Hard times are sending grown children home to Mom and Dad
Son: Hey, would you please stop talkin’ and listen to me? I wanna move back into my old room. I could save money that way; it’d be real easy. . .
Mom (hesitantly): Well, honey, that would be nice. . .
Dad: Let’s have a man-to-man talk. (Draws son aside.) Yeah, I know, you’re sick of this inflation and that whole swinging singles scene—but no way.
Like all good satire, the skit from Chicago’s Second City Theater strikes within a hair of real life: young adults in America are coming back to roost. Among some ethnic groups, the Old World style of several generations living under one roof has long persisted. Until now the middle class has exhorted its young to go west, go to college, go to work —in short, to get out. But those catalysts of unwed cohabitation in the ’70s—inflation, recession and rising divorce rates —are now persuading young people to cleave unto their parents.
Says Ellice Schneider, 29, a Chicago teacher who moved home after a divorce: “My salary doesn’t keep up with inflation. And I won’t move where I have to count cracks in the wall. So I live with my parents, despite the inconvenience.”
In urban areas especially, recent college graduates are finding that their entry-level jobs barely cover fast food and shabby shelter. Living at home can save years of scrimping. In the three years since he moved into his parents’ Miami house, one 24-year-old rock-music reporter has stashed away $6,000, bought a used car with cash and traveled to England on his $12,800 salary. His room and board: $15 per week. Winston Whitlock, 23, returned to his parents’ Atlanta home—and his father’s restaurant-supply business—after leaving the Air Force. He earns his keep through household chores.
Many parents welcome the prodigal’s return. Often the child who left home a bothersome teen returns a helpful adult who can also provide engaging companionship. Susanna Kaplan, 23, a physical-education major at Boston University, moved back to the Cambridge, Mass., home of her parents, Author Justin Kaplan and Novelist Anne Bernays, after four years of study and work. The family agrees that since Susanna has matured they all get along better than ever. Says Mother Anne: “Susanna has a powerful personality, but this is a very big house.”
For some families, no house is big enough for two generations when parents’ values clash head-on with those the child has developed out on his own. Says a Long Island, N.Y., mother who refuses rent from her daughter, a 24-year-old sales representative: “I am determined that things in this house should be the way my husband and I want them. At times we feel that Kate uses the house as a hotel.”
The children, for their part, emphasize that life at home is not all fast cars and home cooking. Freedom and privacy are sharply curtailed. Guests are scrutinized. The use of the telephone and stereo becomes problematic. Above all, the children chafe at their inability to invite boyfriends or girlfriends to stay the night. Although Kate’s mother feels her daughter has forced her standards on the household, Kate disagrees: “I have learned the hard way not to fight with them about my sense of values. I now realize I have to compromise. This is their territory.”
Some parents frankly resent being used in place of the old American bootstrap. A businessman from heavily “re-roosted” Cambridge says, “These are the children of academics who floated through school, majored in Renaissance literature, and find there aren’t any jobs for humanities students. They know a good deal when they see it—full refrigerator, a TV, a bed—and so home they come.”
Perhaps the most complicated live-ins arise when a son or daughter returns home after a divorce. Seeking moral as well as financial support, the divorced offspring often assumes a dependent role that psychologists say is bad for all concerned. After her seven-year marriage ended last winter, Wendy Kurd, 26, returned to her parents’ Atlanta home. Her father wakes her each morning, just like old times, and has offered to buy her a car. Wendy’s mother plans to keep helping her daughter, but adds: “When the kids come and go like this, they have you on an emotional yo-yo.”
Most of the children intend to move out again. Marin County Psychiatrist Paul Kingsley advises the sooner, the better. Even loving families, says Kingsley, can breed resentment. He warns parents they may be using children to assuage loneliness or to divert attention from their own problems. But in a nation that often isolates and idolizes youth, the coming-home trend might just prove healthy. Says Mother Anne Bernays of Daughter Susanna: “It’s a step forward, because in order to get along in the world, you have to learn to get along with your parents—even if they’re difficult.” —By Lorene Cory
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