Scripture: Psalm 119:9-16
Young adults are my favourite kind of people. I know exactly who I have in mind when I speak of young adults, and they do too, but many older adults have some confusion about who exactly are young adults.
You become an adult in Australian society by being allowed to do four things: vote and get called up for military service – events that are reasonably rare – and get drunk legally and drive a car – rights that too frequently are exercised together. In the past, becoming adult was also associated with moving from school into the workforce, from living in the parents’ home to living on their own, from financial dependence to financial independence.
Today it is not like that. A 23-year-old may have a partner but no job, a child but no partner, be a student and living with parents, be a student and married, have a job but be living with parents; have no job, no partner, no child and be living with parents, but still feel adult.
Adulthood is also a stage of psychological and personal development by which time it is assumed that individuals have established their identity and are well on the way to being independent, responsible, self-disciplined and purposeful. If this is adulthood, many of us are still on the way!
Others argue that we always carry something of the child within us and that the healthiest balance is to recognise and accept both elements, the adult and the child, each of which is appropriate at particular times.
In some societies, reaching adulthood is clearly marked by ritual and ceremony at a certain age or on assuming a particular status. Jesus, on reaching thirteen, went to Jerusalem for His Bar Mitzvah and spoke of “being about His Father’s business.” From this time on, He worked as a carpenter to help support the family in Nazareth.
Today attaining adult status tends to be gradual, complex and sometimes ill-defined, but usually occurs with the young adults still at home; still at home, that is, in their parents’ home!
1. How many young adults are living at home?
More than we might have thought! The most recent census shows more than six in ten people aged 15-24 years were living with their parents “on the cheap”. About 29% of all young adults not in full-time education are also living at home.
Then another 31% still in full-time education are still living at home. So 60% of those under 25 years of age still live with their parents, although few of those parents were living with their own parents at the same age.
It has been observed that patterns of family life differ from age to age, and from culture to culture, but in general Australian young people have left home when they finish their schooling. In a number of European, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries it is the norm for the children to live at home until they marry, and not to leave at all if they do not ever marry.
But in Britain, Western Europe, the USA and Australia, children have tended to claim their independence much earlier and set up their own homes by their early twenties.
However in the past decade or so it has been noted by the demographers that many children are not leaving home as early, or are leaving and coming back to live once again in their parental homes. This has led to a changed dynamic of growing up, especially for the parents who thought they were just about over the ‘empty nest syndrome’ and now have the kids back home again.
The experts suggest that in a time of economic insecurity people tend to band together, and children stay close to the fold, in order to save money. This pattern has been called “the boomerang kids”: they leave and come back, leave and come back, sometimes regularly over the years until they are capable of handling life on their own. It can happen after finishing university when the young adults have huge debts to pay off, between jobs, or after a marriage fails.
A Harvard Center for Housing Studies report found a direct correlation between rental prices and adult children’s decisions to live with their parents. Add to that the big increases in university tuition and HECS fees, and the young adult may be saddled with huge debt before they have even earned their first pay. Typical Australian university students accumulate sizable debts, especially those pursuing medicine and law whose courses can add up to $80,000.
Parents are usually happy to have the children back, too, especially if they see that they are actively saving money for their future, to save for a wedding, for a down payment on a home, or to start a business.
The Sun Herald Family Survey in 2004 found that 83% of parents did not want their children to leave home before they were 21; about half the adult children living at home were students and the other half were working; 44% contributed to the household income; and 80% helped out with the housework.
The New York based Families and Work Institute researchers were surprised to find that 25% of employed parents had children from 18 to 29 years old living at home with them at least half of the time. They also observed that families with middle and higher incomes were more likely to have children at home than were lower income households.
It appears that there is no longer an assumption about a clear-cut departure age. Demographers suggest that there needs to be a new life stage assigned to those between 18 to 25 who are past adolescence but not yet mature enough to be taking on the social and economic roles of adulthood. Many in this age group are delaying the usual stages of adulthood by going to university longer, marrying later, and having children later in life than earlier generations did.
This change of life pattern has affected the relationships between the parent and child generations, but researchers report that they get along very well. Today’s older adults are more accepting and more like friends than earlier generations were. In general it has been found that the parents liked having their adult children around. And, as one mother quipped, “They can live with me now, as long as I can live with them later!”
2. Why are more young adults staying at home longer?
Because circumstances have changed. In Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving home was closely associated with marriage, education and employment.
One reason for more young adults staying home longer is the shift to later marriages. Between 1940 and 1970 young people left home earlier to get married. In the 1970s, the age at which they left remained the same, but since the 1980’s the trend away from marrying young in Australia has been strong.
In 1972, 33% of Australian women were married as teenagers and 83% by their 25th birthday. But twenty years later, only 5% married as teenagers and less than half before they turned 25 years. The percentage married by 25 at the beginning of 1991 was lower than during the 1930s Depression, when the state of the economy discouraged people from marrying.
Furthermore, the trends already evident among younger women promise that the proportion of Australian women marrying under the age of 25 will continue to decline sharply over the next five years. Today only 17% of young adult men marry before they turn 25 years.
Although the marriage rate has fallen for women and men aged 20-24, findings show that 23-year-olds have generally positive responses to marriage and most expected to marry.
Another reason why young adults are staying home longer is the increased years spent in education. In the 1980s, the number of young people staying on at school to Year 12, plus the increasing number undertaking post-secondary education, meant more young adults were engaged in study and therefore were at home.
Another reason why young adults are staying home longer is the virtual disappearance of full-time employment for 15 to 19 year-olds and, later in the decade, as the recession hit, rising unemployment for 20-24-year-olds. Having no job keeps them at home.
This means that even some employed young adults find it very difficult to manage away from their parents. For many, the prospect of buying a home seems impossible or very remote, but some opt to remain with parents and save while they can.
Economic pressures also arise for those who have left home. Losing a job, mounting bills and sudden unexpected expenses such as extensive car repairs or hospital treatment can all be decision points for young adults to move back in with parents. Sometimes there is no particular crisis – just a realisation that it is exceedingly difficult to make any headway financially while living independently from parents.
So many young adults live with their parents because they are not able to be financially independent. Young adults believe that while it costs a lot to keep themselves, it does not cost much for mum and dad to keep them.
Parents apparently can work economic miracles so that free board and lodging is expected by many. Some are studying full or part-time, some are unemployed, some have not been able to establish themselves in a career, but whatever the reason, it is cheaper for their parents to pay than they themselves.
Often it is early separation from marriage. This can lead young adults to return home for both emotional and financial support. Their parents would rather have died than return home, and they forced themselves to work through their marriage difficulties rather than divorce.
Young adults after divorce with or without children of their own, frequently return for a while to readjust and make other living arrangements. There may be other reasons.
Sometimes this can be for good reasons, such as when our daughter, her husband and three children moved in with us while builders added a second storey to their home. Some parents have a never-empty nest!
3. What’s it like for young adults to stay at home?
The experience of going or staying is often emotional. Young people leave home willingly or reluctantly. They leave with confidence, hope and a sense of adventure. They leave with trepidation and anxiety, in fear, disgrace and despair.
They may be encouraged out, helped out, pushed out, or run out. They may be clung to, cried over, exhorted to stay. When the young leave, parents sigh with relief, weep for the loss, fear the worst, hope for the best. Some parents experience all of these reactions on the same day!
There are advantages and disadvantages for young adults who continue to live with their parents. They have the support, security and company which living at home provides. Women more than men tend to add comments about love and caring as a family. Living at home is cheaper and offers an opportunity to save.
Living at home usually means that some services are provided – meals, washing, ironing, housework and general tidying up. More men than women mention this as an advantage. Although some gender roles have changed, most young adult men are not into housework, cooking and cleaning, and their parents seem to be leaving this part of growing sensitive new-age guys to their future wives to undertake.
The major motivations for young people to leave home are for independence, or to live with a partner with or without marriage. If neither of these are strong motivations and there is a reasonable amount of independence and freedom available at home, and some financial advantage in living at home, then most young adults come to the conclusion that they love their parents too much to leave, and parents believe them!
Yet parents expect their young adult children to leave home. They expect them to lead their own lives and be independent. Yet genuine love for their children makes them want to hang on to them for just a little longer. So with economic, educational, marriage and child-bearing opportunities for young adults changed and both parents and young adults wanting a combined household, it is not surprising that this generation, more than the previous, want to stay with mum and dad.
The major area of conflict between the generations
Yet about two-thirds of young adults living at home mention constraints on what they could do, lack of privacy and occasional value clashes. One area in particular has to do with expressions of sexuality.
Mother and father may give their young adults all the freedom in the world, but wait until favourite daughter suggests her boyfriend spends the night in her bedroom! Sexual behaviour and attitudes have changed with use of contraception, the waning of Christian moral restraints and the earlier sexual maturity of young people. More adolescents are sexually active and probably more experienced than their parents were at the same age.
There is now apparent public acceptance of young people cohabiting prior to marriage, implying acceptance of sex before marriage. In the 1988-89 National Social Science Survey, 44% of 23-year-olds said their parents would definitely not accept them having a pre-marital sexual relationship in their house. The strength of parents’ views varied, but they were clearly opposed to sex before marriage. Parents have conservative attitudes in general; and expected their home standards to be respected and believe they have the right to set the rules in their own house.
About 40% of the 23 year olds said they would not feel comfortable about premarital sex in their parents’ home; 23% said they would feel comfortable only if the relationship was a committed one and their parents accepted the person; but only 38% said they would feel all right about it.
When my children came home from school repeating a new swear word just learnt, Beverley and I would say: “You may know that word, but it is never used in this house.” In the same way if drugs or drinking alcohol would have been proposed we would have said, “That is not the standard of behaviour in this house.” If sleeping together had been proposed we would have replied: “This is our house, too, and the way this house runs does not allow sleeping together.”
Our experience with four normal children (they have provided, with their spouses, eleven grandchildren so are sexually active!) is that our young adults respected our views.
The adjustments between parents and young adults
What adjustments have to be made to the lifestyles of parents and children who live together? There are many potential advantages in households of different generations. There is the possibility of greater understanding between generations, and of mutual financial and emotional support.
There are, however, potential problems. There may be the disruption to parents’ plans and activities, lack of role clarity, difficulties with matters such as cleaning and house maintenance, conflicting lifestyles, use of household resources, entertaining friends, rent and other charges.
Parents may have retained houses which are too large for themselves alone for longer than they normally would; they may have to continue in the workforce for longer than they anticipated; some take on grandchild-minding responsibilities when they had hoped their parenting days were over; some feel they have failed as parents because their offspring have not left home at the “normal” time. Young adults in the home may have negative effects on a marriage because of the additional stress placed on parents.
The relationships between parents and unemployed young adults living with them generally exaggerate any poor relationships between them. Each of these tension points mentioned needs to be listed and discussed together when the relationship is good, and not left in the realm of uncertainty. If something I have written has prompted a response in you, make sure you discuss it with your loved ones.
Young adults form a crucial bridge between one generation and the next. They carry values, attitudes and beliefs derived from their parents and from the society and culture in which they have been raised. At the same time, they help shape, by their behaviour and the decisions they make, changes in the society in which the next generation will live. Most will become parents and raise children, others will have contact with and influence children less directly; but all young adults will contribute to the pattern of social change. The values that they hold now therefore have important implications for the future.
There are differences in the lives of today’s young adults and those of their parents. In general, young adults marry later than their parents, more live in de facto relationships, more have had a number of significant relationships before marriage, have children later, and young women expect to return to work after they have children with someone else caring for the children. Often that caring is from the grandparents, who thought their years of child caring were done, but who would not say “No” for the world; not because of excessive love for their children, but because they want the best for their grandchildren!
Jesus was a young adult who stayed home with His mother to support the young family members after Joseph died. In His time there was no social security, no widows’ pension, or the like. The extended family had to care for the widow and the young. So Jesus stayed at home with Mary and the younger children until He left home at thirty to be baptised and become a travelling preacher.
By that time the other younger children were old enough to work in the carpentry shop, even though the next eldest boy, James, had already left to go to Rabbinical school to study for the priesthood. But Jesus worked and contributed to the family income, and even at His death was concerned for his mother’s welfare, asking His friend, John, to care for her.
He followed the Commandment (Exodus 20:12) “Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” But Jesus also said (Matt 19:3-7) “at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female,”5 and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
Jesus gave the young adult the example of living in harmony with the parental generation at home, and also the encouragement to leave home and form a new family.
References: The Australian Institute For Family Studies: “Family Matters” April 1990; August 1991; December 1991.
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC
For those of you in Wisconsin, apparently there was a heckuva meteor that lit up the skies there around 10:00 p.m. local time April 14, an hour ago as I write this. 