Multiple generations living together?

I never knew my grand parents; they were all gone when I was old enough to remember anything, but they were part of a generation in which grand-parents, parents and kids were able to live and coexist under a same roof, inside a same dwelling. All of my grand-parents and parents came from an agrarian culture and they didn't worry too much about what would come next. People just didn't think that way. It was the glorious time of “one size fits all” and if you didn't like it, you could try your luck elsewhere. Because of their inherent homogenous culture, these people could pile up together inside the same home and put up with each others.

Sure, it wasn't always happy living, but beside the age differences, the group values where pretty much the same. At the same time, you could have transposed my peculiar family situation into some more advanced French communities and would have seen the following structure: The grand-parents could have originally been farmers, the parents part of the industrial revolution and the kids a representation of the information age. Children checking their mobile phone messages under the diner table wouldn't have been too popular with parents and grand-parents, and so would the parent propensity for all-out consumption not seen kindly by the oldest folks...

The more time seems to pass, the more we seemed to be marked by it and become in many instances permanently set in our ways. This observation leads me to affirm that different generations will find it increasingly difficult not just to live in harmony together, but more simply to stand one another!