Cohabitation, Family-Style

My dad made an interesting suggestion the other night, one which my parents have coyly talked around for years and are only now making explicit. I have a feeling that this change in rhetorical method has to do with the fact that T and I are planning on buying a house some time this year and that the houses we can afford are, in real estate jingo, "cozy," "full of character," and very "vintage." They also all happen to be in "good neighborhoods for first-time home buyers," which is a transparent euphemism for, "We've just evicted the meth addicts and people of color! Come, o ye educated young white folk, and gentrify the Hood!"

But this is besides the point. What my father is suggesting--with my mother hovering earnestly nearby--is that T and I consider moving into a large house with them.

Consider the benefits:
1. Built in babysitting when the time arrives.
2. Shared household expenses.
3. Shared organic garden.
4. A return to the centrality of family intimacy and support in American life that began to die out with the baby boomers.
5. Partially exempt ourselves from the failing American system of individual acquisition--reducing our geographical and, to a lesser extent, carbon footprints.
6. Provide our filmmaker friend with the basis for an excellent, European cinema-esque family dramedy.

It might be nice to live with my parents, provided that we had (as my father insists we would) a private apartment and the same financial and social independence we have now (more so, in fact, as we get older and more successful). I like the idea of collective dinners and proximity to the people we love. I also like the idea of living in a classy house in a beautiful neighborhood, rather than a 900 sqft bungalow in Felony Flats.

But, I have considerable concerns:
1. Is it possible to have real independence from your parents' concerns and hopes for you if you live one ceiling away from them? My father already shoots rays of anxiety and advice from across the river. Won't the temptation to intercede just grow stronger as the distance between us recedes? Also, how can T and I grow as independent adults if we remain somewhat dependent on my parents' resources?
2. There's something to be said for privacy. I like making my own financial decisions. I like raising the heat if it's really freezing out. I like coming home and feeling unobserved. Kicking my shoes off, changing into pajama bottoms and getting dinner rolling. Taking a hot bath if I feel like it, having sex on our orange velvet couch if I feel like it, conducting ridiculous and embarrassing conversations with the cat if I feel like it. Not waking up to the morning habits of other people. You might say that most of this is possible even living with my parents (the couch would obviously be in our section of the house), but a lot of my daily activities remain exciting and fun because they're things I started doing when I first moved out on my own. It just feels good--physically and psychologically--to stretch my legs in my own space.
3. I love my baby brother, but I don't want to become the in-house babysitter. This might change as T and I have children--why not have another youngster running around--but right now it's lovely to shirk the daily responsibilities of parenthood.
4. Our design input--house and garden--will be severely limited if we share space with my parents. It's important not to feel like a guest in your own house.

In the end, I doubt we'll move in together, at least right now; I'm sure we'll end up caring for either my parents or T's parents down the line. But I do think a seismic shift needs to occur in the American lifestyle so that we all live more sustainably and more connectedly with one another. Owning one's own piece of the pie may be intrinsic to capitalism, but it's hurting our resources and landscape. Maybe the independence and privacy T and I crave are the negative results of a social system that privileges consumer acquisition--that illogically equates success with buying your own stuff and spatially separating yourself from your family and friends. Our children would love living with grandma and grandpa and Uncle Luke. It would be nice after a long day to run down the stairs and suggest a communal dinner. To all be in one place and around to help one another.

I don't know. Part of me is seduced by the idea, and the other parts repulsed. We can always buy a house now and consider a collective move later, after watching the evolution of the American financial market and social welfare system (health care, education, employment) for a while. All I know is that I do want to make a greater effort to live well in this world, making healthy decisions for our environment and city. And it's a start, but not enough, to buy organic and local food and to use organic skin care products. It's going to require reappraising what it means to live successfully and self-satisfyingly in a space that needs to be shared and preserved.