23% of British baby boomers financially support adult kids

According to an article in the Telegraph:

One in four – 23 per cent – give regular financial help to their grown-up children and seven per cent have adult offspring living with them who don’t contribute financially to the household.

As we discuss in our book, it’s inappropriate — potentially even damaging — for adults to live at home without making some sort of financial contribution to the household. Even if they can’t pay market rent, it’s important for your adult children’s self esteem to feel they are contributing, and it’s important for you to have help with the additional expenses (electricity, gas, phone) you incur because of the extra person living in your home. You can read some of our tips here.

Young adults "subsidized in the city"

In this Newsweek opinion piece, 25-year-old Melodie Serafino explores the question:

Adulthood means financial independence. So why do so many of my peers still live off their parents?

Her thoughts about subsidized rent, allowance, and other parental support for the 20-plus crowd are an interesting read, especially for families dealing with adult children living at home.

FHA reform bill may help your adult children buy a home

With housing costs way out of reach for many young adults, especially in the face of the current economic crisis, often the only way for adult children to get out of the parental home is with a significant “bail-out” from mom and dad.

Peter G. Miller, author of Common-Sense Mortgage, has a suggestion for a better way to help your adult kids buy a home:

As a parent you can always give a gift to a child to help them buy a home. But a “gift” is something that you don’t get back and doesn’t pay interest, not an option for a lot of families that are not among the rich and famous.

Under the new FHA package, however, there is a delightful option: You can give the children a loan and it will count as “cash” for FHA downpayment purposes.

This is likely to be a better idea for most parents than an outright gift. You can structure the loan as you like, maybe not requiring payments or interest for awhile, or maybe not requiring repayment after so many years. And you can forgive the debt in your estate, if you want.

You can read the rest of his article here.

New Spanish reality show to get adult children to leave home

Following on the heels of Australia’s “The Nest” reality show, Spanish television channel La Sexta is looking for families to participate in a new reality show where adult children who live at home are nudged out to live in a shared flat.

The show may be inspired by troubling new statistics from a recent survey in Spain:

Up to a quarter of Spanish young adults (under 35) who have left home in the past two years have already boomeranged home or are planning to do so soon.
Nearly 60 per cent of Spanish young adults aged 18 to 34 still live with their parents.
More than 25% of Spanish kids stay at home into their 30s.

Source: TimesOnline

One-third of parents believe kids will live at home until their mid-thirties

A new survey from Skandia shows that while the majority of parents hope their children will be able to go to university, own a home, and become financially independent, more than a third admitted it was likely their children would be living at home until their mid-thirties

Michelle Cracknell, strategy director at Skandia, said

While most parents hope their children will be financially comfortable in adult life, it is clear that many parents see adult life starting when their children are in their late 30s.

Source: The Press Association

New UK survey shows 94% of parents give money to adult children

A new survey of parents with children 18 years and older conducted by UK insurance group LV found some scary statistics about how much money UK parents are spending on their adult children. Among the findings:

Parents spend an average of £21,540 supporting their children after age 18
94% of parents continue to contribute financially towards education, houses, cars, and living costs after their kids reach 18
Parents contribute an average of £5,602 to their child’s first home
42% of parents give their children more than £1,000 for a first car

… and the two most staggering statistics:

79% of those with grandchildren are supporting both generations
45% of parents aged 70 or older are still helping their children financially!

Source: The Press Association.

Adult children living at home cause marital stress for parents

This article from The Birmingham Post explains why adult children returning to the nest after completing college can be a major strain on their parents’ marriages.

Expert says establishing boundaries is #1 step

In a recent article from EnterpriseNews.com, Helen DeVries, director of the doctorate psychology program at Wheaton College offered the following advice for families with adult children moving home:

To make it work and ensure things stay amicable rather than resentful, you have to frame it more like you’re cohabiting with roommates. In that scenario, there’s a splitting of chores and errands. It’s easy to slip back into the routine you had pre-college, but you have to try to make it more collegial than hierarchical. Parents need to say ‘We’re delighted we’re able to help you, but you’ll be expected to cook one night a week or do all of the ironing or give us X amount of dollars for the cable bill.

One of the families profiled in the article used a contract to set the terms with their adult child — and everyone seems pleased with the results. You can learn more about how to create a contract for adult children living at home here.

Is your son stuck in "Guyland"?

Sociologist and Author Michael Kimmel has recently released a new book — Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men — in which he explores the results of his conversations with nearly 400 young men between the ages of 16 and 26. According to Kimmel, many of them are stuck in “Guyland,” in a Peter-Pan-like state where their high school or college life continues on well into their twenties, where the focus is on having fun and playing video games, rather than finding a good job and becoming independent. Here’s how Kimmel describes Guyland:

Guyland is the world in which young men live. It is both a stage of life, a liminal undefined time span between adolescence and adulthood that can often stretch for a decade or more, and a place, or, rather, a bunch of places where guys gather to be guys with each other, unhassled by the demands of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids, and the other nuisances of adult life. In this topsy-turvy, Peter-Pan mindset, young men shirk the responsibilities of adulthood and remain fixated on the trappings of boyhood, while the boys they still are struggle heroically to prove that they are real men despite all evidence to the contrary.

If your son is stuck in Guyland, you may benefit from some of the strategies in our book, The Hands-On Guide to Surviving Adult Children Living at Home.

You can read a longer excerpt of Guyland on the USA Today website.

Support group for parents with adult children living at home

Two Madsion, WI mental health professionals are starting a support group for parents with adult children living at home in September.

“They don’t ever quite fit again,” Pat Gillette, a licensed marriage and family therapist, said. “You don’t ever go back, really, nor should you, go back to the parent-child relationship the way it was.

You can read about it in this article from The Capital Times.