Adults living with parents? Pathetic… unless it isn’t

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2016 (3435 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Monday night, I was at my youngest brother’s high school graduation dinner. During the toast to the Class of 2016, one of his classmates mused about how, 10 years from now, they would be working at their dream jobs and be living in their own houses. 

It’s a nice idea, that. But it’s also entirely possible that 10 years from now, they will be living in their parents’ houses — even if they have the job part locked down.

After all, that seems to be the new normal. In the spring, a widely publicized Pew Research Center study confirmed what most of us already suspected: an unprecedented number of young adults are still living at home. In 2014, 32.1 per cent of U.S. adults aged 18 to 34 were living with their parents.

In 2011, 59.4 per cent of Canadian adults aged 20 to 24 lived with their parents. A quarter of Canadian adults aged 24 to 29 also lived with their parents.

The reasons for this trend are pretty easy to figure out. Young adults are getting married later, or not at all. They’re having kids later, or not at all. Young people who graduated from college post-2008 found themselves navigating unstable employment in a weakened job market, or patching together an income with multiple gigs — all while trying not to sink under the weight of crushing student debt. Oh, and condos and houses are expensive. So are babies, especially now that they live with you until they’re 30.

Still, this isn’t a new or even a specific-to-millennials thing. In many cultures, it’s expected that a child lives at home until they get married. It’s also not uncommon to have grandparents who live in the family home. 

Pundits have other explanations for this trend — mainly that millennials (anyone born between 1981 and 2000, give or take a couple years on either side) are lazy, entitled, bubble-wrapped babies who live at home because they “can’t even” with the real world. And sure, there are many overgrown children who live that stereotype. Last week, Toronto Life published a profile of a 31-year-old man who lives at home and spends much of his $130,000 per year salary on trips and wine while his mother does his laundry and cooks his meals. He could live on his own. He just doesn’t want to.

But lots of people live at home for reasons that have nothing to do with taking advantage of their parents’ kindness. 

Most of my peers lived at home until their mid- to late-20s while they were pursuing post-secondary education — if they had the privilege to do so, that is. I don’t know that my generation was told to “follow your dreams!” so much as it was told “a university degree is the only path to a career.” It doesn’t necessarily work out that way, as any underemployed arts grad will tell you.

Julie Lafreniere has no regrets about investing in her post-secondary education, but she says that she wished she stayed at home longer because she wouldn’t have been stuck paying student debt until her mid-30s. “It makes parental advice for my kid confusing,” she says. “He graduates high school in four years. I want him to learn responsibility, but is saddling him with thousands in student debt upon post-secondary graduation realistic? I’ll be doing my best to pay his tuition and living expenses as long as he’s a full-time student.”  

“I think it’s worth noting that even among those of us who moved out fairly early — 20 for me — it’s not that uncommon to have unexpected life events that required us to move home later,” says Kristin Millar, 32. 

In 2009, at 26, Millar went into heart failure. She learned she would require a heart transplant, which she didn’t get until 2012. “I felt this huge pressure — from myself mostly — to prove how strong I was by living in my own place while I was waiting for my transplant,” she says. “I regret that decision now because my disability payments barely paid the rent and I ended up being more of a burden to my parents while I insisted on being ‘independent.'” 

Hope Nicholson, 30, is also a boomerang kid. She moved back in with her parents in Winnipeg after several years living in Toronto. She’s a writer and publisher — I wrote about her anthology The Secret Loves of Geek Girls last year — but her day job barely kept her in a tiny basement apartment and was sucking all her creative energy. So she decided to move home to the Prairies to focus on growing her publishing business. 

“I now have an office space in downtown Winnipeg where I work on writing books, publishing books, doing freelance editing, and building communities. It’s been a wonderful experience, and I don’t regret my decision for a second,” she says. “It was either this or get a series of temp jobs that would likely lead nowhere. Moving in with my parents is giving me a future and a career.” 

I agree with Nicholson when she says the bitterness toward millennials who live at home is often misdirected. “Be bitter with the system that stalls advancement of young people’s careers, while prices of everything continue to rise,” she says.

And that’s true. If we want young people to have a chance at independence, we need things such as affordable housing, jobs that pay a living wage, health benefits for part-time and contract workers, and accessible education and training.

It’s also true that life is a series of choices, compromises and sacrifices. But the “real world” looks different than it did 40 years ago. It’s difficult to say “hard work pays off” if, for so many of a certain generation, it doesn’t. 

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti