Multigenerational Household

"We're Cuban. Literally everybody we know who has a baby lives with their parents."

— Victor, One Day at a Time (2017)

Exactly What It Says on the Tin: When two or more adult generations share the same living unit. The quintessential example of the trope is Four Generations Under One Roof by Lao She, but many East Asian stories set before the mid-to-late 20th century feature this trope whether they make a point to or not. Very much Truth in Television in many cultures, but nowadays often played for comedic effect.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Hunter × Hunter: The Zoldyck Family home currently houses four generations of the Zoldyck clan. There's Killua and his four siblings, Illumi, Milluko, Alluka and Kalluto; parents, Silva and Kikyo; grandparents Zeno and his unseen wife as well as Zeno's grandfather, Maha.
• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You:
  • Kusuri lives with her parents and her grandmother Yaku.
  • Karane lives with four generations of her family: her parents, her sister and brother, her niece and nephew on her sister's side, and two of her grandparents. And all of them are tsunderes.
• Digimon:
  • In Digimon Adventure 02, Cody lives with his mother and paternal grandfather. Cody's father was also in the picture until he was was killed in duty during his work as a police officer when Cody was young.
  • In Digimon Tamers, Rika lives with her mother and her maternal grandmother. Unlike Cody, her father divorced her mother and left.
  • Kouichi in Digimon Frontier grew up in one of those, until his grandmother passed and revealed to him on her deathbed that he has a twin brother.
• Fruits Basket:
  • The Hanajima household consists of Saki's grandmother, Saki's parents, Saki and Saki's brother, Megumi.
  • The epilogue of the series shows that there's a household consisting of a cute little girl, her parents, and her grandparents, Tohru and Kyo.
• Itazura Na Kiss:
  • When Naoki and Kotoko marry and have a daughter, the Irie household gathers three generations.
  • Also, Mrs. Irie's childhood home in Kyushu has three generations.
• In My Neighbor Totoro, their neighbor Kanta and his family also includes their grandmother.
• My Neighbors the Yamadas by Takahata Isao manages three generations.
• Ranma ½, at least after the arrival of Happosai.
• In Sazae-san, Sazae with her husband and son live at her parents household along with her two very young siblings.
• In Tenchi Muyo! Tenchi, his father and his grandfather live together. The OVA also includes Washu along with her daughter Ryoko and more distant descendant Mihoshi.
• Umineko: When They Cry: In the main house on Rokkenjima, Kinzo lives with his son, Krauss, and his wife and daughter. Not that you can tell, since he spends almost all of the time locked away in his room. Subverted. Although this used to be the case, Kinzo died a year before the story started, and Krauss and Natsuhi have been doing their best to keep it a secret from everyone.

Comic Books

• Batman: While Alfred Pennyworth is Bruce Wayne's butler those close to the family understand that Alfred has been Bruce's adoptive father since the Waynes were murdered which is acknowledged by the family. As Bruce quickly becomes the parent to Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Cass Cain and Damian Wayne there are three generations of mostly adopted family living in Wayne Manor at most times.

Comic Strips

• The short-lived comic strip Freshly Squeezed revolves around the elderly Irv and Sara moving in with their daughter Liz and her family after they lose all their money when the economy collapses.

Fan Works

• Twice in the Gensokyo 20XX series:
  • This is downplayed as they are a family unit but we do have this with Yukari (oldest), Ran (second oldest), Chen (third oldest), and Reimu (youngest) in Life in Gensokyo Village. It's changed up over the latter parts of the series but the overall dynamic is the still there, especially in 20XXV, where, in that case, it's a multigenerational apartment, with Yukari (up until she leaves) being the oldest, Ran and Ren being the second oldest, the kids being the third oldest, and the kits being the very youngest.
  • This occurs in Foundling, though this is slightly more explainable given the time period. The Yakumo household has Yukari as matriarch, Ran and Ren playing the parents, and the kids being the youngest generation.

Films — Animation

• Coco has both the living Riveras and the dead Riveras. The living Rivera household includes protagonist Miguel, his parents, his paternal aunt and uncle as well as his uncle's wife and children, Miguel's paternal grandparents, and his great-grandmother Coco, the titular character. The Rivera household in the Land of the Dead consists of Miguel's great-great-grandmother, his twin great-great-granduncles, his great-grandfather and great-grandaunt, and his grandaunt. The dead Riveras later expend to include Miguel's great-great-grandfather, Héctor, and a recently deceased Coco, while the living family expends to include Miguel's baby sister Socorro, named for her great-grandmother ("Coco" is a nickname for "Socorro").
• Encanto focuses on the Madrigal family, which consists of three generations; main character Mirabel lives with her parents, her sisters, her maternal aunt and uncle (who have their own three children) and her maternal grandmother who acts as the matriarch. They all live under the roof of a magical Sapient House.
• Meet the Robinsons has Wilbur, his parents and his dad's parents, plus what seems like all of those adults' siblings and their spouses.
• Moana has the titular character living with her parents and paternal grandmother (though her grandmother eventually dies during the story).
• Mulan's household is like this—though Mulan herself is an only child^note In the original poem that the movie is based on, she has a younger brother (who's too young to enlist in the military) and at least one older sister, she lives with her parents (Fa Zho and Fa Li) and her paternal grandmother (Fa Zhou's mother).
• In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, we see Mario's household and family, which consists of him, his parents, his uncles and aunt, and his grandfather.
• Wish (2023): Asha lives with her mother and paternal grandfather.

Films — Live-Action

• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Potts household consists of Caractacus, his children Jeremy and Jemima, and his father.
• 99 Homes: Dennis lives with his mom and son in their home, and then later in a tiny motel room.
• Minari: Jacob and Monica live in a trailer in rural Arkansas with their two children, and then Monica's mother comes to live with them from Korea because Monica is extremely lonely.
• Moonstruck. Loretta lives with her mother, father and grandfather. Her brother and sister had moved away, however.
• My Girl: Vada lives with her father and grandmother. Her grandmother dies offscreen before the events of the sequel.
• Radio Days has seven-year-old Joe living with his parents and grandparents as well as his Aunt Ceil, Uncle Abe, Cousin Ruthie, and Aunt Bea. By the end of the film, he also has a baby sister named Ellen.
• Tanguy is about two parents who would like their adult son move the hell out, so they can have their own lives back. He does, eventually, and moves to China, where his in-laws happily take him in.
• Ugly, Dirty and Bad: The Mazzatellas are a very poor family living in a shantytown, and there are four generations of them living all together in a cramped shack. Giacinto and his wife of thirty years are one generation, Giacinto's mother represents the older one, then there are Giacinto's children which number a dozen or so (according to his claims), and then his children's children.
• Yi Yi takes place in the present day, but the grandmother lives in the same flat as the next two generations.

Literature

• The Baby-Sitters Club: The Thomas-Brewers and the Kishis (before Mimi's death).
• A Brother's Price has this as the standard living arrangement. Men move in with their wives, but apart from that, leaving home seems to only happen if the family "splits up", i.e. if one generation of sisters marries two different men.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Charlie Bucket lives with both his parents and all four grandparents.
• Dandelion Wine has the Spaulding boys living in a big house with their parents, grandparents and a few aunts and uncles.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School: After the rent at his retirement home was raised, Grandpa moves in with the Heffleys.
• Heidi: Heidi's friend Peter lives with his mother and grandmother.
• The novel The House of the Spirits, which follows three generations of women who all live in the titular house. Not so much in the film adaptation, which combined two of the women into one character for brevity.
• Moment in Peking depicts a traditional multigenerational Chinese family sharing the same compound.
• The Buendias in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude live this trope. At one point five generations are living together.
• 81 Bourdonplace in The Ruby Red Trilogy is owned by Lady Arista, who lives there with her sister-in-law Madeleine, her daughters Glenda and Grace, and her grandchildren Charlotte, Gwen, Nick and Caroline.
• Eye Contact: For the first five years of Adam's life, he and his mother Cara lived with her parents, until they were killed in a car accident.
• Forst Reach, home of the Ashkevron family in the Last Herald-Mage Trilogy. In books two and three, we have Lord Withen and his wife Treesa, those of Vanyel's adult siblings that are still living at home, and the children of said siblings.

Live-Action TV

• Happens a lot on soap operas, especially telenovelas (Latin American soap operas). Strangely, this trope tends to be used most frequently with more affluent families.
• The Addams Family — In addition to Gomez, Morticia and their kids (Pugsley and Wednesday), there's also Grandmama^note Canon tends to flip-flop on whether she's the mother of Gomez (making her the kids' paternal grandmother) or Morticia (making her the kids' maternal grandmother) and Uncle Fester^note Just like with Grandmama, canon tends to flip-flop on which side of the family that Fester's from—he was initially portrayed as Morticia's uncle (her mom's brother), which would've made him the kids' grand-uncle, but in recent years, he's portrayed as Gomez's brother, technically making him of the same generation as Gomez and Morticia.
• Barney & Friends: Season 1-3 character Kathy mentions that she lives with her mother and grandmother in the second episode "My Family's Just Right for Me".
• The Barrier starts with Hugo, his brother and his daughter moving into Hugo's mother-in-law's appartement.
• Henry and Frank are father and son on Blue Bloods, and share a house which is also the unofficial crash place for Frank's kids and grandkids when they need it (e.g. after Danny's house burned down).
• Castle has Castle living with his daughter and his mother (his daughter's paternal grandmother)
• Dallas : Jock and Ellie Ewing live on their ranch with their two grown sons, J.R. and Bobby, their sons' wives, Pam and Sue Ellen and their granddaughter Lucy from a third son, Gary. In later seasons, both J.R. and Bobby each have a son so there are two more grandchildren living on the ranch.
• Dash & Lily: The high school-aged Lily and her college-aged brother Langston live in a Manhattan apartment with their parents and grandfather.
• Doctor Who: Donna lives with her mother Sylvia and her grandfather Wilf.
• The Crawley family in Downton Abbey develops into one of these by Series 3. With Mary married to Matthew and living at Downton (leaving Crawley House to Matthew's mother), and the Dowager Countess constantly popping in and out from the nearby Dower House, it definitely qualifies.
• Possibly a case in The Goldbergs, as it's never made clear whose uncle Uncle David actually is, but he's clearly the oldest member of the household and occasionally mentions a late wife.
• Jane the Virgin: the title character was already living with her mom and grandma before the series began, and her pregnancy ^note from an accidental artificial insemination, hence the title kicks off the plot.
• The King of Queens sees Doug and Carrie Heffernan sharing the house with Carrie's old and cantankerous father, Arthur Spooner.
• Life With Lucy: At the beginning of the first episode, Lucy moves in with her daughter and her family. At the end of the episode, her son-in-law's father Curtis moves in.
• Money Heist: During the first two seasons, Raquel resides in a shared household with her daughter Paula and her mother Mariví. When they move to vacational places with the robbers afterwards, Raquel gets her own residential place apart from Mariví and Paula, though it's still close to theirs.
• NUMB3RS Charlie and his father Alan share a home. Through part of the show, Charlie is the owner.
• One Day at a Time (2017): A divorced mother living in the same apartment as her mother and two children.
• In the early series of Only Fools and Horses brothers Del and Rodney share their flat with their Grandfather. Following Granddad's funeral, his estranged brother Uncle Albert moves in.
• In Raising Hope: Jimmy lives with his parents and his mother's grandmother. This becomes helpful to him when he unexpectedly becomes a single father and needs help raising his daughter, Hope. Burt and Virginia tried putting Maw Maw in a nursing home, but they wouldn't take someone who was already senile.
• Roseanne becomes this way by the end. We already had Darlene and Becky still living at home with their husbands off and on; when Darlene and David have a baby and are planning to move out, though, the rest of the family agrees that they actually prefer to stay together. Also note that while they don't live there, Roseanne's sister, mom and grandma are frequently around the home too.
  • In the 2018 revival, Darlene and her two children move in with Dan and Roseanne following her split from David. After Roseanne's untimely death in the spin-off series The Conners, Darlene takes it upon herself to fill out her mother's role.
• Both houses on Soap were like this at least part of the time.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine establishes that this is standard for Cardassians, sometimes with four generations under one roof. This is continued from Star Trek: The Next Generation, showing that family is everything to Cardassians.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Ninety Years Without Slumbering", Sam Forstmann lives with his granddaughter Marnie Kirk, who is expecting a baby, and her husband Doug.

Puppet Shows

• Wimzie's House: Wimzie and her little brother Bo live with their parents and grandmother.

Video Games

• Mad TV (1991) features an "average Joe" family, used to visually indicate how much interest there is in your TV programs. Depending on viewership, it's either a single half-asleep grandpa staring at your boring cultural programs or the entire family gathered around The Couch watching the box office hit flick.
• The Sims:
  • The Sims 2 has the Goth household: Mortimer and his two children, adult Cassandra and child Alexander.
  • The Sims 3 has the Sekemoto household, where grandma lives with her son who is a single father; and the Clavell household, where the adult son is still living with his parents.

Webcomics

• Two instances in Kevin & Kell:
  • Kell's mother Elanor moves in with the title couple and their three children after a day-trading mishap wipes her out financially.
  • Dorothy moves in with daughter Danielle and Danielle's husband and son until Dorothy remarries.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • The Water Tribes, with their emphasis on family cohesiveness and unity, have these. Hakoda's household is the primary example, with himself, his wife (before she died), his two children and his mother as the residents.
  • The Fire Nation Royal Family's castle was this, featuring Azulon (while he was still alive), his sons Iroh and Ozai, along with their wives and their children.
  • The Air Nomad temples are a looser example of this trope. They all consider each other their family, holding no biological ties with their blood relatives, and they all participate in raising and taking care of each other.
• As shown in the page image, this is the case of the titular family from The Casagrandes (a Spin-Off series of The Loud House).
  • The adults consist of Carlos, Maria and Frida (Carlos' esposa and Maria's cuñada), and Hector and Rosa (Carlos and Maria's padres and Frida's suegros).
  • The six kids are Bobby and Ronnie Anne Santiago (Maria's hijos through her ex-esposo, Arturo), and Carlota, C.J., Carl and Carlitos Casagrande (Carlos and Frida's hijos).
  • Asides from the humans, there's also the pets Sergio (a Scarlet Macaw) and Lalo (a Bull Mastiff).
• Sam's family from Danny Phantom. Although Sam is an only child, she lives with her parents, Jeremy and Pamela (or "Pam" for short), and her paternal grandmother, Ida.
• The 2017 version of the McDuck-Duck household fits, with the elderly Scrooge, his nephew and later his niece, and his niece's sons all living under one roof.
• Clans of Gargoyles tend to be like this. The London Clan for example has them in age range of the equivalent of nine to nearly 100 years plus some eggs.
• Jade Armor: Lan Jun lives with her father as well as mother starting with episode 25, her grandmother and her great-grandmother in the same household.
• In Rugrats, Grandpa Lou lives with Tommy and his parents until the beginning of the seventh season (in a three-part special that leads into Rugrats in Paris)—Lou moves into a retirement community called "Withering Oaks," where he ends up reuniting with an old girlfriend of his (whom he ends up marrying).
  • In the 2021 reboot, Tommy's home is back to this—he and his parents, Stu and Didi, live with Grandpa Lou.
• Steven Universe: Jenny and Kiki Pizza live with their father and paternal grandmother.
• Zou is one of the more extreme examples, as there are four generations living under the same roof—the titular character lives with his parents, his paternal grandparents and his great-grandmother (it's unknown with side of the family she's from).

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