Multi-generational Living

by Catherine Evans

Very sadly, there’s no one left alive in our family from the Greatest Generation (1900 – 1927) and every year, the number of old soldiers who turn up for Remembrance Day heartbreakingly dwindles. As for the subsequent six generations, we have at least one representative from each of them living in our house.

My mother, Dot, is a War Baby, also known as the Silent Generation (1928-1945). My husband’s a Boomer (1946-1964) and is further distinguished for being the only male in the house, apart from Bear the Dog. I’m Generation X (1965-1980), my stepdaughter’s a Millennial (1981-1996), my two nieces, who have moved in, one to work and one to study, leaving their parents behind in the USA, are Gen Z (1997-2009), and my daughter, who has just become a teenager is Gen Alpha (2010-2024).

Like many Gen Xers, I’m a fully paid-up member of the sandwich generation, i.e. responsible for simultaneously looking after kids and elderly parents. My mum, as the eldest member of the house, shares several characteristics with her granddaughter, the youngest. They’re both staggeringly untidy and have a talent for creating mess. They share a skill for skiving out of the meagre number of chores they’ve been assigned, and both have a flair for disappearing immediately after mealtimes, to escape the clean-up. My daughter’s floordrobe is a sight to behold, and the only reason my mother is careful not to match it is because she creaks when she bends over. They are both incurable snackers with a rampaging sweet tooth. Both are horribly indulged: Dot is not known as Princess Granny for nothing. And Oor Kid is the focal point of everyone’s attention. Apart from my mum, the rest of us work or study from home, and she’s the only one who goes out every day to school, so she’s pounced upon for news and chat as soon as she gets home.

There are several challenges to multi-generational living. The house is always untidy. As soon as the kitchen’s clean, someone comes in to fix a snack and will not only use every pot in the cupboard to do it, but will scatter their crumbs liberally in the process like a papal benediction. We can never find things, as collectively we have so much stuff; the coat you casually drape over a kitchen chair will soon be buried beneath others, or will be nicked by someone who can’t be bothered to find their own before they have to nip out. Our grocery bills are enormous: as soon as I buy food, it disappears. You can’t put anything tasty in the fridge to save for later, as someone is bound to snaffle it before you get the chance. I live in perpetual fear that the dishwasher, a humblingly hard-working contraption, will suddenly decide to go on the blink. Ditto the washing machine. My husband and I are the only drivers, so we’re frequently called upon for lifts to and from the station. (Mum’s just had cataract surgery, but as soon as she’s recovered, we’re all looking forward to the resumption of Dot’s Taxi Service. This fervent hope may not be shared by our fellow road users.) We have three TVs, so we don’t have too many tussles for the remote, but one of them is in my office on the ground floor; I could be in the middle of negotiating world peace via Zoom in there, but Dot will turn up at 6pm every night

without fail, to watch Heartbeat or Downton Abbey. She has seen these shows countless times, but as soon as they come to the end of their seasons, she just starts watching from the beginning again!

Moaning aside, there are plenty of positives: there’s always someone available to walk the dogs. Breakfast is a free-for-all, but we usually eat lunch and dinner together at a table. Cooking meals for so many every day is a big job, especially as my husband is a Type I diabetic, so I can’t just chuck a bit of pasta on the table, but the girls are all keen to learn to cook so are happy to help. We all love chinwagging and often have friends around, so there’s always interesting chat at table. My mother and daughter may be deficient in the clean-up stakes, but the other girls are diligent at helping and their friends always pitch in. The girls like listening to our stories and there’s never a shortage of relationship or careers advice (solicited or not), and the ‘Yoof’ generation are all on hand to help with technological problems or to explain the rudiments of Bitcoin (sorry, still don’t get it) or Python. My husband and I can go away for weekends without worrying about the dogs or the kid.

I only wish we’d had this set-up when my daughter was younger, when we occasionally struggled to find a babysitter. At 13, she’s too old for a sitter, and is now looking to become one herself. In fact, she wants to get a job at a café cleaning tables and washing pots, something the rest of us find hilarious as she has never wiped a table in her life. In fact, we had a jolly evening once dreaming up her CV: ‘Skills: Lazing Around, Skiving. Experience: Being Waited On Hand and Foot. Interests: Chatting with me mates. Vampires.’

Whatever generation comes next, I have no doubt we will soon have a couple of representatives, even if only of the visiting variety. I have three stepdaughters, and all of them are getting a little clucky. As Oor Kid is Gen Alpha, does that mean the next lot of kids will be known as Generation Beta? I sincerely hope not, but whatever they’re called, we’re looking forward to meeting them. Maybe one day they’ll call me Princess Granny.