Kylie, a single mother of two, has returned to live with her parents twice as an adult.
The first time, she was moving back from overseas with little money and not sure what to do with her life after a relationship breakdown.
The second time, more recently, she had separated from her ex-partner and needed somewhere to live while she sorted herself out. She could not afford to live on her own but needed somewhere for herself and her children to find their feet.
Both were relatively short-term arrangements. “We did explore living together longer-term but it wasn’t really practical with the way the house is, we all needed more of our own space.”
It helped financially because she only had to pay minimal living costs and rent but she said there had been “ups and downs”.
“I think it’s hardest being in the middle in a three-generation house because you’re always trying to mediate and also parent your children while being parented at some level.”
Data shows that increasing numbers of people are in her position.
The number of households with adult children has grown by more than 100,000 since 2004 – the fastest growth of any type of household.
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub said that was probably largely due to people having limited incomes and high costs.
“We don’t know for sure the ages of the kids yet – in the census we’ll see a lot more detail.”
He said it could be in part due to the need for people to cut costs when they wanted to save a deposit to buy a house.
“I think it’s also young people not leaving home to go to university and go flatting because there’s no rentals. Rentals are expensive and grotty – there’s the rental crisis, housing crisis and changing preferences.
“I think a lot of young people are okay to stay at home for longer. Norms have changed. Because of Covid they will have changed a lot. You couldn’t go somewhere and there was online learning, things like that – there’s been a lot of shifts that have all sort of taken place at the same time.”
He said it was not something that he would have predicted 10 years ago. People expected to see more households of single people and couples without children, but adult children living with families was not such a thing for New Zealand historically, he said.
“Partly it’s the ethnic mix as well. We’ve got lots of changes going on in families’ ethnic mix in New Zealand – among Asian families, Pacific families, migrant communities, extended family living is quite normal.
“Some of it might be preferences and some of it might be forced by economic conditions. Not enough incomes, houses too expensive, that kind of stuff.”
Kirsty Ross, acting head of the school of psychology at Massey University, said it was probably the case that many people’s financial situations were pushing them into intergenerational living.
“Lots of university students are now able to study online, they can live at home while they’re studying and save money.
“We do have other situations where people are needing to get family support while they’re raising children. There are economic reasons but I also think there are some practical reasons in terms of supporting each other with different stages of life.”
She said the Covid lockdowns had highlighted to many people how living together could give social support as well as cost savings.
“Many cultures have intergenerational living and that’s how things are – for many people in New Zealand it hasn’t been part of our expectation or our thinking but the other thing that happened during Covid was realising how precarious things can be sometimes, if you’re separated from family for a long period of time and have the opportunity to live closely together, it reduced some of the anxiety around that.”
But she said there could be challenges if different generations had different ways of doing things.
“Even down to what television shows you like to watch. For some people it comes easy but for other families it might be a new way of configuring he household which requires really good communication to make sure things don’t fester and bubble up.”
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