More Parents Are Moving In With Adult Children—at Younger Ages
Housing costs, child care and shifting ideas about family are driving a new rise in multigenerational living
4 min
More parents are moving in with their young adult children, and they are doing it while they are younger, healthier and often still working.
One in four Americans aged 25 to 34 lived with parents or older relatives as of 2021, the fastest-growing segment in multigenerational households, according to data from Pew Research Center. Most of this group is adult children moving back in with their parents, but a significant number of older adults are moving in with millennials, said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew. In 2021, 9% of multigenerational households were headed by a 25- to 34-year-old, up from 6% in 2001.
Some parents aren’t waiting for retirement or urgent healthcare needs to move in with adult children, the Pew data suggests. Known as the reverse-boomerang effect, the move is often driven by changing attitudes about family life, high housing costs and challenges in finding affordable child care, the researchers said.
Nearly one in five Americans lived in multigenerational homes in 2021, which are defined as two or more adult generations living under the same roof. Such arrangements were more the norm in the first half of the 20th century. But they fell out of favor as housing centered on the nuclear family and older Americans stayed healthier longer and had more money.
After bottoming out at 12% of Americans in 1980, multigenerational living has made a comeback in recent years, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis and during the pandemic, according to Pew.
The challenges of the housing market are also a factor. In 2022, 14% of all home buyers set up multigenerational homes, up from 11% in 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors. The pandemic drove an increase in demand for homes designed for multigenerational living, with separate living areas for older parents.
Pooling resources
Having more generations in one household allows first-time millennial buyers to pool financial resources with older relatives, says Jessica Lautz, the NAR’s deputy chief economist and vice president of research.
Though the hallmark of independence was once living on your own, adults who asked older relatives to move in say it has advantages.
Last year, Darin Freeman, a 30-year-old who makes a living promoting home appliances, clothes and makeup on social media, bought a 3,300-square-foot home in Tampa, Fla., with her husband. The couple spent a year trying to convince her dad, Daniel Kane, and his wife and stepdaughter to move in with them and their two children.
Mrs. Freeman wanted to be closer to Mr. Kane, who lived in Safford, Ariz. She offered him a job managing her and her husband’s Amazon reselling business. They would pay him about $5,000 a month to communicate with manufacturers, keep track of inventory and test new products.
Mr. Kane, 48, says he was hesitant. His job in radio communications for a mining company paid $120,000 a year, but meant 12-hour shifts, a two-hour commute and crawling through narrow spaces.
“I’m turning 49. I’m tired of beating myself up to make someone else money. I’d rather beat myself up making my daughter money,” he said.
He also wanted more time with his daughter and his grandchildren beyond yearly trips, he said. He wanted to cook them breakfast and watch their soccer games and gymnastics practices. Mr. Kane and his wife have their own bedroom and separate bathroom, which he calls “his own little apartment.”
Sharing bills and space
The Freemans pay the mortgage. Mr. Kane shops for groceries, his wife cleans the house, and they watch the Freemans’ 7-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son. Groceries and utilities go on one shared credit card, which they split down the middle.
“For the first time we have endless amounts of help,” Mrs. Freeman said. “We have more time to do things that we enjoy.”
But with most of the adults working from home, it can be hard to find a quiet place to work, says Mrs. Freeman. She works from her bedroom, where she shoots videos and social media content.
As a child, Mrs. Freeman, who is half Filipino and half white, lived with her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She says that made her more comfortable with the idea of living with her father as an adult.
Mrs. Freeman’s husband also grew up in a four-generation household. She says he understood her desire to have her family closer, since many of his family members also live in Florida.
Pros and cons
The majority of adults in multigenerational households say living with adult family members has been at least somewhat positive, according to Pew, although nearly a quarter said it was often stressful.
Since 2018, Simon DoQuang, 31, and his wife, Alexis DoQuang, 28, have lived with his father in a four-bedroom house in Ellicott City, Md. Mr. DoQuang’s father, Louis DoQuang, made the down payment and the younger DoQuangs pay the $2,425-a-month mortgage. Louis, 62, has Parkinson’s disease and often needs help. And Simon and Alexis, who are working parents with two children, found themselves looking for child care.
In the summer of 2020, they convinced Simon’s mother, Anna DoQuang, to move in, too. She had been living in Las Vegas, apart from her husband. The younger DoQuangs’ oldest son is 4 and goes to daycare, but they needed someone to watch their youngest. Simon offered to pay his mother every month to move in and care for their 2-year-old.
“It’s a blessing to see my grandson grow up,” Anna said.
Simon said his multigenerational living experience is bittersweet. His parents cook, clean and babysit on date nights. But what they are saving in child care and time is costing them in privacy.
“Sometimes I feel like we can’t really be ourselves as a family of four,” Simon said.
His mother says she also misses the privacy of living by herself but that it is too expensive. She says because Alexis’s work schedule changes every week, they need someone to look after their toddler and Louis.
Simon says he and his wife feel they have to keep public displays of affection around the household to a minimum.
“There’s a lot of pros and cons to it,” Simon said. “We’re thinking about possibly selling this house sometime next year so we can separate from my parents.”
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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