Layla Ahmed is, by any measure, a responsible adult. She works at a nonprofit in Nashville helping refugees. Makes 50k a year. Saves money. Pays her bills on time.
But there’s another measure of adulthood that has so far eluded her. Ahmed, 23, moved back in with her parents after graduating college in 2022.
“There is a perception that those who live with their parents into their 20s are either bums or people who are not hard-working,” she told the Today, Explained podcast.
Being neither of those things, Ahmed and her situation actually point to a growing trend in America right now: More adults, especially younger adults, are either moving back in with family or never leaving at all.
According to the Pew Research Center, a quarter of all adults ages 25 to 34 now live in a multigenerational living situation (which it defines as a household with two or more adult generations).
It’s a number that’s been creeping upward since the early ‘70s but has swung up precipitously in the last 15 years. The decennial US Census measures multigenerational living slightly differently (three or more generations living together), but the trend still checks out. From 2010 to 2020, there was a nearly 18 percent increase in the number of multigenerational households.
That’s a lot of words to say “The rent is too damn high.”
It’s poverty. I’ve got a friend sleeping over because she, in her 20’s needs to get away from her abusive mom for a day
Yep, every time I see an article that says ‘young people are choosing to do X instead of Y’ they present it as a conscious lifestyle choice, when it’s pretty much always due to economic factors (usually negative ones at that, see the billion ‘millennials are killing the X industry’ articles).
There is not enough housing in the US and shithead know nothings keep it that way with NIMBY and gentrification attitudes.
People who say that young adults who live in their parents basement are bums are bums themselves.
I build homes and the privileged loser fuck heads who got housing got it from inheritance or getting lucky with their jobs.
The housing market is so fucked up and it’s been under attack by not only the greedy shit head realtors but industry makers and policy makers, investors and Air BnB.
It’s almost as if rich people want the poor to always be on their toes so they can be manipulated.
Housing is a fucking RIGHT. We need to make sure the elites understand that.
MHM.
Don’t forget about other rich ass-hats who buy houses above asking, just to tear them down and build another ungodly McMansion, taking away what affordable houses remain.
A beautiful 50 year old house sold on my block for $250,000k two years ago. At 1600 sqft, and some renovations from the previous owner, it was a wonderful starter home. A college buddy of mine tried to buy it at asking $230k and we joked that we’d be neighbors.
But instead, someone bought it, destroyed it, rebuilt it, and sold it for $900k.
Now, that same house just sits there with a “For Rent” sign. It’s appalling.
Keeping the proletariat occupied with their day to day needs is one of the core goals of the capitalist system. If you are constantly treading water, with barely enough to not starve or become homeless, you have little capacity to think about why you have crumbs and your boss just posted pictures of his yacht on social media.
This is totally selfish of me, but I will be happy for my daughter to live with us as an adult, because empty nest syndrome is going to hit me super hard. I also want her to be independent and strike out on her own, so I would never tell her this. She knows she’s welcome to live with us whenever and for as long as she likes and I’ve left it at that.
On the other hand, I’ve spent a week (so far) in an AirBnB with my 82-year-old mother after being stuck with her during the 8 1/2 hour drive to get here and it has not been fun, so I hope we never have to move in with her, even though she has a ridiculously huge house she doesn’t need.
This is totally selfish of me, but I will be happy for my daughter to live with us as an adult
The real question is, would you be happy to live with your daughter in her house instead of yours? 'Cause that’s the economically-healthy way to do multigenerational housing.
Why? If you own your own home, then why shouldn’t your kids live with you?
Because the issue is the younger generation coming into it in a position of economic, not weakness. The elderly in-laws are done building wealth; it’s the working-age generation that need the equity.
To be clear, I’m not saying it’s wrong for the older people to also have the means to own their own home; it’s just that it shouldn’t be about them.
I disagree that it’s more economically health for adults to be their children’s dependents than it is for adult children to be dependent on their parents. Those are both equally unhealthy situations.
This “Jolie Myers” doesn’t know how to say “poverty”
What a heart-warming tale of abject poverty.
sharing a house with other people isn’t abject poverty
sharing a house with other people in an individualist society that until not too long ago, when it was still economically feasible, pushed everybody to get their own house as soon as they can is abject poverty
that’s a shift in standard of living, abject poverty is an exaggeration. poverty is a symptom of the same underlying causes but one does not equal the other
If only my parents owned a fucking house lolol
I think that we are doomed unless we undertake USSR levels of building housing. For all of its faults, housing was one of the ideas that the USSR did much better at than America. Millions and millions of units of housing built over less than a decade.
A lot of that housing was pretty bad for a lot of reasons. Cramped, badly designed, and incredibly energy inefficient. Yeah, sure…it was housing, but recreation of that style shouldn’t be a goal.
We should get china to ship over their unused buildings. I hear they’ve got a shitload.
So things will just go back to normal and the “most people own their own house and spends decades living alone as a couple in it” thing will be seen as a North American trend that lasted for about 100 years until people realized it didn’t make sense.
You just need to have seen what long term/end of life care looks like to realize that we can’t keep that trend going.
It’s absolutely amazing how pretty much my entire adult life after highschool as an older millennial has been “Fuck you, the good times are over. Deal with it.”
Over and over and over and over and over… It’s always a new “fuck you.”
Look at boomers entering long term care, I think they hadn’t realized the long term consequences of splitting up families like has become the norm… Or just loneliness increasingly becoming an issue for everyone…
Or just loneliness increasingly becoming an issue for everyone…
I literally just came back from spending the weekend with my grandmother because of that. She’s going nuts being all alone :(
More like 75 years. It’s collapsed already and the baby boom was an early 50s/late 40s thing.
My wife and I are very early in the planning stages for building a house. We’re fairly young and have one 6 month old kid, but we’re already planning for the strong possibility of having to have our children with us for far longer than they’d like.
It’s going to suck for them to try affording rent and buying a home.
I’m honestly ok with my kids or step kids or MIL or FIL moving in, saves money and is better in a lot of ways to have someone home all the time. But I absolutely couldn’t have lived with my mom. And I suspect at least some of my kids wouldn’t enjoy living with me. They all say they’d consider a family compound a perfect living situation though, like if we had a quad-plex or something like that.
And those of us with poor parents, or who are estranged from our parents, or who otherwise have some barrier between us and our parents either have to bootstrap our ways to survival or die.
I wish I had married someone rich instead of the daughter of two school teachers. But I’m lucky she had generous rich extended family that gave us enough to buy the house I now own before we divorced.
Now I’m unemployed after being laid off 3 months ago with no safety net and no strong prospects for work that will keep me in the house, even with a roommate paying rent. I have nowhere to go and no one to support me if I lose the house.
Does anyone know how much the switch from “catch and release” to “stay and apply on your side” immigration policies increased the hourly pay of homebuilders? I feel like this housing shortage started with that.
Good. I don’t know where the “everyone should have a 1br apartment to themselves” thing is coming from. It’s terribly inefficient for housing density, and probably contributes to the loneliness epidemic.
I don’t know where the “everyone should have a 1br apartment to themselves” thing is coming from.
My guess would be two ideas/statements of many modern parents:
“As long as you live in my house, you have to live by my rules”
…and…
“My version of society, as viewed through a religious conservative lens, is the only way I’ll allow you to live”
It’s not just parents though. On a personal note, It was extremely important for my development as a young adult to be out on my own and navigate the world. And I always had that support from parents, but it’s different when you have to manage budgets, do grocery shopping, navigate insurance, and handle loans by yourself.
I imagine it’s the same for many young adults. Independence is really important.
On a personal note, It was extremely important for my development as a young adult to be out on my own and navigate the world.
I had the same experience and agree with your conclusions, but this is a very Western version of growing up. Multi-generational households are common and socially acceptable (even expected) in many non-western cultures. That doesn’t mean that young people starting out in those cultures are any less developed. They simply have different ways of obtaining that same development. My guess is that with multi-generational households becoming more commonplace in some Western societies we’ll learn some of those ways too. If we’re smart, we’ll look at the other cultures to see how it works there for some guidance so we don’t have to try to learn from scratch.
It was extremely important for my development as a young adult to be out on my own
This is so true. I’m already in an empty best situation with my older at college and the younger only two years behind. I miss seeing them every day and miss the bustle of a full house. However they’re “required” to live at college, I try to balance my expectations of them toward “find a city that’s best for you to support your life”, and I will never ever say out loud my true feelings of “please come back, and I’ll make you chocolate chip pancakes every Saturday”
This. The previous generation spread their wings. Left their/our families and all that support to make their mark. Now they all sit in their lounger, getting yelled at by their news man wondering why they are so mad and alone. The generation who created participation trophies is now made they exist. 0 accountability to the state of affairs. I was constantly reminded I was on the 18 and out plan…the rooster is roosting
That’s part of it. The part where people bought into it. But I can’t help thinking how much this single one-bedroom model resembles pigs or chicken in battery cages. Someone above said “Keeping the proletariat occupied with their day to day needs is one of the core goals of the capitalist system.” It’s by corporate design. If you’re living alone it’s harder to obtain those day-to-day needs and you’re easier to control.
But I can’t help thinking how much this single one-bedroom model resembles pigs or chicken in battery cages.
I see the opposite from your analogy.
In a battery cage the cage is JUST large enough to contain the animal. No room to move at all, possibly not even turn around. A 1BR apart is the opposite. Its hard boundaries other cannot intrude upon you giving you space that is your own. You’re not shoulder to shoulder with other people/family members always having your space violated. You’re free to leave your 1BR apartment and venture into the work at will, always having a place of privacy and solitude to return to at the end of the day that is no one but yours. If you put your book on the coffee table, no one else will touch it, take it, or harm it. It will be right there whenever you return for it. There is great comfort in that.
Access to housing and transport is necessary for independence though (actual access, not the access to healthcare or a megayacht type of access), how many people stay in abusive relationships because they depend on their abuser for housing?
I don’t know why someone downvoted you. That’s a huge problem when it comes to domestic abuse, especially if children are involved. Battered women fear leaving their children homeless.
A lot. And abusive relationships are a hidden but massive drag on Everything. Dense carfree housing isn’t expensive it’s just illegal
“necessary”
Yeah, so that word doesn’t mean what you think it does when we look at human history and even the majority of households in the world at the moment.
You haven’t met my dad. 🤣
