[Kirkwood]

If you stayed until you were 28, you were clinging to your parents emotionally. Doesn’t matter if you were employed or not. Adults should not be living with their parents, and parents should not enable adult children to remain dependent on them - emotionally or financially. The exception is when a parent becomes unable to take care of themselves due to illness and is better off living with their adult children than being alone or in a nursing home. Everyone in my family left when they were 18, but we were all raised to be mature and self-sufficient at an early age. It builds self-confidence in a kid to let them know they need to have a job of some kind so they are able to start saving money for when they are on their own at 18.

[rb22982]

Like I said in my other response to you, it depends on the person. The best thing I ever did after dropping out of college was moving back in with my parents, working 50 hours a week and paying rent to them and buying my own food, gas and insurance. The things they said then I listened! They made sense. Our conversations were about business & career development and not soccer games. At 18 I thought I was too smart. I hadn’t listened 3 years earlier. I actually learned a lot of important aspects of life and the work force at 21 living with my folks. Now at the age of 26, having lived on my own for 5 years, I oversee nearly 1300 people without a college degree. If I hadn’t moved in with my folks for 6 months I don’t think I’d be in my current position.

[RipSawyer]

You ain’t too swift are you? I said that I moved out at 25, not 28! I got married at 28 which was considered very old for a first marriage at the time. I wasn’t clinging to anyone for support Doctor Fraud, I had joined the Navy straight out of high school and when I returned home my father was disabled with arthritis and my mother was going to nursing school at age 48 so that she could be the breadwinner, I stayed with them until they were back on their feet financially and then I moved two hours away to take a better job. Young men clinging to their parents for support don’t usually go straight from high school into the military. Don’t give up your day job, you will never make it as a psychologist!