Yesterday, Lifehacker posted a discussion question: Have you ever returned to live with your parents? It poses a few questions at the end:
What about you? Have you ever returned to live with more financially stable parents after college, a job loss, or a bad breakup? Do you think it’s more socially acceptable to return home in a down economy, or should young adults stick it out?
The comments are a mix of opinions for and against. Most have caveats, like the kids are doing the smart thing and saving money to buy a house or the kids were just lazy to start. The thing is, in other cultures, living at home as an adult is normal. Moving out is disrespectful. You’re supposed to remain home and support your family. In America, we value independence, so remaining home is seen as lazy and those of us who have done it through no fault of our own are left to defend the decision.
Since the economic crisis, I’d wager it’s more acceptable now. Parents have come to realize that their children will not have steady work, will not remain with the same company for 30 years and thus will lack the financial stability they have enjoyed.
I don’t know that it’s a stigma as much as a tradeoff, but I do think it moving home with the parents is more acceptable in American culture today than it was ten years ago. That isn’t to say moving home is easy. It’s not. It is incredibly demoralizing and almost impossible to see it as anything but failure, even if the circumstances are beyond your control. In hindsight, I could have taken out double the student loans for grad school so I’d have enough to keep living in the city, go to school and keep looking for work even though, by then, no one was hiring. I’m too damn practical though, so I took out just enough to cover tuition and moved home.
I did not have the benefit of a full time job so I couldn’t say the more acceptable things of saving for a down payment. I had to deal with the social stigma of getting laid off, in addition to the residual stigma of being in my late 20s and living at home with my folks. It took awhile before I was actually grateful I got laid off in April 2008 instead of that fall. It took longer to appreciate moving back home. I was able to spend a great deal of time with my nephews, and help my brother and sister-in-law out quite often. I got to be heavily involved in Little Man’s early years, watch him develop and have a connection with my nephews, and then my niece (they are all 2 years apart) that I wouldn’t have otherwise experienced.
To me, that is far more valuable. While the sting of having to move home is still there, the stigma is mitigated by the realization that I was meant to move home to help my brother and sister-in-law. In the process, I paved the way for helping myself.
I think of “stigma” now as the enemy of reason. Stigma gives into social norms, what are perceived as acceptable social norms. Circumstances change, sometimes overnight, but it takes time for the rest of the world to catch up.
The easy thing is to wallow in self pity, remorse, “Woe is I” because, again, that is the socially acceptable thing to do. But doing so removes the ability to reason, and thus the ability to find that proper Monet Distance.