I get this question more often than I’d like to admit – usually asked with a polite smile and a pause that says more than words ever could: “Your parents live with you? And your sister?”
It’s not said outright, but it’s there – in the tilt of the head, the slow blink, the silence that follows as they wait for an explanation.
“Yes,” I say, “we all live together.”
And when they ask why, I answer, why not?
It’s funny how one of the most natural, deeply human things can seem almost radical. In a world that celebrates independence and mobility, cohabiting with aging parents can be treated like a decision that requires justification – like you’ve somehow failed to launch. But no one has ever given me a convincing argument for why my sister and I should send our parents off into the final chapter of their lives alone, away from the very people they once raised with fierce, relentless care.
Yes, we are Indian. And yes, we grew up watching our parents take care of their parents. That legacy matters. But this isn’t about culture. Not really. It’s about conviction. It’s about clarity. It’s about the kind of love that doesn’t look like affection – but looks more like logistics, groceries, shared calendars, and showing up again and again.
It’s easy to say it’s “just how we were raised,” but that would be skimming the surface. This isn’t cultural obligation. It’s personal understanding. It’s the simplest math in the world: they were there for every uncertain, unsteady, exhausting step of our beginning. Why wouldn’t we be there for theirs?
If you think about it biologically, human children are born more helpless than almost any species on Earth. A baby giraffe walks within hours. A human baby? Good luck. We can’t feed ourselves, move ourselves, or protect ourselves. We are needy, and we stay that way for a long time. There’s no real equivalent in the animal kingdom for the eighteen-year (minimum) commitment it takes to raise a human child.
And that’s just the baseline. My mother carried me through hardship I can only imagine. She worked long, grueling hours while pregnant, birthed me at home with no medical assistance, and then – like so many mothers – woke up the next day and got back to work, this time with a newborn in her arms. When I ask her how she managed, she simply says, “Because you were mine.” As though that alone explains the strength. And maybe it does.
Years of sacrifice followed. Sacrifice, by the way, is often mischaracterized. We romanticize it or dismiss it. But real sacrifice isn’t cinematic. It’s buying your child new clothes while quietly mending your own. It’s skipping meals to make sure they have enough. It’s walking them to school with a smile while carrying the weight of financial worry no child should ever see. It’s putting every future plan on hold so your children can have a better shot at theirs.
And if I have to explain why I choose to share a home with my parents now, in their older age, I suppose I’d ask this in return: when did we decide that independence meant detachment? When did we become so focused on carving out our own lives that we forgot the people who carved us into being?
There’s something deeply unsettling about how we talk about aging. We prepare for it the way one might prepare for an inconvenient guest – something to manage, mitigate, or outsource. We build lives with floor plans that no longer leave room for the people who built us. Aging is something we brace for, like a storm – rather than something we witness, with reverence.
And that’s where the idea of relational wealth comes in. In management and leadership theory, we often talk about social capital – the invisible web of relationships and mutual trust that powers organizations and movements. Relational wealth is that idea extended into our homes, our families. It’s the belief that the bonds we nurture over time – across generations – are not liabilities, but assets. Living with my parents isn’t a burden. It’s a form of wealth. It’s the wisdom of lived experience, the softness of shared history, and the quiet reassurance of being part of something bigger than just yourself.
The business world talks a lot about long-term investments. About compounding returns. But perhaps the greatest long-term investment any of us will ever make is how we treat the people who once treated us like the center of their world – when we couldn’t walk, speak, or survive without them.
There’s a moment in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, where he describes the “seven ages of man,” and the last of them – old age – is described as “second childishness.” It’s a return, he says, to the beginning.
And maybe that’s the most honest way to see it. If old age is childhood revisited, shouldn’t love be revisited too? Shouldn’t care? Shouldn’t patience?
We often confuse living together with dependency, as if one automatically drains the other. But in truth, co-living with parents in their older years isn’t about giving up your freedom. It’s about expanding your definition of it. It’s about understanding that autonomy and community can co-exist. That responsibility doesn’t shrink you – it refines you.
We also need to challenge this persistent myth that adulthood means doing everything alone. Hyper-individualism is exhausting. And it’s not even working. Rates of loneliness are rising. Intergenerational homes aren’t just emotionally fulfilling – they’re practically brilliant. Shared expenses. Shared childcare. Shared stories.
There’s something undeniably powerful about being able to gather around a dinner table with people who remember your past, live in your present, and care about your future.
So when someone asks me why I live with my parents, I don’t launch into explanations. I don’t hand out cultural references. I just smile and say, “It works for us.”
And it does.
Because they were there when I needed them. And now, I get to be here when they need me—not out of duty, not out of guilt, but out of gratitude.
That’s not an arrangement. That’s not a compromise. That’s a privilege.
And if that makes me different, I’ll take it.
Because in a world constantly asking why, sometimes the most powerful answer is still –
why not?