Adult Children Moving Home
 

never thought it would happen, but...
 

Jelli I think it is hard anytime you have a family member move in with you, not just an adult child. However yes my son came back home for a short period when he was 24. I told him the rules were still the same as always. He stayed about 2 months and got a job and moved out. I've always been a strict parent and they know I mean business and I command their respect.

Enough is enough...
 

Since there is no baby on the way (if I read it right) then ask them to move out. Make sure your son is taking responsibility for birth control, she does not seem capable, and might keep trying to get pregnant to tie him to her still. He should have insisted she pee on the stick and prove the pregnancy before marrying her, but....water under the bridge now. Make sure he keeps his eyes open to her!

Yikes!
 

Speaking of preggo tests..

Today I learned that you can buy +preggo tests on craigslist..........:|

:|<-- my why am I not cross posting face...

I heard this on the news yesterday. i have to say, if I were a guy, who needed proof of pregnancy, knowing this, I would insist on seeing the pee on the stick actually happen. What people won't do these day eh?

I am not sure if this counts but I have three kids two older girls and one son. Well the son is getting ready to turn 25 and is still living at home. Yes he was in college and does pay his own bills but it can't be healthy to live at home.
I do understand the way things are out there and how hard it is to take care of yourself. If it was better I would have been gone long ago. pfft
I just wonder how kids now a day can call themselves adults and still live at home and have the parent or parents take care of the?

do you charge this man, and he is a man, not a child, rent? Does he pay his own bills, groceries, all that? if not, present him with a bill, and an eviction notice, let him choose, pay, or go.

A hell of a lot of kids. In my experience, it is many more boys than girls who do this.

That wasn't an option for us. When TF's son decided to decisively throw away a (pretty much free) 4 year college education after his freshman year, he expected that he would just live at home and continue to work his part-time job and "take a year off in order to figure out what he wanted to do".

This was a no go. Instead, this is what you will be doing, dear boy:

1)You need to get full time hours at current job/a full time job/part-time jobs equaling full time hours within 3 months.
2)You need to pay ____ amount of rent when you get a full time job and until then, you need to pay ____ amount (percentage of income).
3)After getting the full time job we will talk about setting aside so much from your pay check per month and then we will determine how many more months you will live here.
4) You will then move out.
5)If you do not get the full time hours at current job/get full time job in 3 months, you are on the street.

He decided to join the military instead of working full time. Works for us!

Kid heads to boot camp on 9/9/13!

I'm pretty confident that after he gets done with the Army in 4 years he will be mature enough to want to not live with his parents.

Rent in the South Bay, where I live, has gone up over 9% in less than a year. It went up the year before. We live in the fifth most expensive city in the U.S. $1700-$1800 is at the bottom of the market for a one-bedroom.

Many students and young workers simply cannot afford to move out. A lot of young people literally have no place else to go than to stay with their parents whether they work full time or not. It is simply not possible to live on what many young workers make in this area.

As a teacher, I am almost priced out of the market. I make a lot of money because I have three Master's degrees. But I am near the bottom of the housing market here.

It's a big big deal and getting to the point that it is affecting the very corporations who have helped create the problem. Good workers, who are not their high paid superstars, are turning down companies' job offers because they don't want to pay what it costs to live here -- especially for what you get (It's NOT San Francisco in terms of culture -- so not -- and it's not a drop dead gorgeous place to live -- endless strip malls).

Working class and middle class young people are screwed if they want to stay here. Their paycheck is a joke in the face of the housing market.

They can buy food and keep a car, but they cannot house themselves. Some college students and young working people live in apartments with five and six people in them, but most people don't want to live like that, and landlords don't want tenants like that.

Point is that it's not that shameful for young folks to live at home here. Where else are they gonna live? I would not send my kid to live in the hood, and, hell, it's not that cheap there.

I am so happy to see this thread...I have been dealing with this issue for several years...my partner and I have been together about 7 years...in 2006 I helped her get custody of her son..her daughter was already living with her...and I moved in...my children lived with their father...so it was me, my wife, her two kids full custody...my kids visited holidays...in 2008 her daughter went off to college and we had full time custody of her son...my daughter also got married in 2008...in 2009 my son graduated HS and went away to school to Arlington about an hour away....in 2010 her daughter moved back in with us...we had just bought a home...she said she needed money for a car and was going to take a year off from school to buy a car...her son lived with us full time, my son was in college, and my daughter was married...in 2011 her son graduated HS and went away to college in denton about an hour away...and her daughter moved out to go to school online...and work...

now it is 2013, her daughter is living with us full time while she student teaches, her son is here weekends, my son is in graduate school, and my daughter is separated from her husband...my children have never lived under the same roof with me after I divorced their dad...part of this is because the lifestyle I chose, part of it was logistics....but...we have always had at least one of my partner's children living with us...am I wrong to resent this...am I bad person...this is causing a huge strain on my relationship...any advice would be helpful :)

cricket,

It sounds like a lot. It would be hard for me, but everyone is different. For me, the determining factor would be if the child:

a) had to live with us due to environmental factors such as Martina described or disability

b) The child was there for a specific purpose/time frame and was following through. For example, if he/she is saving for a house and actually saving the amount discussed per month for said house, it wouldn't be a problem.

It is when an adult child is choosing to not work/function as an adult, than I have problems. Giving our kids a leg up is great, enabling them to stay on crutches, is not.

ETA: In terms of advice, the obvious...talk to your partner about how you feel.

I sort of wish I'd had a kid when I was young. I wouldn't mind living with her or him now. (shrug) I mean assuming they weren't dependent on me, but rather, it was a truly shared household. I don't see the harm in that.

This!

I loved living with my Mom and my family later in her life, and i enjoy living with my soon to be 20 year old now. Many cultures revere family life, and many generations live together.

Yes i want my child to be strong and independant when it is the right time, but i am going to enjoy every minute i have before she goes.

I think this raises an interesting point. The conversation thus far has focused on traditional American thinking of the last hundred years or so. Other countries and cultures view this subject very differently.

I live in a very culturally diverse town. People from all over the world. Particularly when it comes to Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Next-door to me is a family originally from the Philippines who have lived in their home for 30 years and there are three generations there, it is because they want it that way. Another family bought a house across the street about a year ago, it is a multi generational Chinese family. Two months ago house three doors down just changed hands, it is a four generation family from Iran. All of these families are doing it by choice, as their culture dictates, and additionally they're able to pool their resources.

I believe this is very different than what we have been discussing so far. I am not advocating for slacker kids looking for a free ride and the people I'm describing are not at all like that. Everybody works, and hard, at whatever the role is in the household.

I think sometimes it is a good idea to step back and remember that the United States is not the world, and that the way our economy and the world's economies are shifting may force us to change some of our current living situations. What we have here, with one person per apartment and one generation family homes, is a first world choice.

Not trying to derail the thread, I just wanted to toss another perspective in there.

Yes! I live next door to a Chinese family (immigrants): a young couple in their 20's, their 1.5 year old son, and (probably) the husband's parents. Now and then, other relatives seem to live with them for awhile. This was the same pattern I found in China itself, in much smaller apartments as well.

My students and I got into a discussion about this topic, in fact, and they were amazed that the "goal" for most American teenagers is to grow up and move out into their own place. Not many American women really want to live with their mothers-in-law; it was just the "done" thing there, whether you liked your MIL or not. From there, we got into topics such as treatment of the elderly and family migration to other cities. There's all kinds of factors.

Strangely enough, as far as I know, the problem of the slacker adult child living perennially in the basement doesn't exist. Everyone pitches in. Next door, the grandparents watch the baby several days a week while the young couple work.

Yes, I actually wrote about (but then deleted) multi generational/ inter-generational households. I decided it was a different topic and didn't want to muddy the waters! Funny it was brought up by someone else!

I suppose I feel more like the Europeans do about family. I would have all of my children at home with me. I don't care if they pay rent. I don't care if they eat what's in the cabinets or do their laundry in the basement. All that really matters to me is to have them close and to share my life with them. I don't come from the kind of family that lives long, and extended family is something I never really had. I would never say go to a Laundromat, or do my laundry since you are down there, or anything like that. I would never turn my children out, because why have them spend the coins on rent somewhere else, when there's space here. How could I not make space for my own child? Even the child I share with my exgf? Or my wife's children. I never expect them to need a place to stay when they can come home. My children all do their own laundry, and choose to. They all pretty much buy their own food. The happiest days of my life would be when all the kids are around the dinner table and the meal is steaming in the center of the table.

I realize I'm not the norm in that ideology, but I've already lost so much time with most of my children, why would I waste anymore? I think it takes a special person to be able to love and accept your children for who they turned out to be and to be willing to always shelter them and care for them when they need it, or even when they do not. If they want to live on their own, I can accept that, but if they want to move home, they all know that I am dying for the privilege of sharing space with them.