I grew up in a close-knit family and would like to think I'm not part of that, but my mom lived with me temporarily to help with my baby while DH was working overseas and I felt like snapping at her often.[/quote]

Among the Indian-American multigenerational families, I have seen the following -

- Parents and grandparents combine resources (may not be 50-50, but it is still very beneficial).  Thus they are able to buy bigger McMansions in more expensive areas.  Kids benefit by being in better school pyramids. Everyone has enough privacy and space. 
-  Household is run more efficiently (food cooked, groceries picked, laundry, school pickups and drop offs) because they can outsource chores (cleaning), they can supervise (nanny, handyman, tutors) and they can divide and conquer chores. 
- Everyone has leisure time and kids are never alone.  
- There are multiple levels of social connections formed and encouraged.  All generations have their own peers, but overall social network is vast and overlapping.

However, you do have to ADJUST to each other and each person must feel valued and respected.  That is a hard tightrope to walk and you have to have a clear understanding that you are benefiting.  In other words, it is like having Thanksgiving every week. You can have a very great experience or it can also quickly turn into toxic situation.

Childcare with even elderly low energy grandparents work in this situation because they usually have a nanny and the grandparents can keep an eye on the kid and nanny.  [/quote]

What happens when multiple members of the second generation marry? This setup seems to only work if the grandparents only have one child with their own family [/quote]

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