[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For the last few minutes of the show, we're going to take your calls on mix generation living situations that exclude the middle generation. What am I talking about? This is a call-in for young adults who live with your grandparents, or for those grandparents who live with your young adult grandchildren. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. How did it come to be that in your case and what are you learning from it no matter which of those two generations you're from?

212-433-WNYC if you're a young adult, living with your grandparents, or if you're a grandparent, living with your young adult grandchildren, 212-433-9692. Some of you will recognize the inspiration for this as the recent New York Times article, Grand-mates: Generations Sharing a Special Bond (and Sometimes the Rent) and they call these relationships grand-mates, the grandparents, and the young adult grandchildren.

Do we have any grand-mates listening right now? I know it's a pig in a poke. Maybe it's a needle in a haystack. If we have any grand-mates listening right now, we would love for you to put some personal stories onto this concept, which apparently is becoming a more common thing now. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

That Times article opens with an anecdote from a grandfather, who found himself confused by all the energy drinks, coffees that were totally alien, and different milks suddenly populating his refrigerator. The culprit, his granddaughter, who moved into his upper west side apartment to attend a graduate program at Columbia. The story is, it's a cheeky example of the cultural differences people in skipped-generation households may experience. What is this different kind of milk? Almond milk. There's no cow product in almond milk. Different kinds of coffee, so that's a simple example.

Listeners, do you have a grand-mate? How did you come into this living arrangement? 212-433-WNYC. Maybe you're looking for a shorter commute to school and that's why you're living with your grandparents, or your parents aren't around to offer the support you need or maybe if you're the grandparent, you might have medical issues, and you need someone around the house, and your young adult grandchild, for whatever reasons, found it to be a match to live with you and help you out while they're doing whatever else they're doing.

Tell us about what it's like to live with someone from a skipped generation away from you. Are you surprised by your grandchild's taste in television, or how late they sleep in or early they wake up, or anything else? Give us a call 212-433-WNYC. If you're on either side of a grand-mates relationship 212-433-9692. Certainly, there are advantages to this. Older folks get to enjoy the company of their grandchildren, assuaging the loneliness that people can face as they get much older.

Conversely, the younger adults in the arrangement, who are often students, we are told in the Times article are working low-paying entry-level jobs, benefit from cheaper rent and utilities but also get that grounding relationship to keep them level-headed and maybe learn about family history. Maybe some stuff that never got discussed that their parents never brought up that the grandparents did. Anybody have a story about a story from your family that you heard and learned about as a result of this kind of relationship?

Although the article emphasizes that skipped-generation relationships are less fraught as grandparents don't feel the need to parent their adult grandchildren as much, I'm sure also not everything is smooth sailing. Maybe there's an issue with tidiness or curfews or language or cultural expectations. Grandkids, do you like how your grandparent's home is decorated or anything else? Grand-mates, this one's for you. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 a lived experience call in that skipped generations on The Brian Lehrer Show today. We'll take your calls right after this.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian there on WNYC. Now to your calls of current or it can be recent. You don't even have to be doing it right now but have done it. Young adults living with your grandparents, grandparents living with those young adults, without the parents in between, for whatever reasons. Chloe in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chloe. Thanks for calling in.

Chloe: Hi, Brian. I'm a longtime listener, first-time caller.

Brian Lehrer: Do you live with your grandparents?

Chloe: I do. I live with my grandfather. He's going to be 98 next week, and I'm 27.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, congratulations. How'd that come about? Congratulations to him on making it to 98. How did that come about for you?

Chloe: It came about pretty naturally. My sister was living with him and moving out and so I moved in.

Brian Lehrer: Why did your sister-

Chloe: She was moving locations. She had really enjoyed living with him and then I moved in. I've lived with him on and off since 2018.

Brian Lehrer: Was there a financial reason in your case, like a lot of the people in The Times story or just some other reasons?

Chloe: He had had a stroke and he was doing okay, but he certainly needed someone around the house. I am a caregiver. I make his meals. I do all of his correspondence. I type for him in English and German, though I don't speak German. I do all manner of things for him. We have a lovely living relationship, but also plenty of struggles and friction.

Brian Lehrer: Over what?

Chloe: For example, he's a German Jewish refugee. I've set a curfew of we have to stop talking about Hitler after 10:00 PM.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. There's a new one. The first time anybody ever said that on the show. A curfew, we have to stop talking about Hitler after 10:00 PM doesn't apply to talk radio. If I can be so intrusive, do you have a financial life? Have you had to not work in order to take care of your grandpa this way?

Chloe: No. Certainly, I'm not super well-paid. It's certainly financially beneficial for me to live with him but the emotional cost is certainly very high. It's not solely because of that, but it certainly helps.

Brian Lehrer: Chloe, thank you so much and good luck to you, and your grandfather. If he's listening, happy 98th birthday in advance. Kathy in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kathy.

Kathy: Hi, Brian. I love listening to you. I'm 82. I'm in good health. Now I live in two places Brooklyn, where I have lived for years and years, brought up two boys here. Then I've moved to another town, which I like, I'm not going to specify it but not that far away, to set up a home for my grandchildren, because their father, who I'm very close to, and he's a dear dear son and a successful man but he remarried.

His new wife decided she couldn't live with them or really accept them, although he thought she would but it turned out no. They had a child together. Now their actual mother is pretty much dysfunctional half the time because she has a problem with alcohol and behavior problems. Someone has to be here, where they're living that is in this other town, to set up a stable home. I'm not the world's most stable person, but at this age, I am compared to some people. I got an apartment and they live right next to me.

Brian Lehrer: Integrated living next to you. That's I guess a whole other reason things weren't going well in those ways you described.

Kathy: There was nowhere for them to live. There was nowhere else for them to have a home unless I established it, and which I did and it's been two years now. It's been good. We get along well. We get along very well. They're lovely kids. Sometimes I had problems, like she stays up all night talking to her friends and then is a wreck in school next day so we cut off her phone or her father cut her off. Sometimes we take turns cooking.

The thing is, I remember my young years. I acted up too. This makes me not ever get angry at them. I guess we all love one another, but it can be difficult at times but they're good kids. I'm glad I did it. Also I'm kind of lonely because I'm a widow now. Lost my husband last year.

Brian Lehrer: I'm sorry.

Kathy: They are great company when I see them. I don't want to see them all the time, but I see them a lot with dinner and go to their school sometimes, that kind of thing. So it's worked out well.

Brian Lehrer: Kathy, thank you so much. Thank you. Please call us again. Kathy with a grand-mate story from the grandparent side. Rachel-- oh, no. I'm sorry. I'm supposed to go to Jordan, sorry, in the Bronx. You're on WNYC. Rachel, you'll be next. Jordan in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Jordan: Hi there. I lived with my grandma for four or five years, all through college and my master's program. The story about the milk in The New York Times made me laugh because she used to always be so confused when we would have oat milk or something because she'd be like, "Oat doesn't have nipples. It can't be milk."

Brian Lehrer: It's a debate in the industry, should they be allowed to call it milk if it doesn't come from a cow, but that's another show.

Jordan: I wasn't the first grandkid nor the last to live with her. My grandfather died really young and so she just kind of-- my older cousins lived with her, and then I lived with her, and even one of my high school friends lived with her for a while, and then my younger cousins because she didn't drive. One of the trade offs there was that she made it sound like when you move in, she's like, "Oh, it's like a dorm, but you don't have to pay," but there was a lot of touring-

Brian Lehrer: Responsibility.

Jordan: - that went along with it.

Brian Lehrer: Besides the financial benefits, what did you get from living with your grandma, do you think, that you'll always be grateful for?

Jordan: Oh my gosh. It drastically changed our relationship. This is in California. I grew up in northern California and she was in the Bay Area. She and I didn't have a super close relationship until we started living together. It was interesting because you get that nurturing relationship, but without-- she didn't need to be a parent. We could just be friends, but also she took care of me.

Brian Lehrer: Jordan, thank you. Thank you so much. Now to Rachel in Nyack. Rachel, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Rachel: Hi. I'm calling because I'm actually the mother. My daughter moved in with my mother when she was 18 years old, a senior in high school finishing out her high school year. My mother had dementia, Alzheimer's. She came to live with her. She had to make that decision because I was already out there. My daughter was living in South Dakota. It was her decision whether or not she wanted to come out.

She was living with her dad in South Dakota. Did she want to come back East and live with her mom and her grandma or grandmother? Actually, my mother only went by grandmother. You could not call her grandma. Did she want to live with grandmother and her mom helped take care of a woman who needed a lot of care, but was the sweetest, sweetest person in the world? [inaudible 00:13:58] and she decided to come live with grandmother.

She constantly talks about how, and I know my mother, we have pictures and pictures and recordings of the two of them, and the way they connected and how much my daughter brought cheer into those last couple years of her life was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. It did an amazing thing for my daughter, who happens to be the youngest of the three daughters. There's a little selfish side to her, but you have to be so selfless when you're giving of yourself to somebody who needs you in every way.

She did things that I could never think of doing like taking selfies and putting filters on them because my mom got to the point where she couldn't speak, but she could still recognize. She could smile if you could figure out things to make her smile and Liliana could always do it. The two of them just beamed together.

Brian Lehrer: It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful story, Rachel. Thank you very much for that. We're going to get one more in here. Adam in Brooklyn, I think you might have a little bit of a long story, but we've got about 45 seconds for you, so go for it and do your best.

Adam: Okay. Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking me. I'll try to be short. The short story is that I lived with my wife's grandmother when I was much younger. Well, I was 30. This was in France and she had lived through the Second World War. This provided me with a perspective on that part of history that I really wasn't going to get anywhere else. They were also in the resistance, all of my wife's grandparents were in the resistance. There were lots of stories about the resistance. I could go on about that, but really the perspective--

one last thing is that it was really countered to the perspective or the idea that the French don't like Americans and things that I was hearing at that time. My experience was that generation loved the Americans because they saw us coming in during World War II and doing whatever we did.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. Great story. Thank you all. I didn't know if we'd get any, but there you all were, grand-mates on either side of that equation. Thank you for your calls today. That is The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, Esperanza Rosenbaum and Emily [unintelligible 00:16:41] today. Our interns this term are Trinity Lopez and Brianna Brady and that was Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz at the audio controls.

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.