Parenting Grown Children: What Dr. Spock Forgot to Tell Us

Setting a Deadline: When grown children move back home, how long should they stay?

When her son's business crashed, Sheri invited him and his family--wife, two toddler-aged children--to put it all behind them . She encouraged them to move across the country and into her house until they got back on their feet. Two and a half years ago, they accepted the invitation. They're still living with Sheri.

"Friends asked me if I put a deadline on it," Sheri says. "Did I tell them they had a few months or a year or something like that?"

She did not. "If it had been just my son or just my son and daughter-in-law, I might have put a time limit on it. But when there are two children, it's different. Besides, it is not as though they wanted to prolong the stay. As Sheri puts it, "I have sympathy for my daighter-in-law.  Who at 33 wants to come live with your mother-in-law? I have been cognizant of that."

And then there was Sheri's past history: "My first husband passed away when I was 35 and I had three  children. My parents and my sister were there for me. My mother never said, "We can’t always help you." So there's a unique bond because of what happened. I'm giving  back to my son the way my mother gave to me."

Even if there were no emotional reasons, hard economic times make it trickier to set a deadline. And certainly, Sheri's son and daughter-in-law faced harsh times, moving as they did from the fire of Florida into the frying pan of California--two states that have suffered inordinately from the economic downturn. Besides, Sheri wanted her son to not just get a job but a career-line job. "I told him to take time to get his feet on the ground," she says. "You can't put a time limit on that."

In a few months, the family of four will be moving to a rented house an hour's drive from Sheri's. Both adults now have good jobs. Although there were difficult times and Sheri is looking forward to having her house, her husband and her life to herself again, she is not sorry she did it. Friends badgered her about not setting a time limit, but she doesn't see why she should have. Yes, it was hard. Yes, it was uncomfortable. But she had a goal in mind--not just employment but good employment--for her son and her daughter-in-law. And she was fortunate enough to have the means to afford the luxury of time it took for her son to get back on his feet. She can count the 2 1/2 years but she has never toted up the cost of the gift in terms of money. Do her other children? That's another issue.

Money Matters: Who pays for what when the kids move back home

When Shari's son, daughter-in-law and two children moved into her house, they had, financially speaking, nothing. The cookie business they started together had failed--despite infusions of money from the family. So when Shari and her husband Hal opened their home as a refuge--"a lifeline" she calls it--money was an issue. "We could have subsidized their rent," Shari says of the decision to have the family move in with her, "but their needs were so far above and beyond that. They needed food, medical insurance, car insurance, clothes--the works." Shari and Hal were fortunate to have the wherewithal to pick up the tab for the big things, but what to do about "walking around money" while the son and daughter-in-law were job hunting?

At first, the four adults held Sunday night meetings: to go over any unmet needs or frustrations; to keep Shari and Hal up to date on job interviews and other employment prospects. Once it became clear what some of the day-to-day cash needs were, Hal came up with a plan. Every Monday morning they would leave Shari's son a check that was big enough to cover lunches, car fare, outings with the kids, other incidentals for both the son and his wife. That way, the younger couple wouldn't have to ask every time they needed something. This was important to Shari: "Money can be very divisive," she says. "It can be a wedge." She didn't want her son to feel demeaned by his circumstances, that he had to ask his Mommy for money to meet a friend for lunch or take his kids to the movies. And there was this: she didn't want either her son or daughter-in-law to rush into a job that wasn't on a career path.

It helps when you can afford to be as generous as Shari and Hal were. But the important point, to me, was not so much how much they could give and how many bills they could cover, but the open way they communicated. Talking things out--being up front about even the most personal money issues--can ease a tricky financial situation. And for Shari, setting a clear goal--jobs for her children that were on a career path--helped her formulate a plan she could live with and not resent.

Refilling the Empty Nest: It's summer and the college kids come home

Friends report that their youngest child is returning home from college for the summer. Their son lives on the other coast, so it's only the daughter coming back to the nest--and that only temporarily. An email spelled out how they feel about having her at home:

"Our daughter is home for the summer which is balm to our souls. As we've discussed, it's not like our lives are empty without her. Our work is endless, we really like one another's company as much as is possible, and we've begun to reconnect with old friends, whom we had left behind in favor of spending time with our children. So, life with kids in the house is full and happy. That said, having our daughter here is like discovering that the rooms are full of sunlight and rainbows that we had been missing."

Re-filing the Nest: An economist looks at the phenomenon

While families struggle with the financial and emotional impact of having grown children move back home--and take up residence in their old bedroom--there are some interesting macroeconomic effects.

Here's how a Mark Thoma, a well-respected economist, blogged about the implications of re-nesting. First he looks at a phenomenon he calls "Family as insurance:"

The parental home as unemployment insurance

"It is well known that in Spain and especially Italy, people in their twenties and even thirties stay with their parents until they find a job, and they often wait for the "perfect" job. This looks like an unemployment insurance with infinite duration with substantial moral hazard, which has lead to sky high youth unemployment rates in Europe.

Greg Kaplan is documenting that something similar is happening in the United States. ...many of those who do not attend college return home during unemployment spells, much like college students return home over the Summer. This analysis is very nicely done with an estimated structural model that features a repeated game between children and altruistic parents. In particular, this allows us to understand why the savings rate of young people is so low. As they have the option of returning to their parents, they see no need to build up any precautionary savings. This means also that programs like unemployment insurance have little impact for them."

Then Thoma comes up with his kicker: "Just thinking of all things parents do to provide the insurance, yet minimize the moral hazard problem. The last place I would have wanted to live at that age was with my parents, and I'm pretty sure the feeling was mutual."

Boomerangers Move Back In: The New Yorker cover says it all

A picture is worth a 1,000-word posting. Amidst the joy and celebration of graduation time, the May 24 New Yorker cover has a message for all whose grown children are heading home after getting their higher-ed degrees. There he stands, the returning son, hanging his PhD diploma on the wall of his childhood bedroom wall--right near the rock n' roll poster and sports trophy. Note in lower left corner, the suitcase and in lower right, the box of college paraphernalia. While the magazine usually comes up with an archly clever title for its cover art, this one leans more to the simple and direct: "Boomerang Graduation."

Well, for those going through it, the cover art makes it clear: You are not alone. So does the Shouts & Murmurs column, "Your New College Graduate: A Parents' Guide"  Here's an excerpt:

"How do I teach my college graduate independence?

Good question! Experts have differing opinions on the subject. Some suggest a “firm” approach: assigning housework, banning marijuana, requesting politeness, etc. Others suggest a “liberal” approach: cooking and cleaning for them, praising their “poems,” etc. Unfortunately, neither approach works."

Missing the Kids: Grown children move away but are not forgotten

For those of us of a certain age--especially those of us whose children have grown up enough to leave the nest--there are some pithy, witty and heart wrenching observations of our condition in a new book,The Three Weissmans of Westport.

The book is not about empty nesters--though one of the characters, Annie, is one. It does, however, have a lot to say about that empty feeling, and the author, Cathleen Schine, manages to offer insights with words that fly along the page--even while they point a dagger at the heart. Take this one, describing Annie's sadness--she's a 50-ish single-mom--that her grown sons could not come home for the Christmas holiday, which she was spending with her mother and sister.

"For the first time that she could remember, Annie felt alone, truly and desperately alone. Even when her husband had disappeared and she had been left to fend for herself with two little boys, there had been the two little boys. Now they were gone, too. They loved her and called her and sent her e-mails and would still snuggle up to her to be petted when they were in the mood, but they were men, and though they would always be at the center of her life, she was no longer at the center of theirs."

Re-Nesting: When the grown kids move back home

The economy is taking its toll on those empty bedrooms in your house. More young and not-so-young adult children are finding the only way to survive the downturn--the loss of job or the piling up of bills--is to cut their losses by moving back home. The number of people between the ages of 25 to 34 that are living with their parents increased 17.8 percent between 2000 and 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau--and that was before the recession firmed its grip. Wonder what the 2010 numbers will look like?

Here's another view of those numbers: Almost 16 million families had at least one child over 18 living at home in 2003, up 7 percent since 1995 and up 14 percent since 1985, according to the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey.

They're "boomerang" or "back-to-the-bedroom" kids. They leave. They come back. Sometimes more than once, often after college, between jobs, before marriage, after a divorce or when housing costs are so exorbitant that moving in to their old bedrooms is more appealing than sharing a small, rundown apartment with three roommates.

Zhu Xiao Di, a research analyst at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, has studied boomerang kids for years.In a recent paper, ["The Effects of Housing Push Factors and Rent Expectations on Household Formation of Young Adult,"] he finds a direct correlation between rent prices and an adult child's decision to live with the parents. Couple that with big increases in college tuition and fees, and young adults find themselves saddled with debt before they start collecting their first paychecks.No wonder they head home.

The good (or bad) news, depending on how much you like have your grown children living at home, is that such arrangements aren't usually permanent. The number of kids moving back in with their folks usually escalates during cycles of crisis, such as wars and economic depressions.

Sound like what we're going through now?

Empty Nesting: Clearing out your child's old bedroom.

It took us almost 10 years to clear out our children's bedrooms. They were launched into the world and starting families of their own before we came to terms with the idea that they no longer needed their old bedrooms. And that if we took over those rooms, they wouldn't feel disowned.

I was reminded of those feelings when I read a recent piece in the New York Times by Michelle Slatalla. She is moving east and had to clean out the bedrooms of her college-age daughters who were away at school. It made her remember how awful she felt when her mother bundled up all the talisman's of her youth and dismantled her room. She was concerned that her children would feel the same way. 

Maybe it was the grace of ten years, but I didn't worry about what my children would think. They would still come home for visits but they wouldn't be sleeping in their old beds surrounded by memorabilia from their grade school days. But Paterfamilias was unnerved by the dismantling--in fact, he resisted it for several years. He worried that his children would feel less welcome when they came home for a visit. On an even more gut level, he seemed to feel it was proof that our family had changed, that our children had grown up and moved away to other cities in other parts of the country. And he didn't like to admit it.

Empty nesting is a tricky thing. I've read stories--usually in decorating magazines--about parents who, garbed in a celebratory mood--re-do their now-extra bedrooms within days of their child moving out. I don't necessarily envy them. I wonder at the quick dispatch of the past. Of course, it may be that they desperately needed the extra space. Our son and daughter had the two biggest bedrooms in the house--on the top floor with high cathedral ceilings, skylights and huge picture windows. We took the room off the kitchen--it had more closets and a bigger bathroom. For us to move upstairs to their rooms meant ripping out the built-in desks and bookcases and replacing them with closets and an addition to the bathroom. There was nothing impermanent about the takeover of their space. We carefully boxed up anything they had left behind--that stuff is still in its boxes in the basement; they have never opened the boxes or asked after the old notebooks, textbooks or drawings in them.

They still come home to visit. They sleep in the guest room or on the pull-out couch in the downstairs rec room. I like to think that not retiring to their old rooms--or sleeping in their old bunk beds--makes them feel more grown up and independent, that it helps change the dynamics of the visit. There's no reason to slip back into teen-year patterns. It's a whole new adult world inside the house. The only little kids in it are theirs.

Money Matters: When does the dependence of grown children end?

A friend tells me his friend's woes: She's a divorced divorce attorney with a small but steady practice. Her daughter has gone to New York City to pursue her dreams. She wants to be an interior designer--get right in there and help people decorate their homes. And she has a talent for it. Only trouble is, the daughter is 28 and has been in dream-pursuit for several years--without much luck. She has yet to land an entry level job with a design firm. The mother has been subsidizing her daughter--"paying a hell of a rent for a place in Hell's Kitchen," says my friend. The mother is feeling the pinch of supporting a second household--her practice is good but not that good. "At what point ," she asks, "do I just say no?"

My friend feels he's been approached because his lawyer friend, a single mom, is looking for a male point of view--women being "more nurturing and not as practical," he says. His practical point of view zeroes in on his own turmoil with his daughter, who is in her early 20s and still in undergraduate school, having transferred colleges and programs several times. Now she wants to spend her winter break in California--with his financial help. "I can't seem to get her to focus on the notion that the purpose of college is to help you become self-supporting," he says. "When I was her age I couldn't wait to take control of my life."

And that, he thinks, is at the core of some of the dependence that seems so prevalent today. His argument: We [our generation] couldn't wait to get a job and move out of our homes because there were so many restrictions on us. But kids today have so much freedom at home--free meals, free room and the freedom to have as guests in their bedroom anyone they want. "They can practically make love in the living room and no one would say a thing," he says. So, he asks, where's the urge to get out there in the real world and declare independence?

It's a theory worth thinking about. How comfortable are we making it for those who've filled our empty nest? Or are living in their own little nests on our dime. Do some of them need a tough-love push? Are we a little late in delivering a practical message?

Children Grow Up: A poet describes that independence best

They've grown up and moved on. Here's poet Thomas Lux's take on the tempus fugit nature of it all and the ability--or is it need--to let go:

A Little Tooth

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It's all

over; she'll learn some words, she'll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.