Joint Families, Roommates & the Myth of Total Independence

Growing up in a Mumbai joint family, I shared a bedroom with my cousin, a bathroom with five people and a living room with everyone’s problems. Privacy was a curtain, not a wall. Years later, standing alone in my one-bedroom apartment in Portland, I felt something unexpected. Not only freedom, but also a small echo of emptiness.

💡 QUICK INTEL

• India Default: Multi-generational homes, shared kitchens, overlapping lives

• West Coast Default: Nuclear families, roommates in your 20s, solo living as a milestone

• Key Tension: Community vs autonomy

• Reality Check: Neither model guarantees support or happiness

How joint families actually function

In a joint Indian family, parents, children, grandparents and sometimes unmarried aunts or uncles share a home or live in stacked apartments. Meals are communal. Childcare, eldercare and financial emergencies are handled together. You rarely eat alone, move house alone or face grief without someone else in the room.

The same closeness that provides safety also wears away at privacy. That argument with your sibling, the salary figure you wanted to keep quiet, the breakup you wanted to process alone, all become topics of general interest. Your decisions about jobs, clothes, friendships and marriage are often treated as shared projects to be debated around the dining table.

West Coast independence: liberating and demanding at once

On the West Coast, moving out is framed as a sign of adulthood. Young adults live alone or share with roommates, dividing rent and chores. The upside is control of your time, décor, diet and guests. The downside is that every bill and crisis belongs to you. If the water heater breaks, there is no uncle who knows a plumber. If you are ill, there is no grandmother making soup in the next room.

For Indian immigrants, this can be both thrilling and tiring. They may enjoy closing a door that nobody will open without knocking. They may also miss grandparents in the next room and neighbours who double as emergency babysitters. In rough times, West Coast Indians lean heavily on chosen families: friends, colleagues and community groups.

Hybrid households: West Coast Indians rewriting the script

In suburbs around Seattle, Portland and San Jose, multi-generational Indian homes are making a quiet return. Parents move in to help with children. Adult kids invite aging parents to spend months or years with them. The floor plans involve guest suites instead of floor mattresses, but the emotional math is similar to what grandparents grew up with.

At the same time, younger Indians raised in North America often set firmer boundaries. They borrow language from therapy and workplace culture, insisting on privacy and individual choice even inside shared homes. Group chats replace some functions of joint living. Family WhatsApp groups deliver real-time commentary, advice and memes, even when everyone sleeps under separate roofs.

“India taught me that independence can be overrated if you have nobody to call at three in the morning. The West Coast taught me that togetherness can be overrated if your life never fully belongs to you.”

— Priya

The Verdict: Do not romanticize joint families as built-in safety nets or dismiss solo living as selfishness. Both are ongoing experiments in how humans share space and responsibility. The sweet spot for many West Coast Indians lies in keeping the emotional village even when the physical house is smaller.