Do your parents live with you? Would you want them to? Would they want to?

The New York Times has a story about parents moving in to their grown children’s homes to help with child care duties. The story follows the news that Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama’s mother, will be moving into the White House for a trial visit.

What struck me about the Times piece was a comment from an AARP official who said that 25 percent of the American baby boomers that AARP surveyed said they expected to have their parents move in with them, and they looked forward to it.

I’m no baby boomer, but I’ve often thought about whether my parents or my husband’s father will live with us one day. I used to shudder at the idea, but lately I’ve started to reconsider, or at least I did until I asked my mother tonight if she would ever live with me.

“You wouldn’t like it,” she told me. “Your father would drive you crazy.”
“My house would always be clean,” I countered, thinking about how much of a neat freak my father is (and how much I wish I was like him in that regard).
“Yes, and he would probably cook for you, too,” she said, and then, reconsidering her initial comment, suggested I probably would like having my father in my house better than I would like her living in my house (though they are still married, so I would think that it’s a “buy one, get one free” sort of deal).

I rephrased the question to my mother later. “Would you want to move in with me?”
She offered another quick no.
“Well, I would if I needed to, but I just think that you need to have your own family,” she said. “I think it’s hard to have more than two adults living in a house. I think it’s hard enough to have a good relationship with one person … you would be torn between my feelings and (your husband’s) feelings.”

“It’s not that it wouldn’t work, I just think that it would be harder,” she said.

My mother, who retires from teaching this year, is always diplomatic. What she was probably thinking but didn’t say was: “You would drive me crazy, with your lazy mornings, your indecisiveness, and your clean laundry sitting unfolded in the laundry basket for days.”

For the moment, there is no reason for either my parents or Will’s father to move in with us. They are healthy, and I’m at home with my kids, not traveling nonstop for a job, so we don’t need the extra help. And, she’s right, an extra adult in the house all the time right now, when I am home all the time right now, might drive me crazy.

Instead, I’ll just keep a look out for for-sale signs in my neighborhood. I wouldn’t mind having my parents or father-in-law as a neighbor.

Natalie appears Sundays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Natalie at her blog A Day at the Park.