Abstract
This article examines the issue of intergenerational cohabitation in the family home. Its primary purpose is to demonstrate that current analysis of internal conflicts in the home is lacking, both in terms of identifying the parties’ interests and characterizing the tensions involved. It focuses on a specific three-way conflict between two parents and their adult child and identifies each of their points of view: one parent who wants the adult child to move out, one parent who wants to continue to share her home with the adult child, and the adult child who wants to remain in the home.
The article builds on rich multidisciplinary literature on the meaning of the home. This focus sheds new light on the conflict in two significant manners. First, the disagreement between the parents is characterized as a struggle between two conflicting visions of the home. Each of these visions reflects a different perception of the home, the family, and intergenerational commitments. Second, the focus on the home allows lawyers to acknowledge the position of the adult child, whose interest is completely not sufficiently taken into account in the conventional analysis.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Hanoch Dagan, Lorna Fox-O’mahony, Pamela Laufer-Ukeles, Anat Rosenberg, and participants of the “Intergenerational Justice” Workshop at the College of Law and Business, and Ramat Gan for very helpful comments and suggestions.
©2014 by De Gruyter
