Living with Adult Children

How to pass, fit in, eventually set an example, and ultimately lead the way.
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jennypenny
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Living with Adult Children

Post by jennypenny »

ZH had yet another article up this morning on the issue of adult children living with their parents longer. I've read several articles about it recently. The spin is always negative. ... it's hard on the parents financially, it shows that the kids aren't prepared to move out, it holds the economy back by reducing the number of new independent households, etc. While I agree that it's a bad sign *if* the parents are financially supporting kids well into adulthood, choosing to live together is another matter. Why not live together to save money and resources, and reduce environmental impact? Why is economy of scale always ignored in this discussion? There seem to be so many benefits to group living that I don't understand why extended family living arrangements are viewed so negatively.

If you don't get along with your family or your life takes you in a different direction, then I don't think you should be made to feel guilty about moving away. OTOH, if you don't mind living with your extended family and your own needs line up, I don't think you should be made to feel guilty or inadequate for choosing to live with your parents. To me, it seems like the smart thing to do all around.

/rant :P

BlueNote
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by BlueNote »

The idea that being independent means living in your own home that you pay for with your own job is so highly in embedded in 'anglo' culture that almost nobody but us weirdo's ever examine it critically.

I honestly cringe a little bit inside at the idea of my son living with us for a long time. However that's probably just my personality and cultural programming, I want my children to be truly independent, or at least as much as their potential allows. My culture has baked in this idea that this means moving to a separate space that they pay for with their job with no help from mom and dad. However I know that in the abstract there are so many more ways to achieve independence. In fact the skill of learning to live together to a certain degree would have been very beneficial to my parents. My parents are so used to living apart from anyone else that they'd likely prefer being taken out the house in a box then going into an assisted care facility. They just don't have the skill set , nor do they want to learn it right now, to move in with another group of people and go through the process. Other cultures routinely live together, multiple generations, aunts , uncles , friends and find ways to make this work synergistically.

chenda
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by chenda »

Agree. I guessing the norm of moving out prior to marriage may have been a post-war western tradition, especially for women. A key problem though is where to have sex...

daylen
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by daylen »

I am still living with my mom. We split rent and cleaning duties. She learns about ere, and helps me stay sane. Net positive for both of us.

Definitely situational though.

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fiby41
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by fiby41 »

I am an adultinfantile and I'm going to live with my parents until it's fickonomical.
Only situation I can imagine in which I won't is if I get a fickonomical job in a city other than current or hometown.

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fiby41
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Fuck my wife while my kids watch in silence ~ Eminem

Post by fiby41 »

chenda wrote:
Sun Dec 10, 2017 9:43 am
A key problem though is where to have sex...
A separate room for the couple. Honeymoon. Mini Vacations. Night outs.

It was common practice in Arctic countries where families lived in huts and couldn't go out during winters for couples to have sex while other members including children minded their own business.
Source;: Malcolm Galdwin's Outliers.

I imagine that this must've been a common practice worldwide throughout human history and that the taboo associated with it now, if any, is a very recent phenomenon.

Dream of Freedom
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by Dream of Freedom »

Well, if you aren't going to save and your only thought on how to use money is to spend it, then what toys are going to get that will be better than your own place? ;)

Campitor
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by Campitor »

I used to rent a unit where I got a price break if I agreed to be the building's handyman. The apartment unit above me one day had some frozen pipes which needed thawing. When I got inside the apartment, the floors had mattresses everywhere with people watching various small TVs. I talked to this teen who was there and he told me they were all family (extended). They were all living together to save rent so they could buy a multi-unit house and open a business. About a year later they did just that. American's don't seem to grasp the advantages of living together to garner an economic advantage on future investments. I have never lived alone. Even when I was single and renting, I always had several roommates - not only do you save money but you actually wind up going out less because your apartment becomes the hangout joint instead of the local bar/restaurant. Pooling money for food/rent/mortgage/utilities - how is this not seen as a win/win? But I do agree that the "adult children" should be contributing something to the household and not be financial vampires bleeding resources out of their parents.

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jennypenny
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by jennypenny »

I guess everyone needs to learn to treat each other like adults for it to work. If you think your kid needs to cut the cord, you might have to push them out of the house for a while so they can learn to be an adult. It's probably not a bad idea for all kids to head out of the house for a while to find their legs, whether through travel, college, mission work, etc.

I've known a lot of parents who treat their kids like kids for way too long. That would have to end, too. I get annoyed with parents (my age) who complain about how much time/money their adult kids consume but then don't cut them off. I think it's an excuse, like when parents over younger kids live in fancy houses and spend too much money on vacations and then complain about the 'sacrifice' they're making.

@chenda -- I think my kids feel more awkward about hearing DH and I have sex than I would feel about overhearing them. ;)

Jason

Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by Jason »

Children moving away is a relatively new phenomenon and still not a universal phenomenon i.e. many countries are still tribal in nature. It really started when economic systems moved from agrarian based to mercantilism/manufacturing based.

We take for granted private space. Separate rooms were not always a part of domestic life. I'm not sure how people worked around it (well, I really don't want to think about it) but they did. Literacy requires not only private space but private time, neither of which was readily available or endemic to domestic life. The proliferation of affordable printed material in the 16th century was both a result and expeditor of changing family dynamics, domestic life in general not to mention residential architecture.

As someone who dedicates as much spare time as possible to pissing people off on the internet, by far the most common insult I receive is that I live in my mother's basement (a distant second being that I can't secure intimate female companionship, closely followed by not only can't I secure intimate female companionship but in fact, I ultimately prefer intimate male companionship). Based upon the puerile nature of the exchange and the general sophistication, or lack thereof, of my opponents, I do not address the fact that said insult is historically conditioned and would not always have been considered a legitimate, albeit feeble attempt to disparage me.

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Sclass
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by Sclass »

daylen wrote:
Sun Dec 10, 2017 10:03 am
I am still living with my mom. We split rent and cleaning duties. She learns about ere, and helps me stay sane. Net positive for both of us.

Definitely situational though.
That’s so cool that you can teach your mom about ere. It’ll pay dividends down the road.

Situational pretty much sums it up. I can imagine situation where it works. You get some things you lose others.

My grandfather had a large compound with my uncle and my cousins living with them. It was good and bad for them in the long run. They got some really unique parenting there that I am jealous of to this day. But at great cost. They’re pretty messed up mentally.

My dad and Mom refused to live there. They couldn’t stand the control factor. I wanted to be like my grandfather but I found out those who lived under his roof turned out to be more like grandfather’s subjects rather than his clones.

My brother was raised in that home because my folks were too young and irresponsible to raise him. He turned out kinda weird. He lacks my grandfather’s strengths and has my Uncle’s weaknesses. Mom swore it was the old man’s influence.

In my current situation my dad and step mother have put a lot of pressure on me to move into my mother’s home. “Such a big home, it’s a shame, you could live there rent free.” Heck no dude. Huge pressure from siblings to “retire” there. I’ve compromised by living fifty miles down the street and letting a team of caregivers clean up after Mom. Now there is a lot of bitterness in my immediate family over how I’m burning family money by not doing things the efficient way. They know little Sclass can do better than this.

You get some things you lose others.

Farm_or
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by Farm_or »

It is character building to live with roommates. If the adult children had survived and learned from that experience, then why not roommate back at their parents?

Without having that experience and maturing around roommates that won't put up with their ignorance, carelessness, and laziness, they will be forever undeveloped living under their parents coddling, bound to be debts to society.

classical_Liberal
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by classical_Liberal »

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Last edited by classical_Liberal on Fri Feb 05, 2021 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Did
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by Did »

Sclass wrote:
Sun Dec 10, 2017 8:32 pm

In my current situation my dad and step mother have put a lot of pressure on me to move into my mother’s home. “Such a big home, it’s a shame, you could live there rent free.” Heck no dude. Huge pressure from siblings to “retire” there. I’ve compromised by living fifty miles down the street and letting a team of caregivers clean up after Mom. Now there is a lot of bitterness in my immediate family over how I’m burning family money by not doing things the efficient way. They know little Sclass can do better than this.
No volunteers from them I take it.

Good move resisting.

Loner
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by Loner »

I think the negative spin is part of modernity’s drive towards destroying the family unit to rapidly transform people in good obedient workers. Living alone makes you more fragile, and you need to clutch to your job to survive. Business interests like it. It’s not surprising that living alone is spun as a virtue in the US, where big business drives culture (and here in Canada, where we take many cues from American culture).

I have worked since I was 15 to pay a part of my university and the stuff I wanted (bicycles, etc.), but I stayed with my family until 27. We liked each other, so that helped. It worked quite well for us. I didn’t drain their finances since I paid for what I used (food, mainly), and helped around the house: trimming hedges, yardwork, bringing in firewood, assistance with caravan, bicycle tuning, computer repairman (“Could you have a look? The computer is slow.”), etc.

Controlling for other factors like “Needed to leave home because university is far away”, there seems to me to be a very strong negative correlation between “Quality of parent-child relationship” and “Age of leaving home”. There also seems to be a rural-urban divide. Staying with your family is, from what I’ve seen, looked down much more severely by urbanites and “modern people”. For some of them, announcing you live with you family since you get along well is almost like casually saying you have a cocktail of venereal diseases.

Traveling a bit, I was surprised to see how unique North-America is unique in this regard. In most of the world, “living with your parents” until marriage is not really a thing. It’s just how life is.

Self-reliance and independence is all well and nice, but I don’t think it’s necessarily virtuous to leave home just to show you can live alone, a perspective which seems to be embedded in the culture. You should be able to, sure, you should have the skills, but there’s no need to always make things harder than they need to be. Seneca said that philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one. If living with you family makes the life of ever person involved more happy and meaningful and robust, why do otherwise?

Jason

Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by Jason »

Well said.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

The adult child I am currently living with is my bi-polar shopaholic mother. Her very generous combination of social security and large pension is spent within hours of receipt every month. Luckily, due to repeated bad experience and strict psychiatric regimen, she at least usually manages to pay her bills first thing. Also, nobody will ever extend her credit again, so that category of expense is precluded.

When I return from spending a few days with my BF, I will likely find the kitchen piled with dirty dishes. A shopping bag containing something like new linen drapes purchased for full price at the mall will be somewhere under the rubble with a tablespoon of jam stuck on top of it. I have been the "Mom" in a household with two teenage girls who frequently entertained their friends. My mother alone is worse than that.

My second sister is still borderline unstable, so I am going to have to have a talk with my two youngest sisters who live out of town when they come in for the holidays. Zero rent is not the price of my sanity. I am converting what used to be known as the Princess Room into a minimalist functional space where anybody could stay during interval when caregiver is necessary because my mother's knee went out again or she is otherwise incapacitated. Right now, given possibility of grocery delivery and non-emergency fire-fighter lift from floor, she could probably continue to live independently for a few more years.

Beyond vent, my point here being that whether or not group living results in savings may depend on the composition of individuals who make up the group. For instance, if your party of 5 is you, your active alcoholic father, delinquent teenage brother, infant cousin dropped off by absentee Aunt, and an old dog with fleas, not so likely to lead to quick ERE. OTOH, the reality is that the world is not peopled with only highly competent adults, no matter where you place your theoretical boundaries. Your party of 5 is never an island unto itself.

Rouva
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Re: Living with Adult Children

Post by Rouva »

I grew up in a small farmer village, where nuclear families were basically unheard of. Houses had two or three generations of family members, and even if the nuclear family had their own house, it was usually built opposite the "old" family house where grandparents lived. Even if small farms vanished when the country joined EU, it was expected that at least one son remained in family home and took over after his parents were too old to care for the house. My husband's parents come from the same region, and one of their sons still lives at home at 38. Never moved out, or held a job. My grandmother had five children, and three of them lived in family home at some point of their adulthood, often with their own families. The eldest son did her shopping and other stuff she was unable to do after she aged.

I expect that my family will become extended again at some point. Currently, I live with husband and children, but my brother moved to same neighbourhood after his chronic condition became worse. He lives in his own apartment, but it's three minute walk from mine. Basically, it's the same arrangement of two households at the same farm but set in city environment. When we get old, I think I might end up living with him again and it's all right. Also, at least one of my children will stay home because he is disabled and I've worked too much in disability services not to be critical towards other housing options.

When I first moved to city, I was somewhat surprised to notice that extended family living together was not a norm here. I remember my first job at the hospital, where I listened the doctor state "there's something weird here, she lives with her mom" and I was like ??? 150km can change a lot.

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