Families Find Bringing It All Together Often a Happy Solution

Although many cultures embrace family togetherness, contemporary American views urge family members to “be on their own” and “live their own lives.”

But families increasingly seem to be giving togetherness another try--pushed in some cases by the high cost of housing and a strained economy.

Although the decision to move close to the family in hard times is often a practical one, it can also stem from the desire for emotional closeness. For a number of North County families, it has been a combination of the two.

Aside from saving costs, extended families who live close together seem to benefit psychologically, according to Kenji Ima, professor of sociology at San Diego State University.

In many cultures, families intentionally live near each other to create a support system.

Sharing family space doesn’t necessarily mean cramped quarters or all living under the same roof. It often does mean that three generations will need to work out the details of living together, sorting out the attendant benefits and annoyances.

Just as the dynamics of each family are unique, so are the arrangements.

William and Mariana Laird of Valley Center built their dream home with enough space around it for all six of their adult children to build. Lexie Randall and her husband lived all over the country before they built a home on the Escondido farm where she grew up and her parents still lived. When Dorothey Downing’s husband died, she invited her daughter and her family to share life in her 5,000 square foot home--an arrangement still working 12 years later.

Here’s how three compounded families have worked things out:

Like spokes of a wheel

It’s the retirement home William and Mariana Laird have dreamed of for years: 4,600 square feet of hacienda-style living space in the rolling hills of Valley Center. Burnt adobe walls, open beams, a brick fireplace, and a wrap-around porch that gives the couple clear views of . . . their children’s homes?

The Lairds will acknowledge that they’ve veered a bit from the contemporary norm. Not many parents, after all, would buy 31 acres of undeveloped land and invite their six grown children to become neighbors.

Bill and Mariana started looking for property to build what they call a “family compound” in 1979 after seeing their Escondido neighbors live in a similar situation.

“We figured if it worked for them, it can work for us,” said Bill, who with his wife is retired from landscape maintenance and a catering business. “Besides, our children were paying astronomical mortgages; we thought ‘if we can help them out--why not?”

The couple set their sights on the Valley Center property, but quickly found that the state does not always make family togetherness easy. A piece of property split more than four ways is considered a subdivision, and requires streets and the like.

By luck, the brother and sister owners of the land decided to sell the property as two lots in 1982: four parcels already divided on each lot. The Lairds had found the site for their family compound.

The couple’s home sits in the center and highest point of the property. “We picked our lot first seeing as how we did foot the bill,” laughed Mariana.

Daughter Robin, and sons Shannon and Bill have parcels 300 yards down the hill. To the front of the “main” house are future homesites for sons Steve and Ross, and daughter K.C.

A leftover 11-acre parcel will serve as a common area with a soccer field, swimming pool, sand pile for volleyball, “lots of pigs, a steer or two, goats to eat the grass and poison oak, and geese “ ‘cause they’re good watchdogs,”Mariana said.

Shannon and his wife, Margaret, recently sold their Escondido home. They and sons Brandon, 12, and Travis, 10, will live in a trailer on their homesite until their four-bedroom 3,000-square-foot home is complete.

Robin and her husband, Leon Engle, will start to build their 2,300-square-foot home before summer. K.C. hopes to build “sometime soon.”

For Shannon, becoming neighbors with his parents also means being able to build his dream home in expensive Southern California.

“My house owned me, and it was not even the house I wanted to be in,” said the independent contractor. “Now I can do other things besides pay my mortgage.”

“And the quality of this house will be much greater--we’ll be doubling the size of our living space (from 1,500 to 3,000 square feet),” said Shannon, sipping coffee in the enormous kitchen in his parents’ house.

Of course it helps that Shannon and his siblings are all hands-on home builders. Shannon, Steve and Bill are contractors, K.C. is in the septic tank business, and Robin, a costume designer, acted as interior decorator for her parents’ home.

In today’s culture, where it seems a family member could have children and turn gray between family visits, will six grown children and their parents be able to coexist peacefully on a day-to-day basis?

“We all have our little disagreements, but we always get over problems quick,” answered Mariana. “And we respect each other. They know that if I’m having a party, for instance, they’re not necessarily invited.”

“I was the one who always lived away from the family,” said Robin. “But after my husband was laid off, we moved back home (from Arizona) with my parents until we got on our feet--it made me realize how nice it is to have family nearby to count on.”

And now, with a flexible home business, Robin spends part of every day at her parents’ house, and talks to her brothers and sisters nearly everyday.

Shannon and Robin both see the family compound as a way to give their own children the big family atmosphere the Laird children know so well.

“I grew up with six of us kids, but most of us had only two or three kids ourselves,” Shannon said. “It will be fun for the kids to have cousins to play with.”

“The cousins are real protective of each other,” Robin added.

Shannon’s house plans don’t include a living room, just a family room. Family gatherings will likely be held at his parents’ house, or “the main house,” he said, glancing at Mariana.

Mariana and Bill seem ready to enjoy anything but a quiet retirement. The dining room table looks like something from a banquet hall, with 30 chairs and ornate chandeliers.

The couple has devoted an entire room, called “The Galleria,” to family photos. “We’ve had two parties, and this was the most popular room in the house; everyone loves to look at family pictures,” Mariana said.

You can keep ‘em down on the farm

After living throughout the country with her husband Jim, then an Air Force pilot, Lexie Randall knew exactly where she wanted to live: on the sprawling 43-acre Escondido farm on which she had grown up.

Her mother and father still lived in the simple frame house, which had grown larger with her father’s penchant for adding on rooms. Her younger brother, Bud Nack, had moved onto the property with his family a few years earlier. So in 1972, the Randalls built their three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home there.

Lexie’s mother, Bernice Nack, widowed since 1979, now lives at the foot of the property. Just up the driveway, Bud, his wife and two children, and Lexie and her husband--their children now grown--live within shouting distance of each other.

For Lexie, the decision to return to Escondido had less to do with living in Southern California than with the opportunity to have her children grow up around grandparents.

“I grew up with my grandparents living across the street,” said Lexie, who with Jim owns a square-dance apparel store in Escondido. “My grandmother was so interesting and full of life--she was once ‘Jubilee Queen’ in Escondido--I enjoyed being around her.”

“I think it’s important for children to have an older influence in their lives, someone who really knows life,” she said. “My parents were typical grandparents to my kids; my mother would bake cookies and my grandfather would take the kids around on a tractor.”

Apparently it’s a give-and-take relationship. “Since my husband died, it has helped me tremendously to have my children so nearby,” Bernice said.

Except of course, Bernice joked, the extra chore of feeding Bud’s cow that seems to wander onto her property.

Bud said the key to families living together harmoniously is to know when to leave each other alone.

“We see each other every day, just going in and out of our houses,” said Bud, who works at the City of Escondido’s water filtration plant. “But we don’t always have to run over and talk.”

Some families, Bernice said, could not live so close because of petty family issues.

“Some families are jealous of each other, about what one another have,” she said. “They wouldn’t want everyone knowing they’re having financial difficulties or other problems.”

For the past few years, for example, financial conditions have forced the family to curtail their normally elaborate Christmas gifts, Lexie said.

“We just make a joke about it: everyone goes to the 99-cent store,” she said, pulling out a picture of their last family gathering. “And we go real heavy on the food.”

Getting along under the same roof

Twelve years ago, Dorothy Downing found herself alone in a 5,000-square-feet, 6-bedroom hilltop home with a pool and 5/8-acre yard.

Her husband had died and she did not want to leave the place he had always referred to as “everyone’s home base.” Downing decided to invite her daughter and son-in-law, Patricia and Jim Aikman, and their two boys to come share her Escondido home with her.

Today, her grandsons--now 23 and 25--have opted to continue living in the house with the rest of the family, although they now pay rent. Jim’s niece, Joyce, 30, recently moved in, too. It’s nothing, Jim said, for family meals to include 12 pork chops and an entire box of rice.

“I’m really happy this way,” said Dorothy. “I would have lost this house. Their dad would have been thrilled to see us now.”

Housework, laundry, and cooking is handled by “whoever is home,” Jim said. Lately that someone happens to be him, he said, since his construction business has been slow. His two sons generally head up the yard work on the weekends.

For the Aikmans, living in the Downing home has meant enjoying one of Escondido’s nicer neighborhoods without the high cost.

Jim said there are the few obvious downfalls: a family member slacking on housework, a lack of privacy. But most problems can be worked out, he said.

“We all like to watch different television shows--Joyce, ‘Stephen King;’ Pat, mysteries; me, history; and Dorothy, nothing violent--not even the news,” he said. The solution: “We finally all got our own television sets.”

And he and Patricia plan weekend getaways to compensate for the loss of privacy.

Their situation works well, Dorothy said, because they are “a very calm family.”

“We can be having 100 people over Saturday night, and Saturday morning we’re just sitting around playing cards like any normal day,” she said while sweeping the kitchen floor. “There is a real bond here,” added Jim, folding laundry. “We may be madder than hell at each other, but we’d never let it leave this house.”