Posted on 08/17/2015 9:28:41 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
While it’s not good for man to live alone, it’s even worse for him to live at home with his parents.
A recent Pew Research poll reveals that though employment is up, the number of millennials living on their own is down. This failure to launch reflects a widespread cultural regression. By returning home after graduation, this generation’s doing more than just perpetuating adolescence. We’re losing at life.
There might be more room for activities at your parent’s house but there’s little room for personal growth. And if being determines consciousness, then you’ll bring your future down with you when you move back into the basement. It’s time to grow up. It’s time to move out.
We Should Love Our Parents Enough Never To Move Back In With Them
Sure, student loans suck. More than our parents, we’ve had to grapple with unrealistic dreams built on unsteady mountains of student debt. But there’s a place you can go when you’re down on your luck and low on your dough. It’s called the YMCA.
If that sounds harsh, imagine asking your old man if you can live in your old room. By moving home, you could save some cash but only at the cost of your character.
Our parents might love us but they don’t like us that much. And they shouldn’t. In civil society, the family exists to foster maturity and prepare offspring for eventual adulthood not perpetual childhood. Taxing their generosity robs them of the investment of their lifetime. Every mother and father wants to provide their kid with a better and brighter future. After two decades of sacrifice—whether they’ll admit it or not—they want a son with a career, not an overgrown boy with a neckbeard. We ought to actualize the potential they’ve poured into us. We should become adults they’re proud of.
Yea Bro, Living at Home Isn’t Cool
Whatever you do though, don’t kid yourself. Living at home is anything but cool and everyone knows it. “Hey girl, want to come back to my parent’s place?” is a line that even Ryan Gosling couldn’t pull off. Winston Churchill once observed that the spaces we occupy end up shaping us. At 22, our mother’s house is turning us back into children. Like continence, literacy, and a job, a place of your own stands as a general benchmark of responsibility. Go find one.
Cutting a rent check is the first big step toward self-reliance. Millennials don’t have to blaze trails, brave the wilderness, or build cabins to make it in the real world. We just need to scout Craigslist for a place, set up direct deposit, and maybe lower our expectations. That first apartment won’t be ideal but it’ll be necessary. More than a roof, it represents an investment in the future.
Tough finances are a burden but they don’t have to be a permanent roadblock. If you’re drowning in student debt and rent breaks the budget, find a roommate, sublease, or couch surf. Do whatever it takes, because to make it in America, you have to make it out of your mom’s house first.
Get Ahead By Betting On Yourself
None of this should discount the difficulty of leaving home. Lord knows my living situation is hardly on fleek. The place exudes a kind of refugee camp chic with makeshift bookshelves made out of milk crates, scrounged furniture, and a few cheap Ikea pieces. Food and clothing present their own challenges. Since graduation a few months ago, I’ve bleached colors and burnt minute-rice; I’ve shrunk clothes and set grease fires. It’s been rough, unpleasant, and always worth it.
Coming and going each day reminds me that I’m on my own. It’s not a great feat. An apartment’s just the most approachable manifestation of day-in and day-out maturity. Stupid or smart decisions determine whether the rent gets paid or if the lease is lost. If disaster strikes, no one’s coming to the rescue. The world won’t pause for me to get back on. And those four walls remind me, that for better or worse, I’m an adult and that each day my mundane adventure is trying to live like one.
I wouldn’t have it any other way. A cheap apartment produces perseverance; soggy ramen noodles, character; and an on time rent check, hope—hope that I can build an adult life. The goal is simple. You want your dad to say, “That’s my boy. He’s got a place of his own.”
As a generation, we can live at home and languish or we can move out and make our on way. It’s time we take a risk. It’s time we bet on ourselves. If we don’t, no one else will.
Lots of “job competition” coming in from south of the border—never mind competition for “bennies” too. Cloward/Piven is reaching critical mass.
I think kids should stay at home until they marry.
I agree with you! The family took care of each other, in the old days. These days Gov’t pays for I home care givers from SEIU. Grandparents were there to help with children. This article is fish wrapper!
You have to have jobs to leave the nest.
It is probably that those that are losing at life, end up living at home. Rather than living at home results in losing at life.
People used to stay at home until they married. And even then they sometimes lived with parents or relatives in the early years of marriage. Throughout most of history, extended families lived together or nearby and shared resources. It’s only in recent times that people (in the West) have been expected to be fully independent of extended family. Of course, people married younger and didn’t stay in school until age 26 either. Many left school at an earlier age and apprenticed themselves to learn a trade.
Also, people used to double or triple up in rented accomodations or live in boarding houses (which are banned now). There were more housing options.
Nowadays you’re expected to finance living alone in an apartment and finance your own personal transportation. Not easy to do on a low income.
Adding in mountains of debt before you are even ‘launched’ is a recipe for disaster.
Somebody told me that a friend of theirs,adult son still lived with her. He is 30 something, has had no focus in life, has had odd jobs but never a career goal.
Well, this adult son got the shock of his life when his mother decided to sell the house and move to an apartment on her own!!!
So this adult son who had failed to launch had to scramble to find a place to.live......
Some young people might move back in with parents to save money and get established in life. But some young people take advantage of a situation and their parents generosity, and as a result never quite grow up.
If they married at 20, 21, or 22 I would agree. But the average first marriage is now at age 28 and rising.
The problem you are describing isn’t that the kids are living with their parents, it’s that their parents are not doing their jobs and are letting them sit idle.
An adult child living at home should be required to do their share. Heck a child of ANY age should have responsibilities that are age appropriate.
One night, when she had a night shift and got home late, Dad was waiting up for her. She scolded me and reminded me she was an adult now. I just told her my "Dad" wiring couldn't adapt to that.
We were genuinely sorry when she got a job out of state and moved away. Of course, she got married shortly thereafter and makes it back the most regularly of any of our kids to visit. Doesn't hurt that she has a nice husband who helps me with physically demanding outdoor projects and a cute little granddaughter too. But we never regretted her time at home.
We recently gave our Petit Grand piano to our daughter and our grandsons. We had to ship it to NY, which was an experience in itself.
The piano movers told my daughter a funny story about an older lady in Milwaukee whose piano they’d moved the week before. She had 4 children who’d studied piano growing up and who were all living back home as adults. She announced that she was giving her grand piano to the first one who showed her a signed lease and moved out. The youngest quickly went out, rented an apartment, and returned with the lease. He got the piano. I guess the others are still in their childhood home.
The kids should grow up and found their own families, but the idea that we’re all supposed to be gypsies trekking thousands of miles away from friends, family, and social support is a way only to stupidly fatten someone else’s bottom line. Heck, even the gypsies stick together.
No, while kids should strive to have their own places, they should also strive to find ways to buy rather than rent and in general embrace a savvier less dissolute way of life.
Only since the 60’s have we had wedges driven between the generations. We need to go back to a place of greater intergenerational cooperation (otherwise workers will self-extinct and all you’ll have left will be SNAP recipients, at least until we are invaded... oh wait!) Mom and dad need to help out and do things like watch the babies and keep any money in the family.
A sister of mine and her husband has her daughter and her husband living with them for years. I bet she is charging rent as our parents temporarily moved in when they moved back to the state and were charged $800 a month! Her parents! (they had helped them buy the house in the first place).
A cousin of mine has 2 sons in their early 20’s still living at home with them only having temp jobs. The two of them are socially awkward. They are smart (computers and creating games) but they need to move out.
The best thing I ever did was move out of state and drive cross the country. It opens your eyes to how big this country is and the opportunities.
There are numerous adult sons and daughters in our neighborhood that are still living at home. Many of them in their 30’s and hanging around long after they should have struck out on their own. But living with mommy and daddy allows them to drive new cars, live way beyond their income, and avoid the responsibilities associated with becoming an independent, mature person.
In many respects, these parents are weakening, rather than strengthening, their children. Life is filled with many challenges, disappointments, and sacrifices. The sooner you learn to deal with them and learn how to prosper on your own the better. It’s called growing up.
Self inflicted problem ...
Jobs are hard to come by and I heard yesterday that rent is at an all-time high. How much did your first car cost? How much was gas, insurance, etc. How much did medical and dental cost? The cost of living is exponentially higher now than when many of us were branching out. The reality today is that many young people, despite their best efforts, simply cannot earn enough dollars to sustain an independent lifestyle.
Or at least until they become financially secure. There is no benefit to holding onto a student loan any longer than you have to.
I see lots of parents who enjoy keeping their millennials in perpetual childhood.
Somehow mothers seem to really handicap their sons, seeing them as irresponsible and so doing every last single thing for them. Thereby, along the way, assuring perpetual irresponsibility.
But their so handicapped perpetual babies are certain never to leave them emotionally alone in old age.
I was making about $6/hr. in 1983 after I got out of the service. This article is squarely aimed at college graduates. If they’re making under $15/hr. they’re doing something wrong. And I lived in a crappy 1/1 apartment below the ground level and drove old cars I bought for cash. Nobody promised you a mansion and a BMW immediately after getting out of school.
Exactly. IMO it’s criminal, but clearly it’s what the parents want.
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