Over Half of U.S. Young Adults Now Live with Their Parents
visualcapitalist.com
visualcapitalist.com
However, I was unprepared in the extreme for the ambient hostility toward men who live with their mothers, no matter the reason. I do not attempt to date or anything near it (I have additional factors that would make dating ... unlikely ... already, and living with your mom is just gravy on top), nor do I "hit on" women, but there was a (to me) startling rate of women who, upon finding out my situation, make it abundantly clear that they would not date me, despite me not asking. I refer to this as "pre-jection."
I wonder if this sort of thing will continue, now that it is happening to a significantly larger segment of the population.
At least being men our dating prospects can actually improve the older we get, and for me I'll be pretty well off financially when I do live on my own, but that's small comfort in the present...
Maybe I’m an outlier, or just got lucky, but the first woman I started dating after a failed 5 year relationship ended up being conditionally ok with it - the conditions being that living in my family’s home wasn’t my “end game”, and that I was able to take care of myself. This was coming from an extremely independent woman who lived on her own, in a country outside of where she was born since coming to the US for college. Since then, she’s come to understand that living with, and helping to take care of family shows a degree of maturity and responsibility that transcends merely taking care of n=1 (yourself).
If anyone is in a similar situation, don’t be afraid to enter the dating pool just because you live with family, don’t be ashamed of it, and respect the ignorance of those who haven’t had the burden of having to support loved ones on their shoulders.
*edit (typo)
Also, by “end game”, she meant that I was planning on moving out at some point, which I am.
In most Asian countries, taking care of your parents is a filial obligation/responsibility deeply engrained in culture: an expectation for being a good child.
It is starting to change now due to Western influence and affluence though...but it is still traditionally the norm to take care of your parents.
My mother taught me young, "Watch how a guy treats his mother because that's how he'll treat his future wife." I've observed it to be true, as a grown woman. There is hope for those like you because there must be others who know this pearl of wisdom.
The only reason I mention that is because I recently started dating a man (not exclusively yet) who has just moved in with his Mom to save money and buy a home. I live with my Mom, who has Parkinson's, to help her.
I do not judge him remotely and find him incredibly attractive regardless. The only person who is ashamed is him! The logistics are the only issue, but we make enough that I don't mind renting out AirBnBs etc...
He is being financially responsible, and I am taking care of the woman who sacrificed her life for me to achieve my dreams and is now unwell.
Be proud, and screw those women with double standards who fail to look a little deeper. It's sexism. A lot of women unfortunately hold this stigma, but there are women like us out there who don't. Keep looking.
When a woman lives with their parents it can be a sign of a few things, such as self entitlement, failure to launch, and parents that still have control over her. These will make for a rough relationship with a woman in this situation. These could be taken as generalizations, but like I said, the negative stigma needs to go both ways.
It's unfair that this is stigmatised, I think it's a good and noble thing to look after elderly parents.
It's not so common in the west, but it's very common in other cultures, I think we get that part wrong in western society.
I couldn't bear the fact that my mother was in a nursing home. If she ever needs care I wont be sending her to something like that, I'll do what you're doing.
That sounds awful. How exactly do they go about this?
Similarly, if less vituperatively, some simply announce "I could never date a guy who lives with his mother!" immediately after, although I had not offered a date.
It is sometimes a struggle to be pleasant in these situations. I sometimes do want to ask if they would like to be abandoned by their children if they were older and fell upon hard times, but I restrain myself.
As @stronglikedan says in a comment in this thread, "most people suck." It's a bit broad, but it ain't wrong.
Right now it is merely a sad observation from the permanently sidelined.
From what I understand of your situation, you should be proud of what you're doing. You aren't living with your mother because you can't stand to leave the nest, you are taking care of your aging mother because she can't take care of herself (small assumption on my part).
If you were able to succinctly describe this in a way you are proud of, which shows that you are mature, responsible, and caring, I wonder if you'd get a better response.
I think the stereotype (as the article somewhat alludes to), is that young adults are living with their parents due to negative circumstances (economic, psychological, etc). It may be ignoring another underlying metric which is that as parents have children later in life, the parents are less able to care for themselves as the child reaches the age when most would be leaving the home.
In any case, there is no opportunity; I am not dating material for numerous other reasons and have accepted that.
At this point, I'd rather be alone the rest of my life than live a fake life passing tests.
I'm not sure of your age but I'm sure it'll be less of an issue as you grow older, and the dating pool around you also starts dealing with aging parents, and they understand the difficulties.
Most people suck. The silver lining is that you have a great bar for measuring them up against, to find the few that don't, should you decide to get back into the dating game. I'd work that fact in towards the end of a first meetup, since it would save both time and money.
Like I said, I went into it with my eyes open. I didn't expect anyone to give me a cookie or anything. It's just that the generalized hostility was unexpected.
(Or at least, an infinitesimally small number that are not already in a long term healthy relationship. It may be that we've just missed the opportunity to meet the high quality people in our earlier years.)
I've had my share of relationships, and still date from time to time, but usually I find the experience disappointing.
The answers you seek you will not find in Hacker News, I will not link to anything I do hope you encounter the solutions to your problems, as I did once myself after struggling with dating, some time ago.
Parents can provide both knowledge and material support for various tasks related to home making and child rearing. It's nice to have someone who's done it before right there to answer any question and give you a hand rather than reinventing the wheel every generation. Splitting up chores more ways leaves everyone less exhausted, and allows for more specialization. You may not like your parents' style, but it's better than doing everything yourself.
The benefits go both ways. As your parents age, they become more feeble. Live in children can take care of their parents without spending a fortune on professional care services. Further many risks of old age like falls are greatly mitigated the more frequent there is human contact. Money that would have been spent on young laborers can instead be put towards retirement savings, again perhaps a macroeconomic loss but great for the individual.
Multi-generational housing is common in many societies. That it is uncommon in modern western culture is really an anomaly: the industrial revolution and subsequent scientific advances meant a sudden boom in the population and rapid changes in lifestyle, you couldn't simply have everyone stay on the farm their whole life, most people had to move to a city and start a new household. Now that populations are stabilizing, it makes sense that we would revert to the system we had before.
Instead we have a land-use system that privileges people who bought 20 or 30 or more years ago, at the expense of anyone who did not. U.S. housing policy is in the main poorly thought out.
But, generally, I'm not sure that incentivizing people to legally bond themselves to another is necessarily an unquestionably positive thing.
People with real issues, whether mental or criminal or sick etcetc both don't marry and have significantly smaller income. People with issues divorce more often and have smaller income too.
We dont know that.
Unmarried lower income people are more likely to have criminal record, more likely to have mental health issues, more likely to be the ones having hard time to keep jobs, more likely to have drugs related issues. Among women, those who got pregnant before marriage and much harder time to get any money and also are less interesting romance target for guys.
People nowdays see marriage as something you do once you are set by your standars and that strongly biases who marry.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/in-the-balance/2018/...
The fact that a college educated person earns less than what you claim is a mentally unwell, non job having drug addict is sad but no all to unobvious. Why would you think a teaching degree or psych degree major would earn more over their lifetime than a plumber or construction worker.
The fact is single women benefit the most financially from marriage since single uneducated and college educated women have a much higher than average poverty rate.
Plus, there's the whole " allowed to be next to your loved one in the hospital" thing that's overlooked until it's needed.
So, no 40 acres, but there are benefits beyond two incomes.
WRT mortgages, given some of the other threads in this discussion pointing out that something like 70% of millennial homeowners were married, it certainly seems relevant.
EDIT: It looks like it really depends on the income levels of both parties. Two well paid professionals will probably see a penalty filing jointly, whereas a single professional income will likely see a benefit.
Some argue there is a "Two-Income Trap" where having two incomes did make certain things more affordable for the middle class like housing but eventually it simply drove up the price of housing & other goods. So now a dual income is simply normal and only having a single income is a disadvantage. Therefore it's not super surprising to see single young adults moving back home.
In certain super high CoL areas like the Bay Area we do see a bit of a trend towards 3+ communal living (post college) in the form of group homes. While this decreases the burden of real estate prices, in most cases residents are not building up equity in the home since they rent. In some cases they may be saving enough to offset the lack of equity but that's probably not very common.
It’s largely an outgrowth of extreme prosperity and urbanization.
Conversely, you don't need to be married to be in a relationship with two incomes.
That's true. But a full-time homemaker usually generates economic value that saves money in a long litany of ways. Staying home with kids saves on childcare. Being able to cook meals saves on eating out. Laundry and cleaning saves money on housekeeping costs. Not to mention all of this labor is accumulated tax-free (i.e. if you work to pay for some expense, you have to pay tax on the income first.)
> Conversely, you don't need to be married to be in a relationship with two incomes.
You absolutely don't. But the statistics are unambigious. Unmarried couples are substantially more likely to split than married ones. The dissolution of a household tends to be an expensive affair that permanently impedes wealth accumulation.
Not to mention that because of this, unmarried couples are substantially less likely to join their finances. Therefore they tend to get significantly worse deals than couples with joined finances. For example two-incomes who jointly sign a mortgage can get a much better APR, than when the mortgage is in one person's name.
Forget what the government does its generally easier to build wealth with two people than one. Theres more flexibility to prevent failure.
Also I'd question that statistic - the older you are the more likely you are married and more likely you are further in your career.
I agree in that married couple are normally muti-income households which makes them wealthy
I disagree that it should be the role of government to incentivize or decentivize marriage
We can resolve this by allowing people to form their own "households" for tax purposes and it should not matter if they are related, married, sleeping with each other, etc.
If they live in the same house, they should be treated as a household and be taxes according to that (or individually if they desire)
I would like to see an end to all government regulations on interpersonal relationships.
Under the Obama administration marriage benefits were extended to same-sex couples EXPANDING the government's push for more people to be married.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161110003040/https://www.justi...
Land use restrictions, housing regulations, and zoning laws substantially increase housing costs. Affordable family formation is the major driver of marriage rates. Housing costs are the primary component of affordable family formation.
Oregon and Washington outperform many southeastern states, in fact they surpass every southeastern state, according to the US census. And while N-E and CA do have a lower marriage rate, it isn't that much lower.
>Few couples base their marriage decisions on the tax consequences that may result.
I'm willing to bet the number of 20-somethings that have "tax considerations" deciding their marital status can be measured in basis points. Furthermore, nothing I see there is a "new penalty", while the numbers have varied over time, those rules look to be exactly the same as they were 20 years ago.
Second, you are nuts if you think this has ANY significant impact on people getting married.
Third, you can file married filed separately.. so while I'm not up on all the details of that, you can probably avoid the simple impacts it might have.
Anyway, that is an extremely crazy weak argument.
Our income at the time, combined, was ~160k.
The mortgage deduction affects anyone with a "large" mortgage, but at current housing prices "large" is becoming the norm.
All these things whether good or bad makes it less likely people settle for pairing together like they typically would have.
The usual argument that says that the government disincentivized marriage is through social safety nets like welfare, particularly ones that pay more for single parents without a spouse in the house, as well as mechanisms like child support payments.
The usual argument that says society has disincentivized marriage is basically through access to sex. There used to be a culture of enforced monogamy, where there was enormous social pressure to be married before having sex, and especially before living with one another. Now, that stigma is largely gone, so the incentive to get married has diminished substantially.
Again, not making a value judgement, just answering the question.
Plus, the enforcement is hard. And even harder since domestic violence rates among cops are higher then those of general population.
> I’m saying the expectation going into a marriage should be that one partner is dominant so there are no power struggles much like a hierarchy in a company.
Aaaand this is literally what leads to abuse. See, the perfect compliance is not possible nor actually human. The one dominator is bound to do dumb or egoistic decisions here and there. Or decisions that ignore needs of partner due to ignorance. With partner being submissive and not providing feedback, dominating person is bound to become worst and worst.
Plus, actual humans have real need for own agency. And when that agency manifests, again, the one who feels entitled to rule it all becomes abusive.
The stats tell the story. Young people are the largest part of the workforce[0], but we work for lower wages and have a TINY amount of the wealth in comparison to older generations[1].
The number of my friends who are hamstrung by massive student loan debt is sickening. The US is bleeding my generation dry.
0: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/11/millennials...
1: https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-versus-boomers-w...
It's not the best life, but at least I have some cash to fall back on when my at-will employment is terminated for no cause and I can't find a job for a couple years. Or maybe my carpal tunnel syndrome will drive me out of the (extremely competitive) job market.
Either way, I'm not going to spend more money than I need to so I can have at least some semblance of "stability". And I sure as hell am not raising another generation of wage slaves. This terrible way of life ends with me.
This is 100% true, especially compared to the home ownership rate of past generations at younger ages, 25-35.
The home ownership rate among people 25-34 and 35-44 now is significantly lower than a few decades ago.
[1]: https://www.zillow.com/research/homeownership-rate-us-housin... (from 2016 so could be a bit different, but still relevant) [2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/30/homeownership-eludes-million...
Using a spatial equilibrium model and data from 220 metropolitan areas we find that these constraints lowered aggregate US growth by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009.
Most of the "income inequality" discourse in the U.S. is really a gloss on what should be housing discourse.
Compared to the rest of the world, people in the US have it easy.
Heck, in many places in the western world, people can't even afford to buy an apartment , which many in the US own or will own houses.
Despite this, we have super comfortable lives, as you say. We've jumped from trailer park, meth country poverty to truly living like we're in the middle class, something I think is way harder to do in other countries. But kids? No. That looks like a ticket right back to where we started.
Then look at the tax/insurance burden of developing countries. Sure, these people earn nominally less, but they often live relatively better lives. They're living lives closer to what our boomer parents lived.
Real estate prices are a distraction. These are high because interest rates are low. It's probably not a good idea to buy real estate even if you can afford it.
US citizens have it on easy mode.
I mostly agree, I don't know what people were thinking what was going to happen when they majored in underwater basket weaving.
I don't pretend know why people chose to go so deeply into debt. I do know a lot of smart people I respect made this decision, so it is more complicated than simply saying "screw the millennial."
However: There is now a mess that is damaging our society. When there is a fire going on, one does not stand around pointing fingers trying to figure out who started the fire. We put the fire out and figure the rest out afterwards. Millenial student debt is stifling their ability to build wealth, participate in the economy, and damaging their quality of life to the point they choose not to have children. I think this is a problem worth solving.
Do such smart people really still think this of subjects that don't have a pre-drawn straight line to a comparable paycheque to their own?
There's nothing wrong with going for underwater basket weaving if you know and have a plan to do just that. The average college student just associates that student loans == "worry about it later!" && Student loan == "I'll get a 50-60k job out of college no problem!"
I'm sorry, but I disagree in so many ways. Do you know how a school becomes renowned? Even then, there are countless people who have thrived without pedigree, without renown, and taken a path less cut-and-dried. I dread a world where such a narrow path is prescribed and must be adhered to. Reminds me of the puritans.
The entire purpose of an arts education is exploration of humanity. Thank god people still naively pursue that endeavour.
To me it sounds like the problem actually lies in the systems of student loans, not people's spirit for venturing into the unknown of whether or not it will financially benefit them.
The reason kids go to college is to get a good paying job. I hate to say it but if you're a kid who does not have affluent parents or don't live in an area where there actually are legitimate jobs in that field, it's 100% on you for doing that. I mean the opinion that those jobs don't exists isn't a stereotype for a reason. Students can get those jobs, but there most definitely aren't where they went to college typically. If you live in LA, Chicago, NYC; sure those could very well be viable career paths. In the middle of Idaho? Maybe you should reconsider who in Idaho is going to hire an artist outside of the small town that is their capital.
Sometimes reality needs to bite people who are incapable of making goals long term.
I would argue this is proof that you don't understand the nature of an education in the humanities. (For the record, I say this as an English major dropout who's working as a software developer)
> The reason kids go to college is to get a good paying job. I hate to say it but if you're a kid who does not have affluent parents or don't live in an area where there actually are legitimate jobs in that field, it's 100% on you for doing that. I mean the opinion that those jobs don't exists isn't a stereotype for a reason. Students can get those jobs, but there most definitely aren't where they went to college typically. If you live in LA, Chicago, NYC; sure those could very well be viable career paths. In the middle of Idaho? Maybe you should reconsider who in Idaho is going to hire an artist outside of the small town that is their capital.
I went because I wanted to learn something and dig a little deeper into life that wasn't available or remotely present in my rural working-class community, or from my non-affluent parents. I didn't finish so I don't have the pedigree, but I did live and learn a great deal, and it's paid dividends. I'm, oddly, precisely your example, but of a mode that you say doesn't exist.
It's also dishonest to propose that the only pursuit of humanities is to try and eek life out as an artist alone. I mean, I'm sure you value historians.
I have to admit I'm confused by the arbitrary limitations you're imposing on the way one must live out their life. A degree in a given field is not a declaration of intent, it's a mark of study. You can do whatever you want. Some roads have prerequisites for taking them, others don't. And sometimes still, there are roads that are yet uncut.
Maybe what you're really talking about is how easy or hard a given path might be and then associating that with some kind of right or wrong. Efficient path navigation is not the purpose of humanities study or works. It's about discovering what we do not discover through science. Not even science is the end, just another method of discovery. The tangents are the purpose, and reflecting on those in any number of ways is the meaning... leaving the path navigation efficiency algorithms to slime mould.
This. All I heard growing up was "go to post-secondary." Zero concern for what the actual degree would be. Any degree would do.
Now, I'm a big believer in education and post-secondary. 100%. The top earners across the board are more educated than the lower half.
BUT: It depends on the degree. So many of my friends are still paying for degrees that went nowhere, and I'm in my mid-30s.
I've got 4 kids and my message to them is to keep their options open, figure out what kind of work they want to do for the rest of their lives, and get the right education for that. If they want to be an engineer, fantastic. University it is. But so many degrees lead to poor job prospects or low wages that do not in any way justify the cost. It's crazy town.
If the type of work you want to do doesn't pay especially well, that's fine. There's more to life than money. But don't go into debt over it.
Not to detract from the point about student debt, which is absolutely on point, but isn't it expected than younger people would always hold less wealth and have lower salaries on average than older people who have been working for decades longer and have that much more work experience?
So a 25 year old, today, doing the same job as their 25 year old parent/grand parent in 1980 is worse off at the same point in their career. This doesn't bode well when people like my parents and grandparents were relatively easily and affordably able to acquire homes and actually start building wealth, while the current generation of young workers are unable to build wealth.
It's not about a comparison between the youth and the now older workforce (which would be a moronic comparison). It's about comparing the youth to what the older workforce had 40 years ago. Or even 30.
the previous generation did so much with so little. with current attitudes, i dont know how life would become better in the next hundred years. is the defeatism due to not ever having to 'truly' struggle? if people had given up after ww2(or after any of the world's catastrophes), where would we be now?
As parents have children at a later stage of life, they may be less able to care for themselves as the child prepares to leave the home . The effect may be that the child stays in the home to care for the parent.
This changes the dynamic considerably.
As a result, they move back in with mom and dad at age 22, now thousands of dollars in debt.
This "it's your fault for majoring in gender studies" meme is a red herring. There was a time in the U.S. where one parent could support a family and purchase a house while the other stayed at home with the kids. With nothing more than a high school diploma.
most people major in more 'actionable' subjects such as business, nursing, phycology, etc.
That is why poor in India is diff from poor in California. Even though to the poor in India, the Californian poverty seems like the stuff of kings. Etc.
In the 1950s, in the US, you could live on one income of a high-school graduate. Today, you still can... but you have to live a 1950s lifestyle.
But if you look at what the wealthiest (or even the upper middle class) have, no, you can't do that. If that becomes your measure of "how you're supposed to live", then no, you can't live on one income.
But sure, let's blame those foolish, foolish young adults for their crazy choices.
As for the other part: I was told, explicitly, that thinking about college as a jobs-training experience was the wrong approach. Learning how to think, how to write, how to organize ideas, that was valuable in and of itself. And maybe at some time, it was true. With a degree in the '70s, you could get in to a lot of sensible middle-class jobs, even in art-history and psychology.It turned out not to be true [edit: when I was in college, not in the '70s], but I was ill equipped to understand that.
I also suspect that you have only the most superficial understanding of your cohort's motivations, yet seem absolutely confident in your analysis. I wonder if a course in psychology or philosophy would have benefited you some.