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 think this is largely attributable to the change in college education -- both how many people get it, and what it consists of. It used to be that students were proud and grateful to be accepted at any college. Now the colleges are selling themselves like rock groups, and are grateful when students accept an offer of admission. This is largely due to the explosion of federal and state funding programs which both enable unqualified and/or uncommitted students to go to college, and removed any incentive for colleges to restrict entry to those whose parents are able and willing to pay (with the willingness part often tied to previous academic accomplishment), and to those whose accomplishments and attitude suggest that scholarships extended to them out of the college's own funds, will be more than repaid in one way or another. The modern outlook of college administrations is "we've got to sell ourselves to all these silly kids who've got all that free (to us) money attached to them, to maintain jobs for ourselves and our friends and colleagues, and fund our pet research pursuits." For-credit courses in movie-watching, full-blown majors in nonsense like "queer studies", and an absolute refusal to exercise any control whatsoever over students' lives, are the predictable result of this outlook.
At least half of the traditional age students currently in college don't belong there, and if they're learning anything at all that will increase their employability, they're learning it much more slowly and expensively than they would if they were learning it on the job. The primary purpose of college has shifted from preparing academically strong and committed young adults for specific careers, to a 4-year party-filled postponement of adult responsibilities. And most "students" end up with a pile of student loans for an education that did nothing to increase their earning power, but did raise the financial bar for their independence. Many could have supported themselves if they'd gone to work straight out of high school, but with big monthly student loans payments, and a resume and self-image that screams "over-qualified or at least thinks s/he is" for any job that they're actually qualified for, means many really can't support themselves (at least not while living in reasonably safe neighborhood, which is a line that their financially and physically secure parents usually aren't eager to have them cross).
For the most part, those of us who never sent their kids to college are luckier.
My kids all live on their own, have productive jobs, make their way and they do it with hard work.
Guess College ain't everything it's cracked up to be.
401K, Roth IRA savings etc....you will get a heck of a lot over 40 years just with 1000 per year.
Right on the money (no pun intended). I manage a 25 year-old marketing assistant and he complains about his low salary - low 30's a year - and asked if I didn't think he was worth more.
I told him that up until a couple years ago (I'm 31) I never made more than 32k a year and that if he wants to make more, he will need to prove to me (and upper management) that he deserves it - i.e. by working harder.
For me it's a source of pride to have a family of my own, a good job and a home, but my wife and I spent much of our 20's renting and our first house was a broken down place bought for 70k.
BUT WE LOVED IT, because it was ours and we had worked to get it.
And by the way, someone needs to tell these kids that if they're going to go to college, at least get a degree that can get you a job in the real world. Otherwise all you've got is a 4 year (or more) 'camp' experience with a huge bill to show for it.
I forgot to consider college students. They probably are counted as living at home.
I'll be in a sort of weird situation after I graduate. I will finish my undergrad in December, but won't start law school until the fall. Im planning on continuing to live in my college town and find some sort of work to keep me afloat until I begin on my JD. Moving back home isn't really an option because even though I would be living for free at my parents house, my hometown is tiny town in the Mississippi Delta with very poor job prospects. That and rent at my current residence is only $200/month.
You are right that many are like that.
Frankly, the only luxury I need is high speed internet.
I would have a cell phone, but I would use the prepaid kind and only use it rarely.
Used cars for fine enough for me.
I don't need some fancy place.
But, no doubt many young people expect new cars, nice houses etc. starting out immediately.
Well said.
I have one married child and another who is sharing a house with two other guys. They're learning what it's like to be an adult and they're all maturing a little. They're finding out what work is, that the bills must be paid and that it's up to them what kind of life they lead.
It's called growing up.
bump
I have 2 young adults-
I had them- I will try and make them successful:
1. start them on a IRA or other investment-start now!
2. let them choose the school for a career they may want
(one wants to be a teacher the other -? has not decided)
3. support them with good moral/ethical values.
4. Go over finances WEEKLY- talk about Career and life
choices-cars,rent,clothes etc.
good luck all
"From the article: "a tight job market"
Unemployment has been below 6% for YEARS now"
Exactly! I think what they really mean by "tight job market" is "I can't seem to find a entry level job paying 60k right out of school".
Maybe it had something to do with explaining to them the virtues of which majors (criminal justice, business adminstration, marketing) they should go for in college.
I may live to eat these words, but my kids are welcome to live at home as long as they want.
I blame the parents plain and simple. Most of these kids have never known hardship of any type thanks to their parents who wanted them to have everything that the parents never had. The chickens are coming home to roost.
DO NOT pay off your student loans. That is one of the most common and costly financial mistakes young people make. That is the cheapest debt you'll ever get in your life -- low interest rates to start with and tax deductible to boot. Until you are contributing the legal maximum to tax-deferred retirement plans (i.e. IRA and/or 401k), and have made a 20% down payment on a home of a size and value that you could be comfortable with for the rest of your life, don't even think about making more than the minimum monthly payment on your student loans, and be sure to sign up for the longest available repayment option.
You can always pay it all off in a lump sum, if your reach the above objectives before the scheduled completion of repayment. You CANNOT EVER get back the lost years of tax-free investment growth in retirement plans, and the lost years of equity growth in a home (financed primarily with other people's money, and with tax deductible interest), that will slip away while you're making bigger than necessary payments on your student loans.
Even if you have credit cards with interest rates in the high teens, do the math before deciding whether to pay them of before contributing to whatever retirement plans are available to you. If you've got a total income tax rate of 25%, and your employer will match 50% of your contributions to a 401k, then making the maximum allowable 401k contribution needs to come before paying off the 18% interest credit cards. Do the math!
Financial security comes from having a high net worth, not from having little or no debt. Your net worth will climb much faster if you follow the plan I outlined.
Anybody who is 29 or above still living at home normally has some serious issues or is lazy.
I am extremely, extremely grateful for my parents helping me out through college. I am working two jobs (sounds worse than it is....campus jobs so not too many hours....20 or so and very low pay) while many of the students are rich spoiled brats who do nothing at all it seems like. But, I am still having a good time and learning at the college I wanted to attend rather than a state school where I am just a number.
And that is thanks to my parents. I will have a lot of loans to pay off still, of course and graduate without much to my name because it is all going to school.
So, thankfully, they say they want me to live at home after I graduate, and they will help me pay off loans etc. provided I do all I can to pay them off myself.
What really pisses me off is that I see so many people my age with an entitlement attitude, however.
I would like to see the numbers between 22-25 or so. That would give us a good read on how many recent graduates go back to home. I bet you the number has shot up over even a decade ago.
"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."
Not here in north east ohio - and we're not really a high rent area. Nonethless, here an $80k single family home (no kidding) cn rent for around $750/month.
And a $200k home, that's going to rent for around $1200 - $1500 /month.
I would do the same if I were in that situation.
200 a month is fine. I am sure you can find a job.
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