Papa, can you hear me? Papa can you see me?!.....52% of adults under 30, living with parents.....

[graylocks]

tuqqer wrote:

I don't see a lot of that kind of bootstrap risk taking in many young people.

i agree with you regarding the willingness to hustle or make sacrifices. what level of socio-economic class would you say you grew up in. my family didn’t feel poor but i do know what government cheese taste like and my first glasses came from county health clinics. my parents also scraped it together for me to attend a private boarding school and i got a scholarship to a really good college.

for a variety of reasons my son has grown up with opportunities and resources that belie my actual meager resources and thus is used to a fair amount of creature comforts. he’s read stories of people who make and have made the kind of sacrifices you have. he says he’s not that kind of guy. yes, he has a job but to move out he’s going to need more than that.

[samintx]

I would have lived in a silo before living with my mother during or after college. I made excuses to attend summer school so I only had to be home 3 weeks.

[graylocks]

samintx wrote:
I would have lived in a silo before living with my mother during or after college. I made excuses to attend summer school so I only had to be home 3 weeks.

was this because you and your mom didn't get along or because of your pride at independence?

my brother and i have both noted that unlike many in our separate circles of friends and acquaintances, we grew up in a functional family. i would also say that about my son. i think he would say the same for all our interpersonal challenges.

[mattkime]

tuqqer wrote:
Case in point: in my last year of high school, every day after school, I would hustle quickly a half mile to a main road where I'd hitchhike 5 miles to a restaurant, where I'd work until 11pm each night, 36 hours a week, washing dishes.

Thats quite the 'up hill both ways' story.

[A-Polly]

samintx wrote:
I would have lived in a silo before living with my mother during or after college. I made excuses to attend summer school so I only had to be home 3 weeks.

Me, too!—and not because of a Harry-Potter-at-the-Dursleys situation. I didn't dislike my family, or live in disturbing circumstances. But being there after living away felt suffocating...ha, that feeling comes back hard even now, many (ahem!) decades later, when I think about those days. :oldfogette:

[sekker]

I encourage those criticizing the Youth today to listen to this 10 min podcast:

Millennial Mythbusting

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/762099021

'Millennials are living at home longer. They're getting married later. They're having children later. And they're putting off buying houses. And this has led some people from earlier generations to label millennials as lazy or coddled or afraid of becoming adults, to make commitments and put down roots. But that is a bum rap.'

'Gray has been referred to by The Washington Post as a serial millennial myth-debunker. He says that the reputation millennials have gotten as lazy or afraid of adulthood is nonsense. And there is data to back it up. '

I can validate the headwinds listed here as impacting my two Millennials. Give them a break. And all of these issues were BEFORE COVID.

[graylocks]

sekker wrote:
I can validate the headwinds listed here as impacting my two Millennials. Give them a break. And all of these issues were BEFORE COVID.

i will listen to the podcast and i agree about the headwinds. Mine has been home since 2013. There has been incremental progress and improvement but in my circumstance personal initiative is wanting much more critically than amongst his friends. there have also been some emotional health issues. mom is cutting breaks or at least still continuing to feed him. sorta. certain foods he likes that i don't eat at all are now his responsibility to plan for and purchase.

[rgG]

I went to college at 18.
I was home over summer break for the first summer.
I did a study abroad for the next and went to summer school to knock out my six required PE courses the last summer.
I was soooooooo lucky to land a job a few weeks before I graduated in 1979, during an awful time to find a job.
I haven’t lived at home since. I am sure having no student debt helped me a lot.

My daughter only lived at home for a few months after she was out of college, in 2013, until she landed her first full time job, thank goodness. I love her more than anything, but adult children living with their parents is very difficult for all involved. She was lucky not to be saddled with student loans.

[rz]

In my brother's family, 50% of the adults over 30 are living with their parents (2 out of 4). Neither went to college, and neither have a job. He hates it (at least that's what he tells us), but his wife seems to love it. I doubt they will ever move out.

I had no choice. I lived at home during the summers I was in college, but in my senior year, my parents moved to what was their "retirement" home and basically told me I wasn't coming with them. I wasn't planning on it though. They lived in the boonies, and I wouldn't have been able to find an engineering job within 50 miles.

[graylocks]

rz wrote:
In my brother's family, 50% of the adults over 30 are living with their parents (2 out of 4). Neither went to college, and neither have a job.

if for no other reason, my son maintains some level of employment because he knows i would harangue him from dawn to dust if he didn't. not working at all is NOT an option.