Just another article on adult kids moving back in with their parents.  It’s a long-ass article, but it’s from Oprah(!), so you HAVE to read it.  More of a guide-ish thing for the adults and the…semi-adults, but it definitely gave me a little perspective that I may have lost within the past few months.  I definitely don’t endorse all of it though, which you’ll see if you read it here.  Still, worth the read.

Parents, I’m Home! Why More Adult Children Are Moving In with Mom and Dad

Oprah.com

Job losses, mounting student loans and high costs of living—how can young adults get ahead in life? According to new research studies, more adult children are heading home sweet home to Mom and Dad during the recession.

As economic times get more difficult for all Americans, the recession is no doubt leaving its mark on young adults trying to build lives for themselves. A survey conducted in October 2009 by the Pew Research Center found that about one in 10 adults ages 18 to 34 are moving back in with their parents because of the state of the economy.

Because this living situation can get tricky fast, it’s important that, as a parent of what social scientists call a boomerang child, you work with your grown child to help get her back on her feet. Susan Morris Shaffer and Linda Perlman Gordon, co-authors of Mom, Can I Move Back in with You?, offer advice to help make the living situation as pain-free as possible. Plus, they share ways you can help your child grow.

Prior to an adult child’s return, it’s important to make sure you are communicating your needs with your child. Discuss both your expectations and responsibilities and your child’s, Shaffer says. “Really negotiate collaboratively—don’t tell your kid the way in which you want him or her to behave,” she says. “[The situation] really has to be very purposeful, but also enjoyable for both adult children and their parents.”

Also, work out any kinks in your parent-child relationship before you once again share the same address. “If the relationship has some baggage, which, if you’re raising teenagers, it’s hard not to have baggage, you have to understand that it’s not going to be slipped under the rug,” Shaffer says.

How the living situation affects Mom and Dad

Seriously though, where’s MY handbook for moving back home? WTF?

When an adult child moves home and you were an empty nester, you might be upset about your loss of privacy. But you need to stay optimistic and make the most of your living situation. “Look at it as a new opportunity to spend time with your adult children when you don’t have the angst of living with teenagers,” Shaffer says.

“Understand that you have an emerging adult living with you, not the teenager who left before college,” Gordon adds.

But what is your role as a parent in this living arrangement? It’s to support your child as she becomes incrementally more mature and help her better manage her own life, Shaffer says. “Make sure you’re not enabling further dependence, but giving them real opportunities and coaching and mentoring them to become mature adults,” she says.

It might seem difficult to gauge an adult child’s growth, but Shaffer and Gordon have developed a new standard for measuring maturity that’s more applicable for today’s young adults.

Some signs of maturity include your adult child’s ability to:

• Display empathy
• Have opportunities to show personal responsibility and demonstrate personal responsibility
• Become as financially independent as possible
• Set and maintain appropriate boundaries, set her own course and show respect for others’ privacy
• Develop respectful interdependence. “We want to stay connected to our children, but we want them to become independent and become individuals while staying connected,” Shaffer says.

When you see your boomerang child failing to meet these emotional standards, it can be difficult not to step in. However, Shaffer says to rescue with caution. “Don’t do for them what they can do for themselves, and listen before responding to them,” she says. “Realize that making things easier for them doesn’t not necessarily prepare them for real life.”

Also, allowing your adult child to fix her own mistakes shows her that you have total faith in her. “If you’re constantly fixing things, that erodes their self-esteem,” Shaffer says.

What living at home means for an adult child

According to the Pew Research Center’s study, the current economic state is not only forcing some young adults to move back home, it’s also forcing them to put their lives on hold. Fifteen percent of single adults younger than 35 said they have postponed getting married because of the recession. In addition, 14 percent of all young adults have delayed having a child because of their financial situation.

But Gordon suggests that young adults have been putting their lives on hold before the recession began. “If you look at the age that girls and boys are getting married, it’s substantially up compared to their parents,” Gordon says. “It is taking longer to launch. It really does take more money to be able to put a roof over your head, an apartment and sustain yourself, and more people are waiting so they can be more economically solvent.”

Another factor is that more young women are working and pursuing their own careers. “It’s not just boys out there looking to make their way in the world—you’ve got girls pursuing their lives beyond wanting to become mothers and homemakers,” she says.

It’s also important to note that it’s more difficult to stay at one job for an extended period of time. “Before, there were many job shifts that 20-year-olds had,” Gordon says. “You can’t expect to retire in 50 years with a gold watch anymore. There’s way more mobility.”

Not only has the career landscape changed, but when your adult child moves back home, her personal life changes as well, Gordon says. Certain issues, like going out at night and having relationships, can be difficult for a young adult she’s under your roof, but the most important thing is for you and your child to maintain respect for one another. “While your 20-something might have much more of a night life than you have, you expect that kid to come home and not make noise when you have to get up in the morning,” Gordon says. “It’s the same kind of respect that you would give a roommate. So there are all kinds of mutuality and interdependence that have to be spelled out and clear when your child moves back home.”

But when you disagree with your adult child’s lifestyle, it’s important to deal with these issues as they happen and not to bottle them up. “You can sustain a certain amount an acceptance of something if you only see it three times a year,” Shaffer says. “It’s very different when you’re dealing with something on a daily basis. Then you can’t be disingenuous. Rage, aggravation, disappointment—all of those emotions are going to come out.”

Ways to help your adult child grow

While an adult child is living at home, you should give her opportunities to become more responsible and develop the skill set she needs to be able to manage her own life. So does that mean it’s okay for you to charge your adult child rent? “There are lots of different ways to contribute to the household,” Shaffer says. “Paying rent is only one of them.” She suggests activities such as helping out with younger siblings or grandparents, doing the grocery shopping or making dinner as other ways your adult child can be valuable.

Another way you can help your child save money is by having the young adult give money to you to put it away for her. [Jillian says: Hahaha what?  Nice try, but no thanks. ] Perhaps you can help her restructure her debts. “The most important thing is that you insist on children taking on responsibilities,” Shaffer says.

Instead of picking your child up after she stumbles, try to step back. Gordon explains that when her 20-something children moved back home, she understood that she had to let them make their own mistakes. “We didn’t have to save them anymore,” she says. “We knew they better learn the consequences because later it would be way worse. Our perspective was that we knew it was another shot at parenting from afar and parenting by doing less rather than doing more. It was an absolute joy.”

Luckily, FB from Fabulously Broke in the City has graciously allowed me to bootleg one of her recent posts regarding moving back home after you’ve been living on your own for a long time.   Don’t worry though, I’m not letting her do all the work.  Watch out for my own personal comments throughout the post.

Living with your parents, before you move out

This is the time when you most want to move out.

There is no space, it’s cluttered, you can’t even make chocolate spread-covered butter biscuits for breakfast without your Dad shoving an orange in your face.

You get in fights over who should have taken out the garbage.

You are constantly told: My house, my rules.

And you get these worrying looks when you come home past 8 p.m.

Like at 8.15 p.m.

Jillian says:  This is where I’m grateful for never having a curfew.

You think living on your own will be THE BOMB and you can eat cookies for breakfast, sleep in until noon with nary a care in the world.

I moved out when I was 19, got my own apartment and a job to pay for it.

Jillian says: same here.

It was a quick lesson in how to be an adult, that was for damn sure.

The thing I forgot about in my fantasies of leaving was how things were going to get done and paid.

Bathroom filthy? It may not have been your chore to do at home, but now you have to do it ALL.

Bills getting paid? Gotta get a job to do that, the electricity doesn’t work without it.

And I didn’t pay rent BEFORE I moved out. Only after I move back in, do I have to pay rent.

Jillian says:  Yep, same here.

Remembering to buy toilet paper and toothpaste? Er…… can baking soda and tissue papers suffice for now?

Jillian says:  Toilet paper is the least fun thing you could ever spend your own money on, along with detergent and Windex.

Learning how to do little fix-it things around the home? Had to be Googled.

And cooking: where else are you ever going to get mom’s home cooked meals filled with love, unless you do it yourself? Gah.

Jillian says:  my mom didn’t cook much when I was growing up.  We ate out a lot, but after I moved out it was the having to pay for it all myself that killed.

Of course, the best thing about living on your own is you CAN eat cookies for breakfast, sleep in until noon and do what you want without someone nagging you.

But change starts to take place, and before you know it, you are shrieking at someone for putting down a cold glass on the table without a coaster, and wondering how to get burnt food off from the bottom of a pot without ruining it.

With freedom, comes responsibility. Ahhhh…

Still, it’s pretty awesome living without your parents.

You can decorate and do whatever the heck you want, and no one is going to try and use your room as a storage for old dusty boxes with useless parts of ancient computers, or store furniture in there because they have too much junk everywhere else.

Living with your parents after you have moved out

So you had to move back in for various reasons.

It wasn’t awful living with my mom. But I felt a real sense of guilt of not being there more during the week on some nights when I came home late, or went out after.

Jillian says: this has been happening to me a lot lately.  I’m hardly ever home, and when I am, my parents are generally not because our work schedules don’t line up.

My mom has been wanting to go to the movies with me, play Wii Fit with her, and to take me to a Thai restaurant for my birthday this Saturday, but I’m always somewhere, on my way somewhere, or planning to go somewhere else.  Excuse me while I go give my mom a hug right now.

We only saw each other briefly in the mornings (she left before I did), and briefly at night when she and I both came home hungry and exhausted.

Jillian says: exactly the same.

There were a lot of good things, like having more bonding time with my mom, which helped our relationship a lot, and I felt good being able to help her do things she otherwise would have taken hours to do.

Jillian says:  I also agree here.  Being home permanently during the holidays was especially great.  My trips home were usually hectic and too short.

I came back to a room totally filled with JUNK. My family’s JUNK.

Jillian says:  they cleared a lot of junk out for me when I moved back, but my room was still full of my own junk…like a box of notes from friends in high school.  And I’d been telling my mom to just pitch everything for years, but she is wacked and wanted me to go through everything and save “important” stuff.  I ended up pitching 96% of it.

And a new rule was installed: You put junk in that particular room, and I will get rid of it as I see fit.

The last time we went back with BF’s truck, we hauled away 10 boxes of JUNK, 1 huge broken computer chair, and cleaned the room of its mess.

Did anyone notice? Probably not.

But the room looks a heck of a lot better.

I don’t think there’s anything shameful or wrong in living with your parents past the age of 19, or moving back in

Maybe it’s just my sort-of traditional upbringing, but I had lots of friends who lived with their parents, and some who still do.

Jillian says:  I have a few friends who still live with their parents.  If everybody’s fine and happy with it, then why not?

And they are normal, human beings who are not weirdo recluses who stay in their basement in their PJs all day, playing Dungeons and Dragons, shunning all human contact.

Jillian says: hahaha.  Consider this comment a shout out to someone.  You know who you are.

Some people think it’s a sign of weakness, or that you couldn’t hack it on your own, so you had to crawl back to mommy and daddy.

Jillian says:  I worry about this just a little.

Not me.

I already moved out on my own at 19, and proved I could be independent.

Jillian says: very true.

And when I moved back in the first time, it was for practical reasons, rather than emotional ones.

Jillian says: also very true.

I had a project in my so-called home city (Toronto is NOT Greater Toronto Area, people!! GTA is not “local” for me.), and I didn’t want to pay 12 months of rent to a stranger when I could just pay it to my parents.

This time, since I had already left the family home once, it meant I would move back as a contributing member and renter.

I paid $600 a month, bought my own food, stayed only for 4 days in Toronto and spent the other 3 in Montreal with BF.

Jillian says:  I pay rent also.  They will share most of what they buy in groceries with me, but I’m responsible for anything extra.  This is because we all want me to save my money (which I’m effectively doing!).  I help out as much as I can in other ways, when I’m even around.

For 8 months.

I also pulled my weight as a member of the family and became a typist & editor for my mom’s papers, garbage-taker-outter, official lunch-maker-and-packer, and a pianist at night.

This second time I will move back in with my parents, and with my BF, will not be because we cannot afford rent, or are running back home with our tails between our legs.

I am not ashamed at all for going back, and neither does BF feel weird for going back to my parents.

Jillian says:  we’re lucky to have the option and families who are happy to have us back.  Not everyone has that.

I wouldn’t feel strange going to his place to live if it was for practical reasons, and if I knew it wasn’t permanent.

Again, as always, it’s for practical reasons — that we don’t want to pay 12 months of rent to a stranger, as we could potentially be leaving after a month of being in Toronto, or after 7 months.

Plus, it’s a totally enclosed separate apartment on its own, and we can have our own privacy any time we want, with our own bathroom, kitchen and separate doors and entryways.

It’s like being tenants, while having the freedom to do what you want in your own space, AND roam to take over the rest of the house as well.

It’s uncertain how long we will stay in Toronto, and I’d rather take advantage of the available situation rather than getting an apartment, paying the same rent in the same area, just to prove a point.

I have no qualms (and neither does BF) about moving back in with my family.

It isn’t permanent, and we aren’t parasitic moochers.

Jillian says:  this is important for people on the outside to be aware of.

Besides, my mom is really craving the company at night, and we are planning on doing lots of chores that my much older mom cannot handle on her own, cooking and buying food for the family in addition to paying rent while we’re there.

Even with my older brother, they don’t find it weird that my dad has moved in with them to nanny their kids.

And I don’t either, because my dad gets paid a decent salary for doing it, and he WANTS to take care of his grandkids.

We’re family but we are not a family of moochers, even to each other.

We understand that nothing is really for free, even if we’re family.

Lessons learned so far

Living with your parents at the age of 19 or coming back when you’re 23, and 26, can be both annoying, but also comforting.

I found that over the years of not physically living with my sometimes very demanding, annoying parents, was that I grew closer emotionally.

I called my mom more. On a whim, just to hear how the family and she was doing.

I emailed my dad more, to show him pictures of food we made, and to promise to come back.

I actually even tried to get more sisterly with my brothers, and tentatively, it’s still walking on hot coals for some parts. But it’s getting there.

You sometimes need to move away to get closer.

Jillian says:  all of the above are so true.

Haha strange coincidence.  My mom just now knocked on my door and handed me a small bowl of sweet potato fries that were left from dinner and said “finish them.”

Those are the moments I’ll miss when I’m gone, and am hanging on to now while I can.  Lucky to be here.

Thanks again FB!  I couldn’t have said any of this better myself.

by Baylie Evans

CHEYENNE — A recent study found that the current recession has hit young adults hard enough to significantly change the way many of them are living.

They’ve been dubbed “boomerangers,” the study says, and they’re a growing population: young adults who have moved back in with family, chosen to live with roommates instead of alone or have put off big life decisions until more stable times.

Across the nation, fewer young people ages 16-24 are employed than since 1948, when the government began tracking such numbers. Only 46 percent of that age group is employed.

The study used data from an annual study by the Census Bureau, which is conducted each March, as well as a nationally representative survey of 1,028 adults by the Pew Research Center, which was conducted last October.

Although Wyoming doesn’t appear to track such specific statistics as unemployment rates based on age groups, some say the state is experiencing similar trends.

“This is because, similar to other states, Wyoming is now in an economic recession,” Amy Bittner, a Wyoming state economist, said. “Since 2006, Wyoming’s average household size has increased. This is counter to what has occurred in previous years, where the average household size had been declining.”

Combined with record-high college enrollment rates, the trend could help explain why fewer young people are living alone than ever before, the study says.

It found that 24 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds nationally moved in with a roommate due to the recession, and 6 percent moved back in with parents.

Of 25- to 34-year-olds, 11 percent moved back in with parents.

The change is most noticeable for young women 18 to 29 who live alone. That rate dropped a full percentage point since 2007, to just more than 6 percent in 2009. The percent change for young men was not statistically significant.

The recession has posed tough decisions for young adults in other ways too. Fifteen percent of 18- to 34-year-olds reported postponing getting married because of the recession, and 14 percent have postponed having a baby.

This trend could have a mixed effect on the Wyoming economy, Bittner said.

While more unemployed young adults have less money to spend, moving back home might mean their parents spend more money or delay retirement to support them. Still, their parents could spend less on vacations, restaurants or other entertainment.

It’s also possible that the pattern will bring a slight benefit to the Wyoming labor force.

“Typically, Wyoming has lost its younger educated workers to jobs in other states,” Bittner said. “With the economic recession, these educated young adults might be moving back to Wyoming, creating a more educated Wyoming labor force.”

Joan Evans, the director of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, said it makes sense that the unemployment rate for young people has risen.

Wyoming has experienced that trend, she added, even though it doesn’t collect the particular data needed to support the claim.

There is a program at the department to help young adults, 14- to 21-year-olds who come from low-income families, find work, she said. That program has seen a 30 percent increase in cases.

She attributed that increase both to increased funding and an increase in need for help in finding work for young people in the state.

“Right now, everyone’s looking for an opportunity, and they’re harder to find,” she said.

Older adults also are snatching up jobs that may have formerly gone to younger adults like retail, fast food and grocery store jobs.

The local office reported only about 50 job openings in Cheyenne, she added. Usually there are about 200 at this time of year.

“That gives you an idea of how opportunities have shrunk substantially,” she said.

article source: Wyoming Tribune Eagle; WyomingNews.com

One in five of ‘boomerang generation’ graduates now living at home

John Bingham, Telegraph.co.uk

By contrast, only one in eight university graduates had failed to fly the nest by the same age 20 years ago, research from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows.

It also found that grown-up sons are twice as likely as their sisters to still be living with their parents in their late 20s.

With nearly a quarter of men approaching 30 still living at home, the findings are bound to lead to claims of a “generation of mummy’s boys”.

Rising property prices, mounting student debts and the effects of recession on the job market have forced a wave of young people to move back into the family home at an age when they would normally be moving out.

Young professionals in their late 20s or early 30s have been nicknamed the “boomerang generation” because of the trend toward returning to the family home having initially left to study.

Recent research has suggested that young people in Britain are twice as likely to chose to live with their parents in their late 20s than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe.

But commentators warned that the phenomenon may have more to do with young people facing “dire” prospects than simply a desire to save money.

While the proportion of those of university or college age moving out from the family home has continued to rise in the last 20 years, among those in their mid and late 20s the trend has been reversed.

Overall 1.7 million people aged from 22 to 29 now share a roof with their parents, including more than 760,000 in their late 20s, the ONS figures suggest.

In 1988 22.7 per cent of men aged 25 to 29 were still living with their parents but last year the proportion was 24.5 per cent, according to the ONS.

Among women the same age the proportion rose from 11.6 per cent to 12.8 per cent.

But among graduates the rise was more marked, increasing almost a third to 22.3 per cent among men and from 9.3 per cent of women to 14.8 per cent.

Among possible reasons cited to explain the trend are mounting student debts, the effects of the recession and the long housing boom which saw average property prices rise from three to five times a typical income over two decades.

“It is unclear the extent to which remaining in – or returning to – the parental home is an outcome of choice rather than a constraint for these emerging adults,” the report comments.

“The results suggest that the transition to residential independence is becoming increasingly protracted and reversible for all groups.”

Anastasia de Waal, director of family and education at Civitas, the think tank, warned that the onset of recession was likely to force thousands more young people to postpone moving into their own home.

“In the past we had a fair number of graduates who would make a positive decision to try to save some money because they had a lot of student debt and perhaps living at home for a while,” she said.

“But increasingly the graduates who are moving home are doing so because they can’t find work, they are in debt but also not earning.

“We are seeing massive increases in the numbers of people going to university in the first instance but also a large increase in graduate unemployment.

“Graduates have also been tending toward taking up non-graduate work.

“In an awful lot of cases graduates would prefer to do something below their skill set rather than move back home, but this suggests that they are not even able to find that kid of work.”

Goodbye jobs, hello mom and dad

Hope Yen, Associated Press writer

WASHINGTON – Faced with limited job options, many young adults are turning to an old standby to weather the recession: moving back in with mom and dad.

Nearly 1 in 7 parents with grown children say they had a “boomerang kid” move back home in the past year, according to a study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. In a turnabout in the rite of passage in which a college graduate finds a job and an apartment, many are returning to their parents’ empty nests because of tight finances or as they pursue an advanced degree.

“The journey home for Thanksgiving won’t be quite so far this year for many adults,” said researchers Wendy Wang and Rich Morin, who wrote the report. “Instead of traveling across country or across town, many grown sons or daughters will be coming to dinner from their old bedroom down the hall.”

Pew’s survey and analysis of government data found that the share of adults 18 to 29 who lived alone declined from 7.9 percent in 2007 to 7.3 percent this year. Drops of that magnitude were also seen during or immediately after the recessions of 1982 and 2001.

Roughly one-third, or 35 percent, of boomerang kids said they had lived independently at some point in their lives but had to move back in with their parents. About half of the grown children worked full- or part-time, while 25 percent were unemployed and 20 percent were full-time students.

The findings are the latest to highlight the sweeping social impact of a recession that began in December 2007. The effects have included declining immigration and U.S. migration between states, as well as increased carpools, use of public transit and “doubling up” of families in single-residence homes.

Data released earlier this year showed that older Americans will make up virtually all of the growth in the U.S. work force in the coming years as a nearly unprecedented number hold onto jobs and younger people decide to stay in school.

Among 16- to 24-year-olds, less than half, or 46.1 percent, are currently employed, the smallest share since the government began collecting such data in 1948. At the same time, a record high of about 11.5 million Americans ages 18 to 24, or nearly 40 percent, attended college in October 2008.

“Boomerang kids are a major trend, and they represent a shift in cultural norms,” said David Morrison, president and founder of Twentysomething Inc., a marketing and research firm. “Young adults are the first to feel the brunt of a bad economy and the last to feel the benefits of a recovering economy. So the first way you hedge your bets is to minimize your expenses.”

Saying there is now less of a stigma in moving back home, Morrison predicted that the trend of boomerang kids may lessen somewhat but still continue after the economy recovers. That could create longer-term ripple effects in social relationships, from multigenerational family tensions to delayed marriage, he said.

According to the latest Pew survey and census data:

_About 20 million people ages 18 to 34 live at home with their parents — roughly 30 percent of that age group. That’s up from about 18 million, or 27 percent, in 2005.

_About 12 percent of young adults ages 18 to 34 said they were forced to move in with a roommate because of the poor economy.

_Fifteen percent of adults 18 to 34 said they had postponed getting married due to the recession. That share increases to 21 percent for adults ages 25 to 34, when many people tend to get married.

_Fourteen percent of adults 18 to 34 say they delayed having a baby.

Pew based its findings on data from the Bureau Statistics and the Census Bureau. It also interviewed 1,028 people ages 18 and older by cell phone or landline from Oct. 21-25. The poll has a Margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

Article source: Yahoo! News