In Spain, 38% of single-parent families with children live with grandparents due to rising housing costs, according to a Funcas report. This trend has increased 33% since 2020, driven by the pandemic and housing shortages. Cases like Ainhoa Navarro's in Valencia highlight struggles with mortgages and family reconciliation.
The Funcas report 'Los hogares intergeneracionales en España: una radiografía de la convivencia entre abuelos y nietos' shows that in 2024, 16% of Spanish households with children included at least one grandparent, a 33% increase over four years since 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For single-parent families, this figure reaches 38%, tripling the 12% for two-parent families. Housing access is a key factor, as Spaniards must allocate nearly eight full salaries to obtain it, worsened by job instability and lack of reconciliation services.
Ainhoa Navarro, 50, a single mother by choice of a nine-year-old daughter in Valencia, lives with her 76-year-old mother Marisa. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, Navarro left her job as a healthcare worker and now lives on a pension. 'While the world was fighting a bug, I was fighting another', she recalls. Her mother has been essential in caregiving: 'She took care of me, my home, and my child'. In Valencia, 13.3% of households with minors under 16 are multigenerational, and rent hit 13.6 euros per square meter in September 2024, a 65.9% rise from 8.2 euros in 2020, per Idealista. Navarro pays 1,000 euros in rent and cannot get a mortgage: 'With one salary they don't give you mortgages, the numbers don't add up'.
Funcas attributes the rise to post-pandemic reconfigurations and failures in labor markets and public care: 'Where the labor market, housing access, or public care offerings fail, families turn to the older generation as essential support'. Navarro, a member of the Asociación Madres Solteras por Elección (AMSPE), criticizes the lack of aid: 'Without my mother I couldn't maintain my home or anything... I don't know any'. She links this to 30.5% child poverty in the Valencian Community. The Canary Islands lead at 31.4%, followed by Galicia (26%) and Ceuta (25.7%); the lowest are La Rioja (8.1%), Basque Country (8.7%), and Extremadura (8.9%). The report highlights welfare system limits, delegating to family solidarity: 'This reality not only reveals households' adaptive capacity but also the limits of a welfare system that delegates much of its function to family solidarity'.