A Man’s Guide to Moving Back in With His Parents…While Maintaining at Least a Little Dignity

by Brett & Kate McKay
The Art of Manliness

That’s certainly how the regular spate of “What’s the matter with the menz?” articles portray it. The fact that the number of 25- to 34-year-olds who are living with their parents has doubled since 1980 (it now sits at 22%), and that more men in that age group than women have moved back home (22% versus 18%), is often used as evidence that young men are willfully refusing to grow up these days, and have gladly traded their manly independence for a chance to play video games in mom and dad’s basement.

While there are definitely cases of 20 and 30-something men living at home in order to prolong their adolescence, to say all men in this situation are lazy moochers is to paint the picture with far too broad a brush. The reasons for the increase in the number of young men moving back in with their parents are much more nuanced and complex, and include both cultural and structural changes:

• Higher education costs. Back when your Baby Boomer parents were in college, a semester of school cost just a few hundred dollars, and it was easy to graduate with little to no debt. But since 1980, college tuition has increased between 1 1/2 and 2 times the inflation rate each year. Today students can graduate $25-$100k in debt, double that if they go on to graduate school.
• Dismal job market for young people. Since the 1970s, real income has declined for young people, and the job market has gotten more competitive. The current recession only made things worse. The first decade of the 21st century constituted one of the toughest job markets for young people in recent history. Today just 54% of adults between the ages of 18-24 are employed. The recession also hit the paychecks of young people more than any other age group.
• Increased education requirements. Fifty or sixty years ago, a man could get a decent paying job with just a high school education. Today's job market typically requires candidates to not only have a college degree, but often an advanced degree as well. Because schooling is now both more expensive and lengthier, it's taking young people longer to become financially independent.
• Increased housing costs. On average, your parents and grandparents probably spent only 1/3 of their income on housing. Today 1 in 4 Americans are spending more than half of their income putting a roof over their heads. With housing costs up and paychecks down, getting a place of their own has become much more difficult for those in their 20s.
• Decreasing generational gap. The rift between Baby Boomers and their GI generation parents is the stuff of pop culture legend. Boomers and GI’s often had completely different tastes in music, dressing, and values. Boomers couldn’t wait to leave home, and their parents were glad to see them go. These days, many of the Millennial generation get along great with their parents and consider them friends. Parents and children listen to the same Jack Johnson songs and sit down to watch Boardwalk Empire together. And because many Boomer parents worked full-time when their kids were growing up, they aren’t sick of their offspring yet and like having more time to spend with them.

So suffice it to say the phenomena of young people moving back home is more complicated than “Young men today are lazy and unmotivated.” And as we mentioned in our series on the history of the bachelor, far from being the recent anomaly the media has made it out to be, living with your parents well into your 20s was the norm for young men for much of history. It was in fact the post-WWII period, with its flush economic prosperity and robust governmental housing and educational subsidies which allowed young men to strike out and settle down early, that was the real aberration. It should also be noted that multi-generational households have long been, and continue to be, the norm in many other countries and cultures; the peculiar American fixation with having your own homestead is in many ways a function of our frontier history.

Now all of this isn’t to say that it’s always a good idea to move back in with your parents and that you should feel comfortable living with them indefinitely. Or that living on your own isn't a very worthy goal. Rather, it is to point out that stigmatizing a young man's decision to move back home as always unmanly is misguided. Like many things in life, if you do it for the wrong reasons, and you do it immaturely, it’s unmanly, while if you do it for the right reasons, and in the right way, it can be, if not overtly manly, at least dignified. What are those right reasons and behaviors? Read on.

Friendly Advice on Moving Back in with Your Parents

Have a good reason for moving back in. This is numero uno in importance when figuring out if moving back in with your parents is the right decision for you. You should have a specific, sensible reason as to why you're returning home (or haven’t yet left). Your reason shouldn't be vague like "I need time to get my life back together." How do you know when you've gotten your life back together so you can move out? Vague goals lead to vague results. Most American parents don't mind housing their adult children so long as it's furthering an important life goal for them. If you're trying to save money so you can go to school, great! If you're trying to save money so you can backpack through Europe, not great.

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June 30, 2012

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