Author Archives: Christina Newberry

New stats: 10% of 18-to-34-year-olds moved back home with parents because of recession.

The Pew Research Center recently released some interesting statistics:

13% of parents with grown children say one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year
10% of adults ages 18 to 34 say the poor economy has forced them to move back in with Mom and Dad
11% of all adults 18 or older live with their parents in their home
Only seven-in-ten grown children who live with their parents are younger than 30 (that means 30% of them are over 30)
Of all adults who report they currently live in their parents’ home, about a third (35%) say they had lived independently at some point in their lives before returning home

You can read an article that explains Pew’s methods of data collection, and provides some analysis, here.

BBC show looking for adult children living at home

The BBC South Politics Show, which airs every Sunday in Hampshire, Dorset, West Sussex, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Surrey, wants to hear from people in the South of England who have Kippers or adult children at home. They want to find out why the adult children are still at home and how it’s working out for the whole family. There’s a chance the BBC would want to come and interview the family for the show. If this describes you, and you’re interested in talking to the BBC, send me a quick e-mail at christina@adultchildrenlivingathome.com and I’ll connect you with the people involved at the BBC.

Government-sanctioned "tough love" for boomerang kids

There’s quite a lot of uproar going on right now about a brochure released by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills in the UK, urging parents to show “tough love” to their boomerang kids or other adult children living at home. The brochure says that parents shouldn’t nag (it’s not effective), but that they should cut back on the support they provide to boomerang kids to encourage them to step up to the plate and take care of themselves.

Much of the advice overlaps what I say in my book. The difference is that those who buy my book do so because they are looking for tips to make the situation of living with adult children work — meaning that they have some concerns about the situation or are already experiencing stress related to their living arrangements. Spending government money on a substantial glossy brochure to offer this advice to all parents of boomerang kids seems a bit much.

If you want to see what all the fuss is about, you can download the brochure, called “Parent Motivators,” here: www.direct.gov.uk/graduates

Interview on Roy Green's Nationally Syndicated Show

Today I spoke with Roy Green on his Canada-wide talk show on the Corus Radio Network about how to deal with adult children living at home, including some important ways adult children must be treated differently from when they were little kids:

Don’t overparent your adult kids — it’s a sure way to encourage rebellion and resentment. You can have house rules, but you can’t rule your adult child’s life.
Don’t take care of all the details — your role has changed, and it’s no longer appropriate for you to pay your adult child’s bills, or do their laundry. Your role is to help your adult child achieve independence.
Talk, talk, talk. Your adult child should have much more input than they did when they were small, and discussions and agreements are important to achieving household harmony. That said, it’s still your house, so in the end, what you say goes.

You can hear the interview here.

From the adult child's point of view: How to maintain a relationship?

Lucy Tobin, a boomerang kid in the UK, recently write an excellent piece for The Guardian that can provide some insight for parents with adult children living at home — especially if they have recently returned from university — about how challenging it is for adult children living at home to maintain a normal young adult’s life, having had to give up the typical young adult lifestyle. The article shows how both parents and kids can feel stressed by the situation, and may echo some of your own thoughts about how challenging it is to see your adult child making mistakes or decisions you don’t agree with right in front of you, even if you know they were likely doing those same things while they were away (and you were blissfully ignorant).

Here are quotes from two Moms in the article:

“In a way, it was easier when you were at university. I could listen from afar whenever you felt like talking to me about your love life, and try to help. But now I see it developing in front of my eyes, and when I give you advice, you ignore it.”

“I get on well with my kids, and their boyfriends are nice, polite people to have around. But it can be frustrating – they revert to how they were as children. It would be nice to see them and their partners make a meal for us once in a while, rather than us cooking for all the extra people all the time.”

Do these sentiments sound familiar? If so, you can read the rest of the article here. And then, you might want to check out the tips you can find in The Hands-On Guide to Surviving Adult Children Living at Home.

How to help young adult children become independent

Is the boomerang kid phenomenon all about the economy, or is there more to it than that? How can you help young adult children become independent? In Escaping the Endless Adolescence: How We Can Help Our Teenagers Grow Up Before They Grow Old, psychologists Joseph Allen and Claudia Worrell Allen suggest that over-parenting has created a generation of young adults who are more dependent on their parents than ever — including needing advice from mom and dad an everage of 13 times per week while away at college!

In this interview with the Globe and Mail, Dr. Joseph Allen explains how you can help your young adult child develop the skills they need for independence: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships/are-you-stopping-your-teen-from-growing-up/article1356130/

Video: An adult son who returned home with wife and daughters in tow

When adult children move home with children of their own in tow, there are even more issues that everyone has to deal with — including who will look after the young children, where everyone will fit, and conflicts over different parenting styles. Still, it’s becoming a more and more common living situation, and with good communication and understanding, you can make it work. Here’s a video that tells the story of one adult son who moved back into his parents house with his wife and two daughters after the economic downturn made it impossible to make ends meet.

Another family story of adult children living at home

Today’s family story comes from Stillwater, Minnessota, where 33-year-old Dawn Mikkelson has moved back in with her parents after she lost 60% of her video-production company’s business to the recession.

Dawn’s story shows that there’s always something a little starnge about moving back in with Mom and Dad. For her, it’s the pink carpet in her childhood bedroom, that reminds her of her childhood “pink phase.”

You can read Dawn’s story here.

Are your adult child's finances your business?

One of the biggest sources of conflict between parents and adult children living at home — in fact, between just about any adults who share a household — is money. In a recent column for the Washington Post, Michelle Singletary explained when — and why — and adult child’s finances are, in fact, their parents’ business. The column was written in response to a letter from an adult child living at home that began like this:

“My parents and I are at an impasse,” she said. “After graduating college, I had minor credit card debt. I asked to move into my parents’ home after living on my own for a while to get rid of the debt, and to get other finances in order. I wanted to do a reset and start off right before it got out of hand.”

To see what Singletary had to say about this hot topic, you can read her column online here.

The older the child, the greater the tension

Researchers from the University of Michigan recently did a study of parents and their adult children. Not surprisingly, they found that there is often tension between parents and adult kids. Parents tend to feel more tension than the adult kids, and parents feel more tension with daughters than with sons. As children get older, tension appears to increase.

Researchers found that the more tension, the less likely parents and adult kids were to use constructive strategies to sort out their differences.

Be sure to sort out annoying issues with your adult kids before they turn into major crises, and you’ll be much more likely to resolve things amicably. There are some excellent communication strategies based on years of leadership and communications training in The Hands-On Guide to Surviving Adult Children Living at Home.

The study mentioned above will be published in the journal Psychology and Aging.