Since the great recession, there has been an upturn of millennials still living at home with their parents. This is particularly true within Latino/Hispanic homes.

But, what's less explored are the number of grandparents now living with their children and grandchildren.

There are 65 million grandparents in the nation, and 10 percent (nearly 7 million) of those grandparents live with at least one grandchild. The latest U.S. Census figures, compiled in a study titled Coresident Grandparents and Their Grandchildren: 2012, confirms these numbers. That said, elderly grandparents and young relatives don't necessarily happily share meals at dinner time, because that isn't the reality of today's multigenerational household.

The report communicated that most grandparents who live with children and grandchildren under the age of 18 are fairly young, between the ages of 50 to 59 and less educated. They're likely a divorced or widowed grandmother, and they often move in with their offspring because they're experiencing money issues. "Coresident grandparents" are more likely to have experienced poverty or be rendered unable to work due to disability or illness, compared to those who do not live with their grandchildren. And coresident grandparents living in parent-maintained households were frequently older, and likelier to be divorced or widowed, compared with those living in their own household.

Black, Latino or Asian grandparents are the most likely to live with their young grandchildren. However, contrary to popular stereotypes, Latinos do not exhibit the highest occurrence of family togetherness. Less Latino children live with their abuelos than black and Asian children living with their grandparents.

Just 7 percent of non-Hispanic whites live with a grandparent, compared to 12 percent of Hispanic children and 14 percent of Asian and black children who live with a grandparent in a multigenerational home. Those numbers aside, multigenerational households aren't unorthodox among Latino families, who have fostered an image of Latino closeness and intimacy that's deeply embedded in the culture and recognized by marketers and politicians alike. But the reality of multigenerational living arrangements is that it often has more to do with necessity and supporting one another during bad times, rather than a need to preserve family togetherness.

The report exposes the complexity of household dynamics that involve grandparents and grandchildren and offers a more complete picture of households that contain grandparents and grandchildren. Nearly 3 percent of all households hold grandparents and grandchildren and more than 60 percent of those households were maintained by a grandparent.

Also, about 2.7 million grandparents are "grandparents caregivers," primarily responsible for the children under 18 years old living with them. About 45 percent of children in grandparent-maintained households lived with only a grandmother compared with 65 percent in parent-maintained households. Two years ago, there were 2.7 million grandparents in the U.S. raising their grandchildren, and one-third of grandparents who were responsible for their grandchildren were raised without parents present. Both in 1992 and 2012, 20 percent of children who lived with a grandparent had no parent present.

In 1970, 3 percent of children lived in grandparent-maintained households, and that number has doubled to 6 percent in 2012. White, non-Hispanic children and Hispanic children had the largest increases when it came to living with grandparents between 1992 and 2012, but they were still less likely to live with a grandparent than were Black or Asian children.

Related