By Mandy Feder
Everybody knows one, an adult child who lives in their childhood home long after high school commencement.
Chances are people ages 18 to 34 in 2011 know a whole gaggle of peers in this category. Chances are some of them don”t just know them, but are them.
It used to be considered weird, anti-social and lazy. Visions of a scrawny, quiet man in a boy”s clothing, playing Dungeons and Dragons in his mom”s basement while she cooks and does his laundry might have come to mind.
But this generation is not necessarily lackadaisical. A boomerang trend is bringing college graduates back home at an alarming rate.
The website www.adultchildrenlivingathome.com states, “The truth is nearly 25 million adult children are living with their parents in the U.S. alone.”
According to an article in the New York Times titled “Advice for young, jobless college graduates,” “For many recent college graduates, graduation may have been the last sure thing they knew about their budding careers. Stepping off the stage, degrees conferred, they emerged from colleges and universities into one of the worst job markets since the Great Depression.”
The job market is competitive, to say the least. College expenses follow graduates for years after a degree is obtained.
So, people are cutting costs and one way to do that is by staying or moving back with parents.
According to a 2010 article by Ian Shapira in the Washington Post, “the number of 18- to 34-year-olds living with their parents increased from 8.3 million in 1960 to 19.2 million in 2007, according to the non-profit Network on Transitions to Adulthood. The group also found that about 75 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds get money from their parents, and for 40 percent of those young people, it”s at least $10,000 a year.”
The article points out that “Today”s young adults face a harsh economy, especially when it comes to health care: about 13 million, or nearly 30 percent, of 19- to 29-year-olds lack insurance, according to a 2009 report by the Commonwealth Fund. As a result of financial strains, they delay social rites of passages, leading them to tap their parents well into their 20s.”
The BBC News reported “More and more young adults are refusing to fly the nest, according to the latest Social Trends report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Home comforts aside, it”s not hard to see another reason why ? money.”
Money is not the single driving factor. Historically, in the 1950s, for example, leaving home was often closely associated with marriage or preparation for marriage.
People are marrying older, marrying at a lesser rate and postponing childbirth or choosing not to have children in may cases.
The importance of travel and education have a greater emphasis.
Maybe the American dream has changed for a great number of people.
Bucket lists are made often including places to see before we die.
It”s scarcely so anymore that I hear someone say he/she, just wants a house with a white picket fence and 2.5 kids. I used to hear that a lot growing up.
I am not waxing nostalgic. I don”t think it”s good or bad ? it just is.
So in order to shift with sands of change, there is a plethora of advise on how to have a successful experience with a home happy adult child.
Do not do their laundry, dishes, make their beds or give them mad money.
Do tell them to either work or go to school.
Have them pay their own bills, car insurance and car payments. Adults should be accustomed to making monthly payments and know how to survive alone.
Moral support is the best kind of support to offer someone who is growing. It can be sensible to share a living space in a time of economic turmoil or it can be a disaster.
Well-meaning parents who do too much for their children may stunt emotional growth, probably making everyone unhappy in the end.
Mandy Feder is the Record-Bee managing editor. She can be reached at mandyfeder@yahoo.com or 263-5636 ext. 32.
