Day: August 14, 2025

• Living with family was a familiar part of growing up for me.
• When my in-laws suggested we buy a house together, I didn’t think the idea was crazy.
• Multigenerational households have quadrupled since 1971, per data from Pew Research Center.

When my in-laws suggested halfway through my pregnancy that we all buy a house together, the idea didn’t seem like the most outrageous thing in the world.

Growing up, I usually lived in some form of a multigenerational or multifamily household, as did may of my family members. One of my aunts lived with me, my mother, and brother for a time. After she had her son, she went to live with my grandmother and great-grandmother.

When I went to art school, the deal my dad made with me for footing the bill was that I would move in with my grandmother. Living with extended family has always been a part of my life.

Living this way was was practical

While in school, me, my aunt, two of her kids, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother all lived in one house. Eating together, cooking for one another, and waiting an inordinate amount of time waiting to use the bathroom was expected. Ask anyone in this type of household, someone is always waiting to use the bathroom.

But our house was just one of millions of families living with their parents and adult children, cousins, brothers and sisters, or grandparents and their grandchildren.

According to the Pew Research Center, there were 59.7 million U.S. residents who lived with multiple generations under the same roof as of March 2021 — a number that has quadrupled since 1971.

I’ve tried to live alone, but it never lasted long

As a 20-something in the aughts, I was so excited to be in my very own apartment. But then the Great Recession of 2007 happened, and I was right back under my mother’s roof along with my brother and a family friend who had been couch surfing.

Now, here I am many years later, living in yet another multigenerational household with my husband, our daughter and my in-laws. It’s going well so far.

There are many benefits to living with family

Living in close proximity to our family has afforded us many benefits, like allowing our toddler to see her grandparents every day.

Occasionally, one of our families cooks and we all have dinner together. If one household is out of cheese, wine or bread, surely the other has some cheese, wine or bread to spare. When my in-laws dishwasher broke, they lugged all their wares upstairs to use ours. Now that our dishwasher is out of commission, we lug all dishes downstairs to use theirs. Whatever issues one of us faces usually works out because our support system is a little bigger than many. “It’s Shangri La,” as my father-in-law likes to put it.

For us, living this way was a choice. No one was ill or unemployed. But when there has been a job loss or expensive home repairs are needed, we’ve been able to stay afloat.

I think another reason our arrangement has worked for us so far, is that there is a degree of separation. There’s literally a door that separates us. I think the door and the ability to have separate bathrooms and kitchens has really carried this whole thing forward more than anything else. I’m half-kidding of course. But having grown up in so many versions of the multigenerational households, I’ve spent a lot of time in closed quarters where there wasn’t that extra bit of privacy. I think it’s made all the difference.

• Ukraine is getting Western help to train its soldiers for the brutal fight against Russia.
• Many of the trainers have not been in a fight like that, the operation head acknowledged to BI.
• He said the training combines Ukraine’s experience with NATO doctrine to make the best preparation.

Western instructors are teaching Ukrainian troops how to fight a war they’ve never fought themselves, but it works, officials say.

More than 56,000 Ukrainian troops have been trained by Western allies under the UK-led Operation Interflex since June 2022, giving Ukraine’s soldiers the skills they need to survive and fight in Europe’s biggest land war since World War II.

Strangely, many of the Ukrainian troops who come to training arrive straight from the front lines — fresh from trench assaults, drone strikes, and days under artillery fire — while some of the instructors have never fought in a war like the one they came from.

Col. Boardman, commanding officer for Operation Interflex, told Business Insider that the UK’s Ministry of Defence is well aware of this unusual dynamic.

Far from being a disadvantage, he said, the mix of Western warfighting doctrine and Ukrainian battlefield experience produces tactics that are better than either side’s knowledge alone.

“I’m conscious of our need to have credibility even though we may not have up-to-date combat experience of this type,” he said.

“But I don’t see that as a disqualifying factor, if you like, because I think we do have the institutional credibility and expertise that what we’re teaching is genuinely valued, not only at the top end of the Ukrainian military, but right all the way down through to those who actually go through the training.”

A different type of war

The West hasn’t fought a major war against a powerful, industrialized military in decades. Most NATO combat experience in recent memory comes from the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Western forces enjoyed air superiority and faced smaller, less-equipped adversaries. Some Interflex trainers weren’t even in Iraq or Afghanistan, having joined after those conflicts ended.

Ukraine is battling one of the world’s largest militaries in a grinding, high-casualty war with no control of the skies. Russia’s relentless artillery fire, missile strikes, and widespread use of drones have reshaped the battlefield in ways NATO has not faced for generations, or in some cases at all.

For years, Western militaries were heavily focused on counterinsurgency skills while maintaining a theoretical capability for large-scale war. Boardman acknowledged this, while saying the UK did not lose the capability for major operations: “I think naturally you do shape yourself for the moment.”

Now, Boardman said, there’s a renewed focus on combating a well-armed foe. That has meant dusting off tactics such as trench warfare and learning as much as possible from Ukraine’s front-line soldiers about emerging threats like exploding drones.

A win-win scenario

Boardman said Ukrainian soldiers bring “a lot of valuable military experience” to the training. That experience often challenges NATO’s best practices and leads to adjustments.

The Western officials and instructors behind Interflex are “approaching it with a humility of approach that allows us to provide our opinions and our ideas and our teaching, but also learn from some of the feedback that we get,” he said.

For example, when learning casualty evacuation, Ukrainians sometimes reject NATO’s extraction techniques, explaining that in their war, it may be safer to wait until nightfall to move the wounded. In trench warfare lessons, Ukrainians sometimes correct their instructors based on tactics they used in combat just weeks earlier. Those insights are then incorporated into the training.

Both sides are learning from the training exercise. Key lessons from Ukraine are feeding directly into Western planning as militaries across Europe prepare for the possibility of a future conflict with Russia. And NATO allies are sharing their skills with Ukraine. Finland, for example, brings forest-warfare expertise to Interflex that Ukraine lacks.

“There’s no question that’s a benefit to the Ukrainians,” Boardman said.

He explained that there is a “really rich mutual understanding going on” and that the training program “ends up with the sum being much greater than the parts, which is really valuable for us.”

Ukraine’s expertise with drones, particularly the first-person-view attack drones, has been especially valuable, especially considering the changes to the operating environment since Iraq and Afghanistan.

Boardman said that while the UK has drone operators and instructors, “we are not currently at war, so we are not developing them at the same pace that the Ukrainians are.”

He said Ukraine is “very good at sharing the understanding with us,” which also helps the UK and other Western militaries.

Bracing for more war

Boardman said he recognizes that it can be a bit “uncomfortable” for trainers to teach trench assaults without having actually done it personally, but the West has a lot of institutional credibility from past military operations and combat successes that give “us license, effectively, to do this training.”

Ukraine, he said, is asking for the training. “We’re not just asking them to come and be trained here; it’s Ukrainians who are asking us to do it.”

Exit interviews show how much Ukraine values the training, Boardman said: “The overriding theme is one of gratitude for the training that they’ve been a part of.” Highlighting the value of the training, Ukraine has requested that it be extended.

He said Ukraine places a lot of value on NATO and Western military doctrine because while “they may have the current battle experience,” the Ukrainians “know that we have some of the history, some of the hard-won experience of this in the past.”

But again, the West also sees tremendous value in learning from this war and the Ukrainian experiences.

“This isn’t a completely charitable activity,” Boardman explained. “There is a big benefit to us in doing this that we are learning an awful lot from our engagement with this war.”

Boardman said that information and tactics from Ukraine are fed to the UK and allies.

The West wants insights from this war, with many European allies fearing Russia may attack elsewhere on the continent. They are closely watching Ukraine to see what kinds of tactics and weaponry they need to adopt for such a conflict.

“We want to teach them as much as we can,” Boardman said of the Ukrainians and the war against Russia. “We also want to learn from it so we can benefit ourselves.”