Report Finds Shift Toward Extended Families

By SAM ROBERTS

Published: March 18, 2010

The NewYork Times

The extended family is making something of a comeback, thanks to delayed marriage, immigration and recession-induced job losses and foreclosures that have forced people to double-up under one roof, an analysis of Census Bureau figures

has found.The analysis also found that the proportion of people 65 and older who live alone, which had been rising steeply for nearly a century — from 6 percent in 1900 to 29 percent in 1990 — declined slightly, to 27 percent. At the same time, the share of older people living in multigenerational families, which plummeted to 17 percent in 1980 from 57 percent in 1900, rose to 20 percent.

While the pre-World War II extended family may have been idealized as a nurturing cocoon, the latest manifestation is too recent and a result of too many factors, positive and negative, to be romanticized.

“It calls to mind one of the famous lines in American poetry, from Robert Frost: ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,’ ” Mr. Taylor said. “I don’t know that I can offer a value judgment of whether it’s good or bad. It reflects our time.”

The decline of extended families coincided with an exodus to the suburbs, where many young adults preferred to raise their children, and the enactment of Social Security and Medicare, which made older adults more financially independent.The latest overall shift coincides with a number of demographic changes, including delayed marriage, greater longevity, more grown children (the baby boomers) with whom the elderly can share a household, Medicare cuts enacted in 1997 and the growing number of immigrants, who are more likely than native-born Americans to live in extended families.

The shift appears to have been accelerated by the recession. In 2008, at the beginning of the recession and the latest year for which figures are available, 2.6 million more Americans lived in a multigenerational household than did the year before. Perhaps as a result of job losses and foreclosures that have affected young adults, in particular, a majority of multigenerational households that include a family member 65 or older are headed by that older adult.

The growth of extended families has also been facilitated by another phenomenon: the average single-family home is about twice as big as it was several decades ago. The shift to extended families was evident across the board, but it was more widespread among blacks and Asian- and Hispanic-Americans than among non-Hispanic whites. While the share of 65-to-84-year-olds living alone began to decline, as Americans lived longer and healthier lives, the proportion of those 85 and older living by themselves grew, to 39 percent in 2008 from 22 percent in 1970. Among adults 65 and over, half are married, a share that has remained fairly constant since 1900. Among the unmarried, a century ago, only 1 percent were divorced or separated and 8 in 10 were widowed; today, nearly 1 in 4 are divorced and 6 in 10 are widowed. Nearly half the 49 million Americans living in extended families are in households made up of two adult generations, with the youngest adult at least 25 years old. Almost as many live in households with three or more generations.

+ Project description courtesy of Miyahara Architect Office, text by Teruo Miyahara

House TTN, Tokyo, Japan – residence for an “urban” extended family
(All Images of House TTN, image courtesy of Miyahara Architect Office)

Project title: House TTN
Location: Tokyo , Japan
Project: 2003 – May 2005
Construction: Aug 2004 – May 2005
Architect: Teruo Miyahara / Miyahara Architect Office
Structural Engineer: Akira Ouchi / S.FORM
Constructor: Yoshiichi Yokota / Monolith Syuken
Photographer: Mitsumasa Fujitsuka
Building area: 214.49m2
Building hight: 8.5m

House TTN was designed to accommodate three families – the parents and the families of their two daughters. They had decided to live together again with the birth of grandchildren. Thus, the main objective for House TTN is to provide the necessary functions for an “urban” extended family, accommodating the needs of modern nuclear families who have grown accustomed to independent life but have chosen to enjoy the benefits of being part of a large family.The first request for this project was to have a sort of collective residence to accommodate three homes, a plan which would completely separate the families within the same building. However, after much thought on how to maximize convenience, the effective and rational use of the site, and the pleasure of each other’s company, House TTN decided to take a semi-independent, sharing approach.

In order to have more than one nuclear family live together as one, it is essential to secure a comfortable distance within the design. Thus, each family has their own independent kitchen unit, bathroom, and toilet, but the homes are adjoined through the ground floor area and common deck – inside and out. The parents’ living space is located on the ground floor, with a highly independent main room (that is also shared by all three families) as well as private rooms (one Japanese-style room and one bedroom) opening towards the outside. The first and second floors are divided east and west, creating living spaces for each daughter’s family. Outdoor common decks in between the two sides of each floor serve as both converging points and buffer space. Transparent glass and sudare or Japanese wooden blinds are used on the common decks to separate the families but at the same time avoid complete privacy. It is possible for each family to go about their business independently, but these purposefully built common areas make it possible to achieve a higher quality of life. A comfortable distance is achieved by softly compelling the families to come together.

Another important aspect of House TTN was its structure. As the decision had been taken not to separate the homes completely, the residents wished to retain an option that would enable them to cut the building in half, left and right, in case they wished to do so in the future. In order to make this possible, the two sides of the structure including the foundation are completely independent of each other, and designed to guarantee durability after being divided. Of course, if two new separate buildings were to emerge, they would both need to pass the various building regulations. Therefore, this aspect greatly influenced the initial plan and form of House TTN. However, it may also be said that because of this requirement, it was possible to achieve a bold design, shaping the areas that would be removed if the house were to be divided into outdoor common decks. It is unclear whether this option will be taken in the future, but having an alternative will surely encourage friendly and active communication between the families.

Thesis Structure

thesis structure:

Thesis will be divided into 3 components : 

Part Exporation - 3 chapters of theory

Part Construction - 3 sites  S, M, L

Part Fiction - series of drawings to be accompanied throughout thesis

intro

Shared systems : Between the Apartment Building  and the Single Family House

Familiar and Unfamiliar

Thesis Structure:  Part Exploration, Part construction, Part Fiction

Methods and Scope

House as a character :Lars Lerup Drawings

Determining Scale

part exploration

Chosen Family

Who We Are: Redefine Family

Contact or non-contact species

Household Assembly

Canadian Statistics

Financials/Social Implications

“Yours and Mine”: Joined Living Systems

Cross-cultural 

Awkward Living Systems

How we live: Awkward Living Systems

What about the Inside?

Transparency

Voyeurism : Identifying the awkward things/Arousing Curiosity

Michael Wolf Photography

Diller+Scofidio Renfro’s “Overexposed” performance

Jorgen Leth’s film “Perfect Human”

Smaga+ Grzeszykowska exhibition “ The Plan”

The With drawing Room: Belonging and Alienation

Secrets

Beatrice Colomina Lit Review: Privacy and Publicity

The Un-Private House

Individual + Stranger / Individual + Family / Family + Stranger

Jean Baudrillard “ The Ecstacy of Communication”

Un Studio : Mobius House

Negotiating Boundaries

Speculating Interface

The Stair

The Section

Gifu Kitagata Project

The Wall

Front facades vs. Back facades : symmettry

Sou Fujimoto House N - Nested House

Sejima’s Toldeo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion

The Door

Front Door

Hidden Dimensions

Proxemics 

Gesture

Visual and Auditory Space through materials: Japanese and German

Skin/ Muscle Memory: Japanese gardens, Wright’s Old Imperial Hotel

Personal Belongings

 
          Territories

Surveillance and Responsibility

Degrees of Governance

Tent vs. Fortress

House as Camp, House as Battlefield

Identifying Markers

Measuring Distance and Value

Signage: Cultural symbols

Inukshuks and Warrior Wounds

Places of Transition

Lee Friedlander’s Photographs: The Overlap

The Porch

The Balcao

No Man’s land

The Shared Unit

Offering Alternatives to the Single Family House

part construction

Experiment

S Mapping a shared ecosystem: Apartment Study

         M Downtown: House/Park Study 

       

  L Townhouse Neighbors Study

Shared Living Systems: An EcoSystems Report

Outlines the extent that shared housing is a prominent contributor to creating a sustainable ecosystem in Canadian society. 

Canada- Ontario- KWC- East Galt-House

part fiction

The 7-12 person unit