Posted on 08/02/2005 8:54:52 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
After at least five years of media hype warning that a tectonic societal shift was slowly taking place, it has hit home. Millions of parents who used to worry vaguely about what they'd do when their kids fled the nest are now fretting about the opposite: how to get them to leave.
An estimated 18 million fledgling adults are now out of college but not out on their own. Parental nests are packed with offspring whose costly college educations so far have not equipped them to assume the traditional markers of adulthood: moving out on their own, finding jobs good enough to support themselves and, down the line, establishing their own families.
Reasons for their return
Social scientists have blamed this "boomerang" syndrome on a variety of economic factors: a tight job market, low salaries for entry-level jobs and the high cost of rent and large student-loan debts, making it difficult for many to afford independent living soon after graduation. The trouble is, many parents would like independence from their kids. Many have retired or plan to retire, want to scale down, or want to use what funds they have for their own selfish pleasures after years of putting their children first.
The situation has grown so pervasive not just in the United States — where 25 percent of Americans between 18 and 34 now live with parents, according to the 2000 U.S. census, the most recent available — but also in England and Canada, that marketers have begun targeting families who live with these boomerang kids, and social-service groups have begun advising on how to handle the situation.
DaimlerChrysler autoworkers, for example, received advice on the subject in the April issue of their union magazine, Life, Work & Family. The advice: Meet in neutral territory to discuss the kids' return before they come back home. Set up house rules, including a contract that deals with schedules and expectations.
A Florida newspaper columnist has asked in print (perhaps in jest) that the IRS offer a tax credit to parents whose grown kids have come home to mooch, er, live.
Life stages realigned
Author Gail Sheehy nailed this trend a decade ago in her book "New Passages," in which she realigned the life stages, adding whole new bonus decades based on changing societal norms and increasing longevity. Adolescence and partial dependence on family now linger until the late 20s, she wrote. True adulthood doesn't begin until 30.
In her new alignment, 40 is the new 30 and 50 is the start of a whole new life because by then many children have fled the nest, and their parents can begin to explore new options.
But that last part hasn't exactly worked out the way Sheehy predicted for those whose grown kids have returned.
Harriet Pollon of Malibu, Calif., has witnessed the transition from her vantage point as a long-ago college grad, then mother and teacher. She graduated from Boston University in 1964 and, she says, nothing could have persuaded her to go home afterward. "It just wasn't done in those days."
"I was shocked"
Pollon has four children, three of whom came home to live with her after their college graduations. One stayed for a year. "I thought, 'How convenient.' He's an adult who drives, and I still had a daughter in elementary school, so he could help drive her. I also thought it was not unreasonable to ask him to occasionally baby-sit. He was shocked. It was out of the question, he said. It would interfere with his social life. He refused. And I was shocked."
She tried, but she simply couldn't tune them out, she says, because they are, after all, still her children. "You don't want to be a bad parent, so you get sort of trapped into it."
Serious class difference
Elina Furman, 32, who wrote a book on the subject titled "Boomerang Nation," now lives with a boyfriend in New York after living with her mother and sister for nine years after college. From her interviews with twentysomethings, she says she saw a "serious class difference" in how people reacted to moving home.
"A lot of kids moving into big houses had a sense that 'this is so much better than I could ever get anywhere else.' Some had hot tubs, cars, a lot of privacy." In a small house or apartment, she says, the grown children may share TV time and almost everything else with their parents — a source of tension.
In either case, stigma is still the main problem that shows up in any review of twentysomething message boards. At the Web site www.quarterlifecrisis.com, which focuses on this age group, posted messages reveal angst but also sweetness, sincerity and poignancy. Someone named Melly writes that she is a Boston University graduate about to turn 25 who has moved back home after getting dumped by her live-in boyfriend. She writes that she felt like "a complete failure in front of the entire extended family."
Not spoiled
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park and author of "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens Through the Twenties," says his studies of the generation have shown that they are "not spoiled and self-indulgent. Typically, kids who return home are working very hard. They're not lying around waiting for their parents to order pizza. They're often looking for jobs or employed in jobs that don't pay very well, so they can't live on their own. Many are going to school as well. I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that they're coddled adults."
I see this happening to a bunch of friends, and even my in-laws. The screw-ups come crawling back and are showered with "poor babies" and "no one understands you" and the successful children are forgotten.
My MIL has two of three adult children still living with her(in their 30's/40's!). Both are major screw-ups (one is a single mom of twins who doesn't know who the father is and one is in and out of the house of correction for DUI's and other assorted crimes).
The successful child (my DH) has been married for 23 years, holds an excellent job and raises his children right. Do you think grandma has time for her successful son or grandchildren? She's too busy making excuses and cleaning up messes, both real and emotional.
We're raising our children to understand that a HEALTHY family disintegrates naturally. Kids move out and up and parents enjoy their golden years as a married couple with occasional visits from kids and hopefully grandchildren.
When did this become so bizarre?
Real estate? Why pay 1200 rent when you can get a 200,000 loan at 6% and pay 1500 mortgage?
It is investing, it is commonsense..... don't piss money away.
"where 25 percent of Americans between 18 and 34 now live with parents"
I have a hard time believing those numbers. I know plenty of people with kids that age and none of them live with their parents. My kids are 26 & 28 and they have been on their own since 18 years old.
The problem is most of these kids want to START OUT where their parents ended up. They want a three bedroom house on a half acre in a tony suburb without working for it.
Screw that mindset.
Er, because the rent on a $200K place is going to be more like $750 a month indicating the market is extremely overvalued due to lax credit conditions.
I think rent control is part of the problem. If the local government sets a rate of $1100.00/month for a 2 bdrm apartment and nobody making more than $2100.00(with no children) can live there, what does that leave a single person making $2200.00/month? They can't qualify for an apartment at the rent control rate, much less the apartments not under rent control which will always be nicer and higher. We don't have places for young singles to live. At least not in No. Virginia.
"Typically, kids who return home are working very hard. They're not lying around waiting for their parents to order pizza. They're often looking for jobs or employed in jobs that don't pay very well, so they can't live on their own. Many are going to school as well. I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that they're coddled adults."
You didn't read.
Unfortunately, when you have 30 grand in student loans and are only making $17 grand a year to start out, it is hard to live, even in a crappy apartment.
There is certainly something wrong with a person still at home if they are 30 or over though....I may have to live at home for a year after I graduate and get a job to try to save up some money and pay off loans, but I sure as heck won't do it for more than that.
No sympathy from me for these leeches or their enablers (parents). I left home as a 16 year old high school drop-out and have worked my everlovin' butt off since. These parents should be horsewhipped.
Even during the depression people still made money in stocks, if they knew what they were doing.
Oh, and my father is not some big time wheeler dealer, but he is living proof that it works.
Well, the reporter only quoted parents with bad experiences.
You are right. Right when I get a job out of college I want to start saving up. You can have 500 grand more if you save in your 20's instead of your 30's. Maybe even more.
BTW, my parents say they would want me to come back and live with them after I graduate to help get myself on my feet etc. since my career will not advance in pay very quickly, and I have a lot of loans to pay off.
But, I really do not want to do it more than a year. After that, it is apartment time. Being KS, I can find something that I can live in for 300 a month or so. But, just a year at home would do wonders for building actual savings and paying off loans.
I do think there is something wrong with those who are still with their parents at 30 or even 27 unless you are a med student (unless it is an ethnic community that lives like that or something).
Well, sometimes in areas like No. Virginia or San Francisco, the best thing that young people can do is to move out of the area.
Ditto.
I don't want to live at home after graduation, but I am afraid I may have to for a year or two.
The amount of loans I will have to pay off will be awful, and for probably under 20 grand a year in salary for a year or two.
Agreed...that son is an ungrateful loser. That he would not be willing to help his mom out, who is doing him a favor, is disgusting.
I believe the numbers to a degree. I'm sure they count college students as living at home even tho they're in dorms 10 months of the year. I'd rather see the statistics of those between the ages of 24 and 34.
I believe in sending a kid thru college AS LONG AS they are working towards a degree with a future - marketing, accounting, computer science, engineering, mathematics or sciences, and the like. No feminist studies, english or the like unless they intend to get teacher certification and can get a job teaching the subject.
My father told me I was supported until I was 22 as long as I was at college - then I was on my own no matter the state of my degree. The explicit message was, finish it in 4 years and get a job. I think this is more than reasonable, and intend to do the same with my own child.
I see some very successful "kid living at home" combinations, but most consist of kid starting or carrying on the family business that revolves around a farm, and the kid (and their family) have a separate house or apartment on the property.
You just do not understand that today's college costs are so much worse that even 10 years ago that it is more and more difficult to get by on your own to start out.
If you start out at even a job paying 25 grand, you can do it. Below that, it is really tough.
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