Generational Living: How ADUs Keep Families Close

What does Generational Living actually mean?

Picture this: your mom calls on a Tuesday evening, not because anything is wrong, but just to hear your voice. She lives four hours away. Your brother is in Arizona. The holidays are the one time a year everyone is actually in the same room — and even then, someone is always catching a flight home.

This isn’t a complaint. It’s just how life turned out. Careers, housing costs, opportunities — they scatter families across the map. And most people don’t question it, because it feels normal.

But lately, something is shifting. More families are asking: does it have to be this way?

Defining Generational Living

Generational living — also called multigenerational living — is when two or more adult generations of a family share the same property or live in close proximity. That might look like an aging parent in a backyard cottage while the kids are in the main house, a young couple renting an accessory unit on their parents’ lot while saving for their own home, grandparents who want to be near their grandchildren without giving up their independence, or adult siblings who chose to put down roots close to each other.

It’s not a new concept. For most of human history, this was simply called home. What’s new is that we’re choosing it again, after decades of moving away.

How Far Apart Are We, Really?

The numbers tell a clear story. According to the Pew Research Center, multigenerational households fell from about 21% of the U.S. population in 1950 to a low of around 12% in 1980, as the post-war ideal of the independent nuclear family took hold. But that trend has reversed significantly. By the early 2020s, roughly 26% of Americans — about 59 million people — were living in multigenerational households, the highest share since the 1950s.

At the same time, geographic distance between family members has grown. Studies from the U.S. Census Bureau show that the average American adult lives about 18 miles from their mother — a figure that sounds manageable until you factor in full-time work schedules, children, and the reality that 18 miles can mean an entirely different life. For families where parents are aging or health needs are emerging, that distance carries real consequences.

In Massachusetts specifically, the numbers compound the challenge. With assisted living and memory care facilities averaging between $5,000 and $8,000 per month in Greater Boston, and rental prices for a one-bedroom apartment exceeding $2,500 per month, the financial pressure on families to find alternatives is significant — and growing.

Why Families Drifted Apart

It would be easy to frame geographic separation as a cultural failure. But the reality is more structural than personal. Families didn’t drift apart because they stopped caring about each other. They drifted apart because the systems around them were designed for exactly that outcome.

• The job market pulled people away:
  For decades, meaningful employment was concentrated in specific cities and industries. Young adults followed opportunity wherever it led, even if that meant leaving everything familiar behind.

• Housing costs made proximity impossible:
  In high-cost markets like Massachusetts, adult children couldn’t afford to live near their parents even when they wanted to. The housing ladder became too steep to climb close to home.

• Cultural messaging equated distance with success:
  The American narrative around independence framed leaving home as growth and staying close as stagnation. “Making it on your own” implicitly meant making it somewhere else.

• Institutional care became the default:
  As parents aged, the path of least resistance became placing them in assisted living facilities — a solution that, at its best, provides professional care, but often at the cost of daily connection and, for many families, financial stability.

The system wasn’t designed for families to stay together. It was designed for individuals to move on.

Something Is Changing

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a reckoning. For many families, months of enforced separation made visible what had quietly been building for years: distance has a cost, and that cost is paid in small moments — birthday dinners, school pickups, Saturday afternoons — that don’t come back.

Remote work changed the equation in another way. For the first time in generations, large numbers of professionals had the freedom to choose where they lived without sacrificing their careers. Many of them chose proximity to family.

Add to this the financial reality: housing costs have outpaced wages in most American metros, and adult children are finding it harder to maintain independent households. The Pew Research Center reports that multigenerational living has grown fastest among adults aged 25 to 34 — a generation that isn’t retreating to their parents’ homes out of failure, but making a pragmatic, and often deliberate, choice.

Families aren’t moving back together because they failed. They’re doing it because they’re smarter about what actually matters.

What Generational Living Actually Delivers

Beyond the emotional case, the practical benefits of multigenerational living are well documented across financial, health, and social dimensions.

• For adult children and young families:
  Reduced housing costs without sacrificing privacy. A built-in support network for childcare, emergencies, and daily life. Less time spent commuting to check on aging parents. The ability to build savings while staying connected to family.

• For aging parents:
  Independence with real security nearby. Research consistently shows that social isolation is one of the leading risk factors for cognitive decline and poor health outcomes in older adults. Living close to family, without the loss of autonomy, addresses this directly. It also provides a dignified, dramatically less expensive alternative to institutional care.

• For the family as a whole:
  Children grow up with grandparents present — not as occasional visitors, but as part of daily life. Caregiving responsibilities are shared naturally rather than outsourced entirely. Connection becomes part of the routine, not something that requires a flight and a hotel reservation.

Being close doesn’t mean being on top of each other. It means being there when it counts.

The Real Obstacle: Housing, Not Relationships

Most families who want to live closer aren’t held back by the relationship. They’re held back by the housing. The average single-family home wasn’t designed to accommodate two independent households. Adding square footage through traditional construction is expensive, slow, and filled with uncertainty. Renting a separate apartment nearby in Massachusetts means competing in one of the tightest rental markets in the country.

The desire is there. The practical path hasn’t always been clear. That’s beginning to change.

ADUs: A Solution More Families Are Discovering

An Accessory Dwelling Unit — commonly called an ADU — is an independent residential unit built on the same lot as a primary home. It has its own entrance, its own kitchen, its own bathroom. It can be a backyard cottage, a structure above a garage, or a newly constructed building alongside the main house.

For multigenerational families, an ADU changes the equation entirely. A parent can live in the backyard unit with full independence — their own space, their own routines — while being thirty seconds from family when they need it. An adult child can build financial stability in an ADU while saving for a home of their own. The arrangement maintains dignity and privacy on both sides while eliminating the distance that erodes relationships over time.

In Massachusetts, a significant legal shift made this option more accessible than it has ever been. The Affordable Homes Act, passed in 2024, established ADUs as a by-right use in 177 MBTA communities across the state — meaning homeowners in most of Greater Boston and its surrounding towns no longer need special zoning approval to build one. The largest regulatory barrier that previously held families back has been removed.

Making It Real, Not Just Possible

Knowing an ADU is possible is one thing. Knowing how to build one without turning your backyard into a construction site for a year is another. MassDwell designs and builds modular ADUs specifically for Massachusetts properties. The process is fully turnkey: from the initial assessment of your lot through permitting, factory production, delivery, and installation, the homeowner doesn’t manage a construction project. They make decisions. MassDwell handles the rest.

Every model is delivered in 8 to 12 weeks, built to Massachusetts code, and designed to function as a complete, comfortable home — not a temporary solution. Whether the goal is housing an aging parent, creating space for an adult child, or simply keeping family closer than a four-hour drive, the path from idea to move-in is clearer than most families expect.

You focus on the relationship. We handle the rest.

The Question Worth Asking

What would it look like if your family didn’t have to choose between living full lives and staying connected? Generational living isn’t about going backwards. It’s not about crowding into the same space or sacrificing independence. It’s about building something better — intentionally, with the people who matter most — and doing it in a way that actually works.

If you’ve been thinking about bringing family closer and you own property in Massachusetts, it’s worth understanding what your options actually are. A conversation costs nothing. The clarity it provides might change a lot.