There is a similar thread, but some want to keep it about wealthy Gen Z’s and their buying habits due to living with parents. This one is more general than that specific subset… I’ll start with an NPR story detailing 5 of the more common ones.
Personally, I don’t see a downside at all if everyone involved is ok with it and lives together peacefully, however they make it work. Is there a downside in that scenario? Naturally it isn’t preferred by everyone and wouldn’t work with certain personalities. I think we all know that. But when it does work and serves a purpose, saving money, having companionship, and other assorted things seem to be quite positive.
my 24 yo daughter just moved back home yet again due to losing the rental she had (landlord issues). But this time she came with a dog :(. She is searching for another place to live, but its hard as she works for non profit.
Honestly I love my D, but I am used to the empty nest and its not easy for us to live together, both working from home.
The stories in that article seem to be related to financial or health reasons. How many are choosing to live at home to save money to a home, etc. ?
I know of a married couple in this age group who could no longer afford their rent (Seattle area) and they each moved back separately with their parents (It is complicated as she is Canadian and he is American).
Back in my day, almost all of my friends lived with their parents until they got married (most didn’t even go away to school and commuted for college.) This was NYC in the late 70s. However, most got married in their mid 20s.
I have no issue with this. I know a lot of people who did this to pay off/pay down student loans or save up to get their own place. Even with renting there are deposits due, furniture and other things to buy. It’s very helpful for a young person trying to get on his/her feet.
Unfortunately, this is not an option for all. We would have been fine with this when we were in Northern Virginia/DC Suburbs and it is very common there, but both of our kids ended up with jobs in other cities. Also some people have difficult/toxic home situations they need to be away from. When I graduated from college it was not an option as the rural are my parents lived in had no job opportunities for me and the nearest city was 2 hours away. So the kids who can do this are fortunate.
All of our kids will have loans, we only managed to save around $35,000 each for college (plus we pay the loan interest while they are in college which can be substantial when there are 3 at a time, will have several years of that with 5 kids). My oldest just moved back and so far I’m enjoying it. We butted heads a lot when she was growing up, she is now such a pleasant person (she always was, just not at home), plus she has her own life so it’s not like we are really hanging out. Our 19 year old son has been living home for over a year after switching colleges, our 24 year old just moved out after his Covid move back in, so we never had to re-adjust as empty nesters since that never happened.
I posted on the other thread too. Multigenerational living is very common in many cultures. In my culture, young adults are welcome to, and often do, live with parents until they choose to go live on their own, without any expectation that turning 18 or 21 or finishing college means you must move out.
My recent grad moved back home despite a six figure salary because she didn’t see the sense in getting an apartment at this point. She saves and invests most of her income and has a good social life. She enjoys living at home. We enjoy having her home for as long as she wants to stay, which I suspect will be 2-3 years (the average consulting tenure).
Our youngest and his wife moved back in for Covid. We invited them to and don’t regret it at all. They had a studio apartment before, but when WFH came about, why stay there when we have three bedrooms and tons of space to roam?
They saved money while here (we covered most expenses and charged no rent) and bought their own acreage in Puerto Rico which they moved to back in Jan. Since then they’ve built their own tiny home and have been developing the ground as a permaculture farm. That wouldn’t have been possible at all if they’d had their paycheck eaten up by the cost of rent in Bethesda.
My other two haven’t had a need or opportunity to move back and likely won’t, but they know they’re welcome here if they ever need it.
More importantly (perhaps) for me is two of them have told me I’m welcome to come live with them should H pass away. I hope to never need that, but it’s a nice safety net to have.
Meanwhile, we’ll be spending close to 6 weeks with them in PR relatively soon. My kids were fun to be around when they lived here and still are as adults.
My son in law’s family’s culture is also one in which unmarried children typically live at home. SIL did not do so after college graduation, but his brother (mid 30’s) is in his medical residency and has always lived with his parents. They are all on board. To be honest, if he ever gets married, I wouldn’t be surprised if they live with his parents. The house is set up to allow for that, with a living area, kitchen and bedroom in the lower level (daylight basement). It is normal to them.
My father was South American and I lived there a year in H.S. It’s the culture to live at home until marriage and not unusual for the newlyweds to live with one set of parents for awhile.
My dad was very upset when I moved out after I got a job after college. He was very difficult to live with, or we might have done the multi-generational thing when we got married.
Youngest son lives at home. He’s 26. He has his own life and we are ships that pass thru the night. We love having him here and he’s free to stay as long as he wants.
My 25 year old son just moved out 6 weeks ago. He has two big dogs we had no desire to live with. I also don’t want to tell a 25 year old to clean up after himself. I still have kids to parent, I didn’t care to be parenting an adult. Things are much better since he moved accross town.
It was quite common for both genders to live at home before marriage until WW2, and for women to stay home until their marriage through the early 1960s. Both my mother and elder sisters followed this path ( actually, for my mom there was truly no other acceptable option for women in 1940).
My sisters regretted it only in retrospect-now in their 70s, they wish they had some of those quintessential twenty something experiences of young single life in a city apartment; they were happy that all their children did have that experience. They felt a woman should not go from her father’s home to her husband’s without a period of independence in-between. They thought they would have felt more confident and capable in facing elderly inevitable time alone if they had done so when young.
This was the norm where I grew up even into the 1980s. In particular the youngest daughter (in the cultures of most of my peers–I know this is different in other cultures) was expected to be the one to stay close and take care of the parents in their old age, even as they were also being encouraged to pursue higher education and have careers of their own. It was a fine line to walk. Two women from my circle, both youngest daughters, experienced some family strife later on, because they had both moved away from home before they were married.
I have another friend, now 60-something, who like your sisters went from father to husband, and has expressed similar regrets.
I have a niece who is about to turn 40. She moved in with her parents after college on what we all assumed would be a short term basis, but she never left. She spent the intervening years exploring various career options and got a masters in social work. She tried social work and being a teacher’s assistant, all low paying positions with poor or no benefits. In her early 30’s we sort of looked at it as a “failure to launch” scenario. I do think the comfortable safety net they provided sort of enabled her to drift career-wise for years. She finally settled on becoming a therapist around the time the pandemic hit, so most of her work initially was remote. In the meanwhile, her dad’s health declined due to Parkinsons and heart disease and he died in 2021. During that period her presence was a huge blessing to my brother and SIL because she helped considerably with caregiving and just helping to manage the household, get groceries, arrange doctor visits, etc. And now her presence is almost essential for my SIL (who’s in her mid 70;s) unless SIL decides to sell the family home (a 5 bdr home) and downsize or move to a retirement home.
I think if young adults 25-34 live with parents the load they carry as an occupant should be different than when they were 18. This should be “negotiated” from the start. Whether it’s paying for certain things, household responsibilities from cooking to cleaning or establishing a “who gets to park where” situation.
I don’t think we do young adults any favors in establishing themselves as young adults if we don’t treat them on equal footing as ourselves as adults.
My DIL’s mother moved in with DIL and my son during COVID and lived with them for a good 1.5 - 2 years. Never planned for it to be that long but at first it was a protective measure for her as the D she was living with was an essential health care worker and mom’s daughters decided it would be best for her to NOT share a household and risk COVID. But time went on, I think it was convenient for her, she loves their old home, she was a built in pup watcher for their dog, surely she helped with household tasks and cooking - honestly I think for a while it was great but also as a young couple (late 20’s) it sort of stunted their adulting growth and development a bit! You can love a family member and enjoy them but NOT benefit from living with them! I think it was a little bit of a relief when she moved back to her original home and DIL and S were a couple again with a home to themselves and all the responsibilities that come with it.
And that situation can also apply to older couples who have kids move back in! It is OK to adore your kids but not want them to move back home for a lengthy period of time! You are not a more loving person/parent or less loving no matter what you decide!
Thinking back to the article in the original post, based on my own experience I had assumed adult children living with their parents had become less common, and perhaps was increasing lately due to the exorbitant cost of housing in many areas. So it surprised me a bit to read that it’s been increasing for 50 years. Unsurprisingly, the article mentioned it’s more common in lower income families, where it’s always made sense to pool resources. I also think it’s more common in families closer to first-generation immigrant status. Both of these applied to my own childhood family, where 3 generations lived together.
One more anecdote…I know one adult (now 50-something) who never married and never moved out. This kid had a pretty cushy life as the parent continued to pay for everything, did the laundry, cooking, cleaning etc. The kid never seemed inclined to want an independent life–no real friends or outside interests–and basically banked a very nice salary for two decades. It paid off in the long run, though, because due to that very large nest egg the kid was able to work part time, and then not at all, for several years to take care of the parent as their health declined.
At any rate I agree with everyone saying that as long as it works for all involved, who are we to judge? There are families where a kid is better off getting away, and others so close they happily stay together, and every gradation in between. One size does not fit all.
I think the bottom line is if all parties are happy/content with the arrangement, it’s all good. Every situation and household is different.
Mine would be welcome to come home and save money, but there’s just not much here for them. Occasionally, older S would bemoan the rent he was paying when he was working 100% at home for the first 18 months. I said sure, you could have lived here, but you would have been miserable. All of his friends are gone. There aren’t many young college educated people in the area, and there’s not much for him to do. He would have been stuck hanging out with us all of the time. And his rent isn’t that bad even in the DC area. He had a roommate the first year and a GF to spilt the cost these past 2. They’re doing fine!
Same with younger S. He needs to leave to get a job in his field. That’s what I wanted for both of them. I will have new places to visit, and once I retire we aren’t staying here anyway.
We didn’t have set chores and still wouldn’t, but we have expectations. Dirty dishes are never left anywhere - not even in the sink. They go in the dishwasher. When the dishwasher is full, it’s run. When it’s done, it’s emptied. And any chore I ask them to do, they do. Unless they were really busy, I always gave them something each week. They didn’t complain because they knew I still did the majority of the work. I don’t suspect it would be any different if they came back. They’ve also seemed to enjoy hanging out with us watching TV/going places, so I wouldn’t foresee them squirreled away in their rooms 24-7 and ignoring us.
My mom got married at 21 and had me at 22, my sister at 25 and then had a tubal. She told us to live on our own before marriage, which we did. I started dating my husband after college graduation and lived on my own for 4 years. My family gets tired about hearing about my tiny 2 room apartment that I miss.
I had a friend in South America whose parents built a multi generational set of homes for them and their 3 daughters/families. DH and I just loved this idea, but doesn’t work in our culture so much.
The parents built the main big house and that’s where they lived. They then built 3 one story apartments for each child, about 1,000 sq ft each. All 4 units formed a square with the center garden. All 3 daughters lived there for several years with their families until they outgrew it.
They had daughters. The question is would a married son and DIL want to live there as well? We should ask ourselves if we would have wanted to live in the same compound as the in-laws?
