Italian father required by court to pay living allowance to 32-year-old daughter
From the Guardian:
A 32-year-old woman who lives with her mother and has been working on her thesis for eight years, has successfully sued her 60-year-old father for a living allowance, to continue until her thesis is complete.
Communication Strategies for Adult Children Supporting Aging Parents at Home
I’m pleased to announce that I have recently launched a new book for adult children supporting aging parents at home.
In this valuable new guide, I’ve adapted my strategies that have worked so well for communicating with boomerang kids and completely reworked them to provide a communication plan for adult children and their aging parents.
You can find more information about Communication Strategies for Adult Children with Aging Parents Living at Home, or order a copy, here.
Graphic: Young adults returning home due to recession
Here’s a great graphic from the Baltimore Sun that shows in visual form the impact that the recession is having on young adults:
Video Tip: How much rent to charge adult children living at home
New stats: 10% of 18-to-34-year-olds moved back home with parents because of recession.
The Pew Research Center recently released some interesting statistics:
- 13% of parents with grown children say one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year
- 10% of adults ages 18 to 34 say the poor economy has forced them to move back in with Mom and Dad
- 11% of all adults 18 or older live with their parents in their home
- Only seven-in-ten grown children who live with their parents are younger than 30 (that means 30% of them are over 30)
- Of all adults who report they currently live in their parents’ home, about a third (35%) say they had lived independently at some point in their lives before returning home
You can read an article that explains Pew’s methods of data collection, and provides some analysis, here.
BBC show looking for adult children living at home
The BBC South Politics Show, which airs every Sunday in Hampshire, Dorset, West Sussex, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Surrey, wants to hear from people in the South of England who have Kippers or adult children at home. They want to find out why the adult children are still at home and how it’s working out for the whole family. There’s a chance the BBC would want to come and interview the family for the show. If this describes you, and you’re interested in talking to the BBC, send me a quick e-mail at christina@adultchildrenlivingathome.com and I’ll connect you with the people involved at the BBC.
Government-sanctioned “tough love” for boomerang kids
There’s quite a lot of uproar going on right now about a brochure released by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills in the UK, urging parents to show “tough love” to their boomerang kids or other adult children living at home. The brochure says that parents shouldn’t nag (it’s not effective), but that they should cut back on the support they provide to boomerang kids to encourage them to step up to the plate and take care of themselves.
Much of the advice overlaps what I say in my book. The difference is that those who buy my book do so because they are looking for tips to make the situation of living with adult children work — meaning that they have some concerns about the situation or are already experiencing stress related to their living arrangements. Spending government money on a substantial glossy brochure to offer this advice to all parents of boomerang kids seems a bit much.
If you want to see what all the fuss is about, you can download the brochure, called “Parent Motivators,” here: www.direct.gov.uk/graduates
Interview on Roy Green’s Nationally Syndicated Show
Today I spoke with Roy Green on his Canada-wide talk show on the Corus Radio Network about how to deal with adult children living at home, including some important ways adult children must be treated differently from when they were little kids:
- Don’t overparent your adult kids — it’s a sure way to encourage rebellion and resentment. You can have house rules, but you can’t rule your adult child’s life.
- Don’t take care of all the details — your role has changed, and it’s no longer appropriate for you to pay your adult child’s bills, or do their laundry. Your role is to help your adult child achieve independence.
- Talk, talk, talk. Your adult child should have much more input than they did when they were small, and discussions and agreements are important to achieving household harmony. That said, it’s still your house, so in the end, what you say goes.
You can hear the interview here.