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‘How many grandparents can say they get to hold their grandchild every day?’
In Atlanta, Carolyn Martinez, 65, lives in a household spanning four generations – and a lifelong friendship. Her 90-year-old mother, who has lived with her for more than 40 years due to various disabilities, shares the house with Martinez, 65, her adult daughter, aged 25 and her granddaughter, aged three months. “My mum has lived with me literally all my adult life,” she says. “She just wasn’t able to live by herself.”
The household also includes Martinez’s best friend of more than three decades, who originally moved in “for a few months” after a divorce. That was 25 years ago. “I could not have raised my daughter as a single mother without her,” Martinez says. When her friend, now aged 79, was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years after moving in, the arrangement became permanent. “There was no point in her leaving,” she says. “By then she was an integral part of our household.” Her friend is now “Tía” (auntie in Spanish) to her children and grandchildren, a role Martinez says reflects how deeply friendship can function as family.
Earlier this year, Martinez’s daughter moved back home when she became pregnant, adding another generation to the household. “How many grandparents can say they get to hold their grandchild every day?” she says. “It’s a blessing.” While the house can be busy and hectic, it’s also “a lot of fun” and Martinez says having multiple adults around makes life easier emotionally and practically. “There’s always someone to say: are you OK? Is there something you need?” she says. “You don’t have that if you live alone.”
Martinez has always lived this way and can’t imagine doing otherwise. “It can be harder work – or maybe just different work,” she says, particularly when living with friends rather than relatives. But she believes the benefits outweigh the challenges. “It keeps me young and it keeps me connected,” she says. “Living like this keeps us all on a more even keel than any one of us would be alone.”
‘The real thing that’s held us together is how we party’
In rural Germany, Tracey Kelliher, a 48-year-old Irish musician who has lived in Berlin for 17 years, is part of a group of three couples who bought an old farmhouse together despite barely knowing one another. The idea of communal living had been something she had long imagined for the future, but the coronavirus pandemic accelerated the decision. “We really followed our gut,” she says. “I’m a calculated risk-taker – not a lunatic – but this just felt right.” What began as a practical choice, driven by affordability and a desire not to do it alone, quickly became something deeper.
Before committing, however, Kelliher and her girlfriend, Wallis, had serious reservations. “We had a bit of a panic moment,” she says. “My way of dealing with it was: I need more information. I basically needed to see into the future.” It was only after a group conversation, where others acknowledged the scale of the leap, that she felt able to move forward. “They said: this is scary. It’s a scary decision,” she says. “And even if it doesn’t work out, everything’s going to be OK. That was all we needed to hear.”
When they first got the keys, the house had no heating and no running water. “We’d be wearing ski suits indoors,” Kelliher says. “You could tell the temperature by how much you could see your breath.” The group spent their early months chopping wood, tending fires and collecting water together – conditions she describes as unexpectedly bonding. “Even that was kind of team building,” she says. “You become a family really quickly when you’re living like that.” Although she had initially imagined needing strict private space, she found herself loving the intimacy. “The communal way of living was a gift I never knew I wanted.”
What surprised her most, however, was how the group really cemented their bond. She assumed it would be through the renovation or shared artistic interests. “But actually the real thing that’s held us together is how we party,” she says. Evenings around the fire became central to their life together. “We sing together – we didn’t know that beforehand. It turns out we can all sing. We’re doing four-part harmonies, dancing around the fire, with a guitar or music on.” She describes it as the “glue” that turned a practical arrangement into a family. “That’s what solidified us.”
Friends and family, particularly those back in Ireland, were concerned when they heard the idea, she says, often focusing on what might go wrong – even though many admitted they longed for the same thing. “Almost everybody wants it,” Kelliher says. “People know isolation isn’t the way forward.”
The group, who all maintain homes in Berlin and split their time between the city and the farm, put significant effort into making the arrangement work on paper as well as emotionally. Unable to secure a group mortgage, they set up a company and drew up contracts covering everything from inheritance to what would happen if couples broke up. “For me, that’s perfect,” Kelliher says. “It means I don’t ever have to think about it. It’s done.” Over time, formal meetings gave way to more organic decision-making, underpinned by trust. “What makes it work is that we put other people before ourselves,” she says. “There’s no malice – if something comes up, you just say it.”
Now, four years on, the renovation is nearing completion, with separate living spaces and shared communal areas. Their biggest concern, Kelliher says, is not conflict but distance. “Our worry is that we might end up spending less time together – and none of us want that.”
‘My son has grown up seeing that friends can be like family’
In Bristol in the UK, Natalie Bennett lives with her 10-year-old son Ruben and his father, Aaron, her longtime friend with whom she has never been in a romantic relationship. When Bennett fell pregnant unexpectedly, they decided to do things differently and moved in together despite only being friends. “I didn’t want all the parenting to fall on my shoulders as a single parent. I wanted to see if we could do things differently and parent as friends,” Bennett says. After initially living together for two years, they separated households for several years before moving back in together when Aaron’s flatmate decided to move out, and he realised it was going to be difficult to rent alone with a child.
Living together again, she says, has made day-to-day life easier and less isolating. They split bills and childcare, share cooking and bedtimes and even co-own their home, even though their finances remain separate. “It’s not that different from parenting as a couple,” she says. “We get the benefits of that without being in a romantic relationship.” The arrangement has also meant her son no longer moves between two homes and they all get to see more of each other.
Their household is also shaped by friendship. Bennett’s close friend Alex – who previously lived with her son and his father – also lives with them two nights a week, helping with childcare and cooking. His support is invaluable, Bennett says, describing it as the village everyone talks about needing when you first have a child. “My son’s grown up seeing that friends can be like family.”
Bennett, who is doing a PhD on single parents with important non-romantic relationships, believes these kinds of platonic relationships are often undervalued, particularly when it comes to raising children.
Bennett says the biggest challenge has been navigating social expectations. “People assume you’re meant to be hostile if you co-parent or that romance is the only real intimacy,” she says. But living this way has changed how she thinks about family and support. “I think people would be less lonely if they felt able to expect more from their friendships.”
‘We kept noticing little ways to help each other out’
Sara Anastazia, 47, and her friend, Mia, moved in with their respective children when both women were going through a divorce.
“We began sharing a beautiful, big, five-bedroom home in 2023,” says Sara, who is a community strategist and lives in Philadelphia. “It was a temporary six-month let while the owner was abroad. At the time, my kids were 14 and 16, and Mia’s were 12 and five. It was incredibly helpful to live with another mom. We kept noticing little ways to help each other out and support each other, like with the laundry, getting ready for school, food shopping, chores, and sharing meals. Our costs went down tremendously, and we both like to cook, so we would enjoy meals together.”
She says they agreed to some very loose ground rules, but they “trusted each other” and it worked out.
When the owner of the house returned, Sara and Mia, who is a cook and culinary educator, and their families moved out. “We went our separate ways for about a year, but we were still in touch,” says Sara. “Then in August of 2025, we lucked out and found an upstairs-downstairs rental.”
Sara now lives in the two-bedroom downstairs with her son, 19, who stays two or three times a week. Her other son, 16, joins them for dinner from Sunday through to Thursday. Mia lives in the four-bedroom accommodation upstairs with her children, who are 14 and seven. “We share meals together one to two nights a week,” she says. “Our kids know each other a lot better now, and we all made cookies together at Christmas. We share the yard, and this spring we’re looking forward to gardening. Coffee and tea mornings together are my joy. We also hold regular work sessions and have worked together hosting events.” They keep costs down by sharing the internet and car insurance.
Sara and Mia feel very strongly about inspiring other women who may be going through divorce or a relationship break-up.
“It is very important to both of us that we can support women in our local community who are trying to navigate difficult situations,” she says, with them letting women stay when they have the room.
“That is a priority for us. We really want to inspire other women who are trying to extricate themselves [from a relationship] and show the creative ways to do this.”
She says of their living arrangement: “I highly recommend this strategy for anyone exiting a relationship.”
‘I can’t imagine a better place to raise a child’
A conversation Peter Reimer had as an undergraduate with one of their favourite professors about housing cooperatives spurred them to investigate this living arrangement when they moved to Chicago.
“I found one, was interviewed and got a spot,” says Peter, 31, a data analyst. “I have been living in this co-op since 2018, but have moved houses within it. When I moved in, I put down a one-month security deposit and a membership charge of around $35.”
Peter met their partner in 2018 at a co-op dinner. They are married and now have a two-year-old with another child on the way. They live in a 22-person house. For the first year and a half of their child’s life, they had just one room, but now they rent a second room and hope to rent another in the future, though they will have to wait until someone moves out before one becomes available.
“As membership turns over, we can rent more rooms without moving, so it’s a lot less hassle,” says Peter, who adds that the support network of the house has been hugely helpful as they bring up their child.
“My partner works remotely as a therapist, and sometimes she needs exclusive access to the room,” they say. “We are doing some co-parenting with some of our housemates, so we always had somewhere for the kid to nap when my partner was working.”
Their rent gets them a room in the co-op and access to the common spaces. Depending on the size of the room, Peter says you can expect to pay between $500 and $800 a month, which is cheaper than the going rate for studios and one-bedroom apartments in Chicago.
“At the co-op you have a room, access to a large kitchen, a big dining room, common spaces, a bike room and a big yard, but they’re not just yours - you’re sharing them with other people,” they say.
Rent includes the water bill and maintenance of the house. The housemates pay for electricity, heating, internet, their food, a rainy-day fund and an education fund, and the cost for all these is between $200 and $240 a month, depending on means.
In Peter’s house, there is one room with an en-suite bathroom, and the remaining 21 people share six bathrooms. Everyone in the house is expected to do chores, including cooking and cleaning, totalling around five-and-a-half hours a week.
“I can’t imagine a better place to raise a child,” says Peter. “It’s cheap, the common spaces are way bigger than I could afford living on my own, and I love living with people. The community, solidarity, and mutual aid within the house are unparalleled. The only price is more time on meetings and figuring out living compromises, but it’s a small price to pay.”
