77% of new college grads living at home
A new survey by CollegeGrad.com showed that 77 percent of respondents said they were living at home in 2008, a huge increase from 67 percent in a in a 2006 survey.
This article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looks at the study and talks to some local families who are dealing with adult college graduates moving back home.
Families with adult children living at home have more arguments
A news study from the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows that 23- and 24-year-olds living at home have 6 times more arguments with their parents than those who have moved out. According to an article about the study in The Herald Sun:
Almost one in five young adults who live at home argue with their parents weekly, compared with just 3 per cent who’ve moved out.
Both parents and offspring report less positive family relationships than those who have cut the apron strings.
It can definitely be a strain to maintain an effective parent-child relationship when your children stay at home longer than you’d planned. Remember that communication is the foundation of any good relationship. Click here for tips on communications strategies to use with your adult children living at home.
23% of British baby boomers financially support adult kids
According to an article in the Telegraph:
One in four – 23 per cent – give regular financial help to their grown-up children and seven per cent have adult offspring living with them who don’t contribute financially to the household.
As we discuss in our book, it’s inappropriate — potentially even damaging — for adults to live at home without making some sort of financial contribution to the household. Even if they can’t pay market rent, it’s important for your adult children’s self esteem to feel they are contributing, and it’s important for you to have help with the additional expenses (electricity, gas, phone) you incur because of the extra person living in your home. You can read some of our tips 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.
Welcome to extended adolescence
We recently attended a conference where Max Valiquette, President and CEO of youthography.com was a keynote speaker. He shared some interesting insights about a new trend he calls “extended adolescence.”
If your adult children are still living at home (or have boomeranged home again) you already know that adolescence (that state of almost-adulthood) is lasting longer than ever before. For example:
- in larger cities, 54-59% of 20-29-year-olds live at home
- the average age to graduate from university is now 25 (20 years ago it was 23)
- the average age of first marriage is 28 (20 years ago it was 25)
- the average age to give birth to your first child is 29 (20 years ago it was 26)
What’s also interesting is that kid are entering adolescence earlier than ever before:
- the average kid is put into their first organized educational “classroom” before age 4
- the average kid tries their first cigarette by age 13
- kids now have to make decisions about what courses to take in high school that can profoundly affect the direction their lives will take (starting as early as age 14)
Fifty years ago, adolescence as a concept didn’t exist. You were a child, then you were adult. Now, we have this extended concept of adolescence that lasts for 10, 20, even up to 30 years. How is this changing the way you relate to your kids — and how they view your responsibilities towards them?
Real stories of Boomerang kids
It’s simply a fact of life for modern families that adult children tend to return home at least once after they initially leave the nest. That’s why young adults these days are so often called “boomerang” kids — they just keep coming back!
This article features some interesting anecdotes from real familes with adult children living at home.