When I tell people my housemates for the first half of my thirties were my parents, I typically get one of two reactions. Some pause, raise their eyebrows, and ask if I’m thrilled to have moved out. “No,” I respond with a level of confidence I’ve only gained over the past few years. “I actually miss it.” Others get it, and might share that they stayed with grandparents for a few years in their twenties, or that a sibling recently moved back in with their parents.
Those of us who have experienced communal living or witnessed it firsthand know the benefits it can bring. The messaging in American culture that living independently, whether alone or with a nuclear family of your own creation, is an important milestone, even an achievement, is nearly inescapable. But many of us are learning that approach doesn’t work—not for everyone and not for all the seasons of our adult lives.
Growing up in an upper-middle-class, majority-white suburb of Philadelphia, I was subject to the usual messages. I imagined that in my twenties, I’d live with roommates or alone before marrying a man and buying a single-family house together like the ones in my neighborhood. While I had friends and was part of artistic communities, these things weren’t yet central to my vision for the future. I mostly daydreamed about partnership, education, and career achievements, as every sitcom I watched, magazine I read, and teacher I had told me to. I drank the American Dream Kool-Aid. And a lot of it.
I spent the first decade of my adult life chasing that dream, stamping out feelings of loneliness in service of my ambitions as I moved across the country and back again. Without established friends nearby, I sought out roommates on Craigslist and in Face-book groups, and while we occasionally shared meals, car rides, or dating horror stories, these actions were mostly logistical. We didn’t become friends. It always seemed strange to live with someone I wasn’t close to emotionally, so when it became financially possible to get my own apartment, I did.
At twenty-eight, the burnout hit. I watched many of my peers settle down with partners and start their own nuclear families; meanwhile, I was living alone—well, with my cats—and unexpectedly working through my sexuality. I was also at the end of a string of toxic jobs that eroded my mental health and exacerbated my chronic neck and back pain. After months of trying to continue working full-time, improve my well-being and explore my identity, and search for a new job, all while facing a 10 percent rent increase, it became clear I couldn’t do it anymore.
The messaging in American culture that living independently, whether alone or with a nuclear family of your own creation, is an important milestone, even an achievement, is nearly inescapable. But many of us are learning that approach doesn’t work—not for everyone and not for all the seasons of our adult lives.
What I didn’t know then was that I wasn’t alone in these difficulties. Today, younger generations in particular find themselves unable to afford homes, and even rent, and loneliness has become an epidemic. And while these are relatively modern-day developments—in the late 1990s, Carrie Bradshaw, of the television show Sex and the City, earned around $60,000–$70,000 a year as a news-paper columnist, and her New York City studio apartment would have cost around $1,000 in monthly rent; now she’d be paid roughly the same, but her rent would cost $3,000–$4,000—these issues have long been present for specific groups of people. Living in a single-family household, whether with a nuclear family or alone, has consistently worked best for the white and wealthy, who can hire cleaners, tutors, babysitters, therapists, and coaches to supplement labor and care. It’s ideal, too, for those who are younger and able-bodied, and often don’t need the built-in physical and emotional support that chronically ill or older folks do—which I was beginning to see for myself. As my depression and anxiety, ADHD, and back problems worsened, I struggled to manage day-to-day responsibilities, like focusing at my full-time content writing job and standing without pain for long enough to cook anything that didn’t come from the Trader Joe’s frozen food aisle.
In the summer of 2019, I quit my job to focus on my health and moved back in with my parents. I was hesitant, but they encouraged it. I was so ashamed to be asking for help; I felt like I was giving up on all the things I had spent my adolescence and young adulthood working for. But for the first time in a long time, I also felt hope. I was looking for relief of all kinds—emotional, mental, physical, financial—and I sensed that living alongside people I cared about, and who cared about me, was going to make a difference in my quality of life.
My mom, my dad, and I actively worked to make each other’s days easier and better. Instead of doing all the household chores myself, I focused on what I was best at and enjoyed most, and they did the same. At dinnertime, my mom cooked, my dad did the dishes, and I took out the trash. I embraced the ease of eating dinner together in front of the TV and the ridiculousness of spontaneously breaking out into song while cleaning up—things I could do alone, sure, but they just weren’t as fun without company.
While many people, including my own sisters, might shudder at the idea of being around their mom and dad all the time, the arrangement didn’t make me feel like a kid again, running through the same parental role-playing we’d engaged in throughout my childhood. Rather, the move strengthened a different side of our relationship: these two people were my friends. Slightly overbearing friends, perhaps too concerned about whether or not I took a sweater when I went out, but friends nonetheless. The polite and distant roommate relationships of my twenties faded away as I leaned into the raucous laughter over inside jokes, the communal care, and yes, the almost dizzying comfort of having someone else to go food shopping, decide what’s for dinner, and then make it. Imagine! All of this was doubly meaningful during those early months of the pandemic; my parents became the only people I could be closer than six feet from.
As I repaired my health and began making a steady income again as a freelance writer and writing tutor rather than an employee climbing the career ladder, I felt pressure to get my own place. I internalized people’s expectations that I should move out. That I should live alone. After gatherings at friends’ houses, I’d frantically scroll through apartments on Zillow, searching for my dream space. Still, I never took the plunge. I continued to stay with my parents, much longer than I imagined I would. A few years went by before I understood that I wasn’t moving out because I simply didn’t want to. I deleted the Zillow app from my phone.
But change is inevitable. In 2024, my parents decided they wanted to retire and downsize the following year. Living together was so transformative that we chose to buy two separate townhouses in the same complex—something I was able to do because I’d saved money on rent and utilities while at their house—so we could maintain some of the routines and systems of care we’d grown accustomed to. Despite their close proximity, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little sad to be living alone again. The arrangement we had for six years filled a hole that I was taught could exclusively be filled by a traditional nuclear family consisting of me, a partner, and children. Now I know that’s not true.
My story is just one example of the many different ways communal living can enhance the material conditions of our lives and foster improved health, stronger relationships, and a genuine sense of connection. When Catapult magazine published an essay I wrote in 2022 about moving back in with my parents, I heard from readers in all sorts of living situations who connected with the idea that the key to a good life isn’t necessarily two adults and a couple of kids separated from the rest of the world by four walls. Not only is this version of the American Dream less accessible than ever, but it’s also not what many of us need—and it hasn’t been for decades.
The arrangement my parents and I had for six years filled a hole that I was taught could exclusively be filled by a traditional nuclear family consisting of me, a partner, and children. Now I know that’s not true.
In 1970, 67 percent of Americans ages twenty-five to forty-nine were living in a nuclear family. Today, that number is closer to 37 percent. The nuclear family has been in decline for the last nearly sixty years, in large part because our country’s circumstances have changed dramatically since the prosperity of the post-WWII period. But where are the stories of the growing number of people turning to other ways of organizing their lives and care networks? Living communally has become a more prominent topic in the media since the pandemic and the surge in housing prices over the past few years. Still, despite the fact that communal living is more relevant than it has ever been, we’re often not hearing directly from those who have experienced it, who can capture in their own words the comforts and inconveniences, the trade-offs and delights. This anthology aims to fill that gap.
My goal in embarking on Living, Together was to gather a breadth of narratives that offer a window into how people in the US are incorporating support and connection into their everyday lives through multigenerational households, cooperative and shared housing, and other forms of communal living. Shaping our homes to better address physical, social, emotional, and financial needs is essential for our survival, which many of the essays within explore. But Living, Together is also about how these forms of cohabitation don’t always arise out of crisis; some people intentionally seek them out. They can be fun and flexible—a way of hacking adulthood, as contributor Rhaina Cohen writes about the home she shares with her husband and friends.
The fifteen essays and six Q&As in the anthology reflect a rich array of stories and perspectives. If you assume, for example, that communal living is mainly for the crunchy granola among us, that it predominantly takes place in rural areas, or that it requires a specific spiritual or religious affiliation, you’ll quickly see upon opening Living, Together that all kinds of people live communally in all kinds of configurations and locations for all kinds of reasons. The choices they’ve made have expanded our collective sense of what’s possible.
As I edited this book, I often thought about what another anthology editor, Margot Kahn, once wrote about the form: “When we look for ways in which to understand the divergent perspectives of others, there’s no better book form than the anthology. This is the town hall bound in pages, to be held, discussed and reflected upon.” My hope is that reading this collection of distinct minds, hearts, and experiences inspires you to challenge the assumptions we’re raised and socialized with, and to lean into the radical joy and freedom that comes with reconsidering the ways we live together.
There are many forces putting pressure on us right now, from the skyrocketing cost of living and the lack of a substantial social safety net to the acceleration of climate change to the fact that healthcare in the US is tied to employment and traditional family structures. There’s so much that needs rethinking if we’re going to remain resilient in today’s world. Why wouldn’t we begin with an idea as basic, primal, and necessary as home, guided by those with unique experiences to share?
I hope this anthology will merely be a starting point for something bigger: expanding personal, and ultimately societal, expectations around how we could live. A spark to pause and question, to share and discuss, and to plan and act towards a future that isn’t just “living” but is sustainable and resilient against what-ever happens next.
My grandmother ran a rooming house in a tiny railroad town in North Carolina. Six of the ten bedrooms housed teachers and railroad workers who all shared one bathroom with a tub! Postwar prosperity, for all its benefits, changed that paradigm. Excellent essay. I'm jealous of your parents as my three 40-ish sons live far away. So glad you overcame some society-induced shame and created something new from your experiences.
I completely relate to this. After my divorce, I moved back in with my mom at the age of 31. I felt like such a failure, but it turns out that the time I spent back at home with my people, was exactly what I and my family needed. Thank you for writing this.