I moved out of my parent's home when I went to college. Moving back was never an option. Maybe because I greatly value my independence. And mostly because moving back would signal failure. Failure to be an independent adult; to capitalize on the opportunity that my parents gave me. To grow up and be a woman. To exist beyond my mother's apron strings and my father's advice. To be a personal and professional success.
My parents never told me I couldn't come back home. No one ever told me that moving back home means that I have failed. But because I see myself as an adult, and not a child or any longer my parent's responsibility, I can't imagine it being any more of a better idea to move in with my parents as with anyone else. I couldn't expect anyone else to deter me from my journey to self-sufficiency; why would I put this on my parents? Haven't they done enough?
Everyone says go home and figure things out. Everyone says going home saves you money. But I truly feel people who are saying this are being selfish. Perhaps the biggest problem with my generation is selfishness. That we only look at things from our own perspective; that we are foolish enough to believe that because someone cares about us, their perspective does not matter. Moving back home might save you money, but it costs your parents. It prevents them from downsizing. It slows their march to retirement. It prevents them from moving on with their lives. Furthermore, it is a cost that they have probably not planned on absorbing, after all the money they spent helping you become a productive adult by investing in education and other essentials.
Perhaps our parents should be as cruel to us as former generations, purchasing luggage as presents for 18 year olds, letting us know that they do not expect us to intrude on their lives after we are grown, beyond the time they expected to be responsible for another human being.
5 comments:
I agree and I appreciate this message, but this is easy to say but difficult to do in our times.
EVERYONE is short on cash. It's just not that easy these days to move out, find a job, find a residence, and reconcile the bills.
Costs of student loan payments and apartments have risen, yet minimum wage is not enough to cover the basic expenses.
Maybe a middle ground is in order. If you live with your parents, you have to pay some of their bills.
I don't think that we should make moving in with parents a desirable option. Or staying with them indefinitely for that matter, if one does not move out for college. It isn't a good thing, no matter how many people do it. It is a minor failure on the road to adult-like independence. So regardless of how many bills you pay, it is obvious that you are not able to pay them all. And it is not your house, or even your leasehold (which is what you get with an apartment). So obviously, you are asking someone else to absorb your costs of living.
I never said "never go back home ever." But I do stress that it is not a good thing, a sign of success in the world, for an individual to be returning to their parent's home.
Finally, everyone is not short on cash. And yes, lift costs money, and bills are high, but it is more than possible to live within one's means in almost every city in the county on a "fresh out of school" salary. I lived on a college student budget in Michigan (about $12,000 a year). I lived on a law school student budget (about $17,000 a year, post tax), and I made it work in Boston. I know it is possible. But it isn't glamourous. It isn't easy, and it isn't perhaps what one would expect. But I know it is possible to live with a shoe string budget, and make it work. Because I have done it.
I think people have different reasons for going back home, so not everyone goes back because they've failed or because they want to leech off their parents or anything like that. Moving in with your parents is not synonymous with failure, not even close. For some people, obviously, it's not an option. (I can't move back to my parents. They live in the sticks, hours from the nearest city, and I couldn't get a job in my field there if I wanted to.) And for those who've decided to permanently set up shop in Mom's basement...well, that's a different story.
But, there are a lot of working young adults who have moved back home because it's less expensive. Many help pay the bills (which actually makes their parents' lives easier) and do chores and have responsibilities around the house. Most do not expect Mommy and Daddy to take care of them. They are living at home because, from a practical standpoint, it saves everyone a lot of money. So for a lot of people, this is actually a very smart, economical decision that doesn't really burden your parents at all.
You're also ignoring the fact that in many cultures, children are encouraged to move back in with their families after school until they get married (or even sometimes to stay at home after they are married.) They are obviously expected to take on responsibilities around the house and to contribute, but the idea that living with your parents after you're an adult means that you've somehow failed to grow up is a fairly culturally-specific, as well as fairly recent, construct. Talking about former generations whose parents sent them packing? Former generations were never really expected to leave home until they were married. There are exceptions to that, BUT...I'm not sure where you got the idea where at the age of 18 kids have ALWAYS been given the boot and told never to come back, but it's not an idea that really has any basis in history or in reality.
I would hope that if you are thinking about moving back home, you aren't expect to revert to some idealized childhood where your parents do everything for you and pay for everything for you. But most kids didn't even have that experience when they were at home, so the stereotype that this is what adult offspring do when they move back home is sort of, well, absurd.
Katie, no matter how you look at it, moving back home does not say success. It is a minor or major failing, depending on how dire one's straights are, when returning home. Going back home is not something you do to celebrate success. Going home certainly does not make you successful. It is a failure, a failure to be an adult. It isn't nice to say, especially to people who must do it, but it is true.
Even if you do pay bills when you move home, you generate them as well. A return to the nest means higher water bills, higher light bills, higher heating bills, more groceries to buy, additional costs of car insurance, and a heap of other expenses. If you live in your parents home, most car insurance plans require you to place your child on a car, if they are driving age and have a license. So paying the cable bill, even with good intentions, is still not paying your way. Now, if you pay your parents the comprable costs of living in the neighborhood on your own, that would be paying your way. But a selfish child who moved home to avoid the costs of being an adult doesn't do that.
And in generations past, young people, especially men, did not live at home upon finishing school. Some women did until they were married, but people also got married a lot younger. Kids didn't just stay at home for long periods of time, being 30 and still raiding their mother's refridgerator, especially not after going to college. My grandmother bought my father luggage for his graduation present. And he moved out (well, went to the military... but all the same...).
As a final note: I have been there. I have lived at home while waiting for the next thing to happen (during summers in college and the summer before law school). And I know the relief my mother felt when she knew, for sure, I wasn't coming back. She would never admit it, but the several hundred dollars it freed up from the car insurance alone surely helped her monthly budget. My mother loves me, and would never tell me I was a burden. But guess what? I was! And I was certaily not a success driving around in my mother's car.
I agree with what a lot of people are saying here, but I don't think that living with your parents for a time = failure. There are so many different circumstances, and everyone goes through different stages at their life and different times. I don't think it's fair (or accurate) to say someone is a failure because of their current living situations...
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