One-third of parents believe kids will live at home until their mid-thirties
A new survey from Skandia shows that while the majority of parents hope their children will be able to go to university, own a home, and become financially independent, more than a third admitted it was likely their children would be living at home until their mid-thirties
Michelle Cracknell, strategy director at Skandia, said
While most parents hope their children will be financially comfortable in adult life, it is clear that many parents see adult life starting when their children are in their late 30s.
Source: The Press Association
New UK survey shows 94% of parents give money to adult children
A new survey of parents with children 18 years and older conducted by UK insurance group LV found some scary statistics about how much money UK parents are spending on their adult children. Among the findings:
- Parents spend an average of £21,540 supporting their children after age 18
- 94% of parents continue to contribute financially towards education, houses, cars, and living costs after their kids reach 18
- Parents contribute an average of £5,602 to their child’s first home
- 42% of parents give their children more than £1,000 for a first car
… and the two most staggering statistics:
- 79% of those with grandchildren are supporting both generations
- 45% of parents aged 70 or older are still helping their children financially!
Source: The Press Association.
Adult children living at home cause marital stress for parents
This article from The Birmingham Post explains why adult children returning t the nest after completing college can be a major strain on their parents’ marriages.
Expert says establishing boundaries is #1 step
In a recent article from EnterpriseNews.com, Helen DeVries, director of the doctorate psychology program at Wheaton College offered the following advice for families with adult children moving home:
To make it work and ensure things stay amicable rather than resentful, you have to frame it more like you’re cohabiting with roommates. In that scenario, there’s a splitting of chores and errands. It’s easy to slip back into the routine you had pre-college, but you have to try to make it more collegial than hierarchical. Parents need to say ‘We’re delighted we’re able to help you, but you’ll be expected to cook one night a week or do all of the ironing or give us X amount of dollars for the cable bill.
One of the families profiled in the article used a contract to set the terms with their adult child — and everyone seems pleased with the results. You can learn more about how to create a contract for adult children living at home here.
Is your son stuck in “Guyland”?
Sociologist and Author Michael Kimmel has recently released a new book — Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men — in which he explores the results of his conversations with nearly 400 young men between the ages of 16 and 26. According to Kimmel, many of them are stuck in “Guyland,” in a Peter-Pan-like state where their high school or college life continues on well into their twenties, where the focus is on having fun and playing video games, rather than finding a good job and becoming independent. Here’s how Kimmel describes Guyland:
Guyland is the world in which young men live. It is both a stage of life, a liminal undefined time span between adolescence and adulthood that can often stretch for a decade or more, and a place, or, rather, a bunch of places where guys gather to be guys with each other, unhassled by the demands of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids, and the other nuisances of adult life. In this topsy-turvy, Peter-Pan mindset, young men shirk the responsibilities of adulthood and remain fixated on the trappings of boyhood, while the boys they still are struggle heroically to prove that they are real men despite all evidence to the contrary.
If your son is stuck in Guyland, you may benefit from some of the strategies in our book, The Hands-On Guide to Surviving Adult Children Living at Home.
You can read a longer excerpt of Guyland on the USA Today website.