At some point, you have to decide what’s best for you. Circumstances in your life will decide what is best for you. There are a bunch of expectations. There will be a few you will not satisfy. We can help and guide young people in this journey, but ultimately young people need to figure how to get from the present to the future. Whatever decision you make, whether living with parents or living on your own, there are positives and negatives to each of them.
If I were advising a young man, you have to leave the nest. It’s fine to have a roommate in those early years. You have to perform those self-sufficient skills. If you want to get married and start a family, a potential wife is going to look at living with your parents at 24 as a negative.
Re: Moralizing
Today, when one calls out another for wrong behavior or a wrong decision, there’s an attack coming back for hypocrisy. Arguments devolve into a bunch of whataboutism. It’s to the point you are more of the bad guy for calling out stuff. As a result, we might now have an environment of people afraid to moralize, even issue punishments, for fear of getting heat for it.
This might be an explanation for light criminal sentencing in recent years.
I lived with my parents for a few years after I graduated college. I agree with Aaron's assessment. It was nice for me to be able to save up some money and repay some of the student loans and have a safety net in those years, but it came at the cost of not really self-actualizing. I was still operating in a reduced-gravity environment. Downstream of this, it's also difficult to date and even sometimes to socialize without having your own place. I certainly experienced that as well.
Our oldest son, 37, still lives with us. Partly because he took so long, ten years, to finish community college and then his bachelors (while working 30+ hours per week), the arrangement was already sort of established. By the time he graduated at 28, many of his siblings had moved out and we had more space.
Looking for a full-time job, he got a lot of advice to move to Austin or California, to max out his career prospects, but I thought it was more important for him to only change one thing at a time, and to focus on making sure he did well at that first job in his profession. He's a programmer, and is somewhat nerdy and limited in people skills, though hardly antisocial like some these days. I ran across the term "20% autistic" a while back, and though he's not actually autistic, he doesn't do well juggling too many changes at once.
I guess someone could argue, "He needs the experience of living with others (i.e., roommates)." But as the oldest son in a big homeschooling family, he really doesn't. Plus, he's something of a neat freak, and I doubt he would love living in a rowdy and messy apartment with a bunch of guys.
Being able to focus on his programming job, while still living at home, has allowed him to excel at that, while saving a lot of money. Still, we're all hoping he'll find someone to marry soon, and move out, even though he's a big help here and pays his share of the housing expenses, which also helps.
In an earlier time, Americans were a very practical people. Nowadays, it seems like so many are prisoners of expectations that aren't always in line with reality. Someone just out of college, for instance, can't expect to have the same standard of living as their parents. I don't recommend all adult kids living at home, but when it makes sense, it can be fine.
I’m 34, living at home. It feels like the country is finally recognizing the aftershocks of 2007. The year of the iPhone, we moved into a house in a suburb similar to Carmel, Ind.
When I graduated high school, I knew very few people who planned to commute to college, like myself. “The college experience” of entering adulthood by living on a large campus seemed the normative experience. For many years, I felt like a weirdo.
This was not weird to my parents. Generation after generation established homeownership by living with parents, and even building new homes to accommodate multiple generations under the same roof. In the South, inter-generational partnership, education, work ethic, and—most importantly—obedience to Baptist godliness, were the only hope for staying out of the harsh poverty most Black people suffered from birth.
“Helicopter parenting” is a logical response to perceived dangers for many Black parents. The changes brought about since 2007–financial and technological—have significantly altered the matrix for decision making, making more people like my anxious Black Boomer parents. This newer matrix more heavily weights the negatives: college costs, housing costs, debt, social isolation, cyber bullying, bad roommate experiences, hazing, being away from home. Most of our Boomer neighbors are White 60/70-something couples living in a house with many bedrooms that go unoccupied. Most of our Gen-X neighbors have 1 to 3 children who live at home. Some of their kids are in college living at home, some are working full-time remote from home, some are doing grad/law school living at home. The growing share of Millennials in the neighborhood seems to be what Drunk Wisconsin calls “The State School Upper Middle Class”—the type of people who look like they own (and actually use) a Peloton.
Canvassing for local election candidates, I’ve noticed there seems to be a much greater prevalence of living at home for anyone who was in school or college in 2020, anyone who did online school, anyone who joined Facebook before adulthood, anyone who grew up with the online world being the primary navigable waters of life.
As someone who did remote schooling before it was cool, I see social atomization, suburbanization, extended adolescence, delayed marriage, and the retreat into the home to interface with the Brave New World where we Amuse Ourselves to Death, as a very long, knotted up thread called “anomie.”
Nonetheless, there are some profound joys and insights in observing and knowing the same parents everyday for three-plus decades.
Re: When I graduated high school, I knew very few people who planned to commute to college
I was almost 21 (this was in 1988) when when I started college, and I did not live on campus, but in a tiny apartment within biking distance-- and also close to a 30 hour a week night job I had. My family lived in the next town over and my father's health was declining (he eventually died when I still had a year to go) so this made it easier for me to visit and help with his needs.
I've frequently had roommates over the years, but no one now in six years, the longest stretch I've gone living alone (not counting my two cats).
To the point about young people continuing to live with their parents - I don't think that saving money is generally a good reason to live with your parents. Because this kind of living situation generally only happens if the parents lack the means or willingness to help their child launch. Whether it is primarily means or willingness, both will still result in tension between the young person and his/her parents. That tension will inevitably impact financial outcomes for the young person in significant ways.
My question about the voters/childbearing graph is whether the difference among the current younger voters will end up evening out over time--it's not implausible that the people who tend to vote Republican will also tend to get married and have babies earlier than those who tend to vote Democrat.
The gap is so extreme at the younger end, you have to think it comes together somewhat, but far from fully. These numbers have been growing farther and farther apart. I've been watching these charts for what seems like 15-20 years, and I considered it a nothingburger at first when the gap was on the order of 2.1 vs. 1.8. But we're now entering a range where it will start to make a difference, in that today it looks like practically zero children will be growing up in the homes of white liberal Zoomers and younger Millennials.
Kids can and will still defect from their parents' conservatism and religiosity in large numbers, but it's a big change that this is increasingly the ONLY life pathway for young leftists. I went to a Roman Catholic HS in the late 90s / early 00s that was pretty divided politically, and I was acquainted with a number of large families that were multi-generationally left-leaning, with Boomer parents more into the "social justice" side of RC. That kind of story is going to be basically unheard of in the post-Zoomer generations.
IMO, the biggest inducement toward my leftist politics will be the perception by many young people that they are being shut out of opportunity, let alone actual gainful employment. Hence the boomlet (I won't call it a boom) in Social Democratic politics. But also a clear danger of too many young people reviving old scapegoating evils, like antisemitism ("The Jews are keeping us down"), as Rod Dreher has been warning even though for now I think he is exaggerating the current incidence of that.
About moralizing and moralism: In our day, I think pluralism is severely challenged by the presence of multiple competing and incompatible moral codes. Most of us on the Right (and in the center) have reacted with incredulity and outrage upon learning that actions such as "misgendering," or questioning various taboos around race and gender, are deemed "immoral" by a significant and influential fraction of society. When there's no agreement on basic questions of morality, it becomes difficult to even have conversations. (And openly immoral or amoral people take advantage of the chaos and dissension).
Ross Douthat addresses this problem, in arguing that for many Americans, an amoral sleazebag (Graham Platner) is more congenial and less threatening than a moralistic preacher who represents a hostile sect (James Talarico):
"But then I encounter Talarico’s concrete religious persona, the specific blend of piety and Peak Woke moralism — embodied not just in his famous “God is nonbinary” line, but in a consistent style that invokes the Annunciation to justify abortion and accuses white people of spreading the “virus” of racism “wherever we go” and treats the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas like holy writ when it suits progressive ends. And my reaction is allergic, in a way that’s similar, I’m sure, to the reaction that a liberal Christian might have to a traditionalist Christian speaking the language of Trumpian populism. It’s a vision of political morality that I don’t share, and the piety makes it more threatening, not more congenial."
IMO, there are clear areas where moral diversity can be tolerated. Drinking, for example, has been one such for many years, since the failure of Prohibition ("Keep your laws off my favorite cocktail!") Gambling and pot use probably qualify here too. And yes, civil SSM. There are probably others as well. People who believe such practices are immoral are free not to practice them. The danger lies with the intolerant Left not being content with "Vive la difference", but hectoring the rest of us like Puritan scolds, or, worse, latter day Carrie A Nations of wokery.
Re: older kids living at home
At some point, you have to decide what’s best for you. Circumstances in your life will decide what is best for you. There are a bunch of expectations. There will be a few you will not satisfy. We can help and guide young people in this journey, but ultimately young people need to figure how to get from the present to the future. Whatever decision you make, whether living with parents or living on your own, there are positives and negatives to each of them.
If I were advising a young man, you have to leave the nest. It’s fine to have a roommate in those early years. You have to perform those self-sufficient skills. If you want to get married and start a family, a potential wife is going to look at living with your parents at 24 as a negative.
Re: Moralizing
Today, when one calls out another for wrong behavior or a wrong decision, there’s an attack coming back for hypocrisy. Arguments devolve into a bunch of whataboutism. It’s to the point you are more of the bad guy for calling out stuff. As a result, we might now have an environment of people afraid to moralize, even issue punishments, for fear of getting heat for it.
This might be an explanation for light criminal sentencing in recent years.
I lived with my parents for a few years after I graduated college. I agree with Aaron's assessment. It was nice for me to be able to save up some money and repay some of the student loans and have a safety net in those years, but it came at the cost of not really self-actualizing. I was still operating in a reduced-gravity environment. Downstream of this, it's also difficult to date and even sometimes to socialize without having your own place. I certainly experienced that as well.
Our oldest son, 37, still lives with us. Partly because he took so long, ten years, to finish community college and then his bachelors (while working 30+ hours per week), the arrangement was already sort of established. By the time he graduated at 28, many of his siblings had moved out and we had more space.
Looking for a full-time job, he got a lot of advice to move to Austin or California, to max out his career prospects, but I thought it was more important for him to only change one thing at a time, and to focus on making sure he did well at that first job in his profession. He's a programmer, and is somewhat nerdy and limited in people skills, though hardly antisocial like some these days. I ran across the term "20% autistic" a while back, and though he's not actually autistic, he doesn't do well juggling too many changes at once.
I guess someone could argue, "He needs the experience of living with others (i.e., roommates)." But as the oldest son in a big homeschooling family, he really doesn't. Plus, he's something of a neat freak, and I doubt he would love living in a rowdy and messy apartment with a bunch of guys.
Being able to focus on his programming job, while still living at home, has allowed him to excel at that, while saving a lot of money. Still, we're all hoping he'll find someone to marry soon, and move out, even though he's a big help here and pays his share of the housing expenses, which also helps.
In an earlier time, Americans were a very practical people. Nowadays, it seems like so many are prisoners of expectations that aren't always in line with reality. Someone just out of college, for instance, can't expect to have the same standard of living as their parents. I don't recommend all adult kids living at home, but when it makes sense, it can be fine.
I’m 34, living at home. It feels like the country is finally recognizing the aftershocks of 2007. The year of the iPhone, we moved into a house in a suburb similar to Carmel, Ind.
When I graduated high school, I knew very few people who planned to commute to college, like myself. “The college experience” of entering adulthood by living on a large campus seemed the normative experience. For many years, I felt like a weirdo.
This was not weird to my parents. Generation after generation established homeownership by living with parents, and even building new homes to accommodate multiple generations under the same roof. In the South, inter-generational partnership, education, work ethic, and—most importantly—obedience to Baptist godliness, were the only hope for staying out of the harsh poverty most Black people suffered from birth.
“Helicopter parenting” is a logical response to perceived dangers for many Black parents. The changes brought about since 2007–financial and technological—have significantly altered the matrix for decision making, making more people like my anxious Black Boomer parents. This newer matrix more heavily weights the negatives: college costs, housing costs, debt, social isolation, cyber bullying, bad roommate experiences, hazing, being away from home. Most of our Boomer neighbors are White 60/70-something couples living in a house with many bedrooms that go unoccupied. Most of our Gen-X neighbors have 1 to 3 children who live at home. Some of their kids are in college living at home, some are working full-time remote from home, some are doing grad/law school living at home. The growing share of Millennials in the neighborhood seems to be what Drunk Wisconsin calls “The State School Upper Middle Class”—the type of people who look like they own (and actually use) a Peloton.
Canvassing for local election candidates, I’ve noticed there seems to be a much greater prevalence of living at home for anyone who was in school or college in 2020, anyone who did online school, anyone who joined Facebook before adulthood, anyone who grew up with the online world being the primary navigable waters of life.
As someone who did remote schooling before it was cool, I see social atomization, suburbanization, extended adolescence, delayed marriage, and the retreat into the home to interface with the Brave New World where we Amuse Ourselves to Death, as a very long, knotted up thread called “anomie.”
Nonetheless, there are some profound joys and insights in observing and knowing the same parents everyday for three-plus decades.
Re: When I graduated high school, I knew very few people who planned to commute to college
I was almost 21 (this was in 1988) when when I started college, and I did not live on campus, but in a tiny apartment within biking distance-- and also close to a 30 hour a week night job I had. My family lived in the next town over and my father's health was declining (he eventually died when I still had a year to go) so this made it easier for me to visit and help with his needs.
I've frequently had roommates over the years, but no one now in six years, the longest stretch I've gone living alone (not counting my two cats).
To the point about young people continuing to live with their parents - I don't think that saving money is generally a good reason to live with your parents. Because this kind of living situation generally only happens if the parents lack the means or willingness to help their child launch. Whether it is primarily means or willingness, both will still result in tension between the young person and his/her parents. That tension will inevitably impact financial outcomes for the young person in significant ways.
My question about the voters/childbearing graph is whether the difference among the current younger voters will end up evening out over time--it's not implausible that the people who tend to vote Republican will also tend to get married and have babies earlier than those who tend to vote Democrat.
The gap is so extreme at the younger end, you have to think it comes together somewhat, but far from fully. These numbers have been growing farther and farther apart. I've been watching these charts for what seems like 15-20 years, and I considered it a nothingburger at first when the gap was on the order of 2.1 vs. 1.8. But we're now entering a range where it will start to make a difference, in that today it looks like practically zero children will be growing up in the homes of white liberal Zoomers and younger Millennials.
Kids can and will still defect from their parents' conservatism and religiosity in large numbers, but it's a big change that this is increasingly the ONLY life pathway for young leftists. I went to a Roman Catholic HS in the late 90s / early 00s that was pretty divided politically, and I was acquainted with a number of large families that were multi-generationally left-leaning, with Boomer parents more into the "social justice" side of RC. That kind of story is going to be basically unheard of in the post-Zoomer generations.
IMO, the biggest inducement toward my leftist politics will be the perception by many young people that they are being shut out of opportunity, let alone actual gainful employment. Hence the boomlet (I won't call it a boom) in Social Democratic politics. But also a clear danger of too many young people reviving old scapegoating evils, like antisemitism ("The Jews are keeping us down"), as Rod Dreher has been warning even though for now I think he is exaggerating the current incidence of that.
About moralizing and moralism: In our day, I think pluralism is severely challenged by the presence of multiple competing and incompatible moral codes. Most of us on the Right (and in the center) have reacted with incredulity and outrage upon learning that actions such as "misgendering," or questioning various taboos around race and gender, are deemed "immoral" by a significant and influential fraction of society. When there's no agreement on basic questions of morality, it becomes difficult to even have conversations. (And openly immoral or amoral people take advantage of the chaos and dissension).
Ross Douthat addresses this problem, in arguing that for many Americans, an amoral sleazebag (Graham Platner) is more congenial and less threatening than a moralistic preacher who represents a hostile sect (James Talarico):
"But then I encounter Talarico’s concrete religious persona, the specific blend of piety and Peak Woke moralism — embodied not just in his famous “God is nonbinary” line, but in a consistent style that invokes the Annunciation to justify abortion and accuses white people of spreading the “virus” of racism “wherever we go” and treats the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas like holy writ when it suits progressive ends. And my reaction is allergic, in a way that’s similar, I’m sure, to the reaction that a liberal Christian might have to a traditionalist Christian speaking the language of Trumpian populism. It’s a vision of political morality that I don’t share, and the piety makes it more threatening, not more congenial."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/opinion/graham-platner-morality-sexting.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yVA.sASA.zhheJ3BePyl2&smid=url-share
IMO, there are clear areas where moral diversity can be tolerated. Drinking, for example, has been one such for many years, since the failure of Prohibition ("Keep your laws off my favorite cocktail!") Gambling and pot use probably qualify here too. And yes, civil SSM. There are probably others as well. People who believe such practices are immoral are free not to practice them. The danger lies with the intolerant Left not being content with "Vive la difference", but hectoring the rest of us like Puritan scolds, or, worse, latter day Carrie A Nations of wokery.