20SomethingMom chronicles of a young mom

Returning to The NestPosted by admin on April 12th, 2010

It’s the hush-hush topic of my generation: moving back in with your parents.

Nearly every person I know who graduated from college in the last 5 years has moved back home at some point. Sometimes, this is for personal reasons, but it’s most often for financial reasons.

After all, living with the ‘rents looks much better on paper than any apartment we could afford.

Mom’s & Dad’s: stocked pantry; laundry on-site; full cable package; one or more bedrooms furnished with comfort items from childhood; free parking; built-in babysitter, counselor, friend, etc…

If it weren’t for the sinking feeling — the lurking F for Failure — that accompanies this common living situation, we’d all be at our happiest in this mid-20s period of material fruitlessness. In a culture that propels us forward with nebulous promises and expectations, though, a move back home often requires a lengthy explanation. As degree-bearing, family-starting young people, we no longer have to endure the barrage of questions about what we will do with our lives at some indefinite point in the future; now, the questions focus on today, tomorrow, and next week.

Have you gotten a call about that job you applied for?

Did you get into grad school?

How much work do you have this week?

It can be even more uncomfortable answering these questions than dealing with an onslaught of unwanted advice.

Instead of feeling like we have to explain away our difficulties, we should consider that there is incredible freedom in having no plans. For once in our lives, we can forget about preparing for some day that will never come and just live. We don’t have to be moving forward (which way is forward?). Sometimes the best way to see clearly is to stand in one place for awhile, to observe rather than act. If that place is our parents’ house, we should consider ourselves lucky.

Financial lack is a powerful cultural force. All the lies inherent in our varying-degrees-of-privileged childhoods can now be unearthed as we reevaluate what we want in terms of identity and values. Things that have nothing to do with money are the hardest to create and maintain.

Will we live up to the expectations of economists and sociologists who label us the Recession Generation? Or will there be more to it than just safer fiscal behavior?

Living with Mom and Dad again gives us an opportunity to metamorphose the definition of the American family. Perhaps we won’t see it as necessary to push our own kids out of the house at some arbitrary age (18? after college?) and we will find a way to support them with more than just large bedrooms and free meals. After all, our parents’ eagerness to send us out into the “real world” was always driven by their wish to retire and reap the rewards of 30+ years of work. If we won’t have those same rewards — i.e. a robust 401(k) promising years of travel and relaxation — how will we view our relationship with our adult children? How can we use this time at home to shift our mindset, desires, and expectations?

I, for one, am hopeful that there will be a more permanent shift towards inclusion of the extended family in raising children, as exists in many non-Western cultures. Living with my mother sometimes presents challenges for me, but has been nothing short of a godsend for my son. He gets the structure of the parent-child relationship and the fun and trust of the grandparent-child relationship in one place.

Who’s to say that we need to check off young adult milestones in the traditional order if that’s going to make life more difficult for everyone? As long as there is mutual respect and we don’t take advantage of our parents, a cooperative household of more than two generations can be beneficial for everyone. The difficult part is learning to share life’s burdens. Sometimes, we simply can’t do it alone.

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