WHEN THE NEST IS EMPTY NO MORE: It’s Not All Bad.

Keeping multiple generations under one roof has its costs, which are well (perhaps excessively) documented in mid-century novels. But it also has its compensations, emotional and economic. More family members means more people around to take care of you if something goes wrong, more economic stability for the household. It also means that the money that you’re not spending on four walls and a set of appliances can be put to some other use, such as going to college.

When the “kids back in the basement” story first surfaced after the financial crisis, it was the subject of much hand-wringing by kids and parents alike. But we may simply be rediscovering the benefits that our grandparents already understood.

My grandmother had a lot of family under one roof until well after my mother was born. She loved her nuclear-family-in-the-suburbs life, as sterile and isolating as it supposedly was.