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

De-Nested: When adult kids move back home, politeness is strained.

I'm a sucker for a new phrase, especially when it captures the definition of the moment. Here's my most recent find: Economy of gratitude. It refers to the breakdown in the way we treat each other--we being the parents and ourr adult children who have moved back into the family nest. It's when family members notice only the inconveniences and ignore the nice things that we do for one another.

According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, that doesn't have to happen. "Children and parents can peacefully coexist by approaching the new living arrangement as they would if they were taking on any roommate: Agree in advance on how to handle household purchases, cleaning and other responsibilities. Resolve the question of who is in charge and how the house is to be governed, and the situation may not seem so bad after all."

The L.A. Times is covering the issue because California is one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis. One of the phenomenons of that tragedy is that people who are losing their homes or in danger of losing their homes, are bunking in together intergenerationally. That is, parents with children or children with parents. But that phenomenon is not limited to the usual--parents and their 20-something children. It involves older children. And here's why

An AARP study--released in September and reflecting 2007 foreclosure woes--found that more than a quarter of the foreclosures and delinquencies in the second half of 2007 involved homeowners ages 50 or older. SInce then there has been the calamity of the plunging stock market and the unraveling of the financial safety net for many midcareer Americans and their parents. No reliable figures yet exist on the number of adults forced to move in with parents because of the financial crises--or adult children moving in with their parents to help the parents--but it's clear this group consists of older, previously well-established homeowners.

The time are a changin' and it's not for the better.

Empty Nesters: Filling the adult child's nest--with you

Lots of self-help tips for parents of grown children center on what to do when the adult kids move back to the family home. But now there's a new trend: The U.S. Census reports that there is a 75 percent increase in parents under the age of 65 who are now living with their adult children--in their children's homes.

What's behind this reverse trend? Some of it is the troubled economy--foreclosures, loss of jobs (older baby boomers have a particularly tough time re-attaching once they've lost employment) and overall difficulty making ends meet. 

According to the census data, the average size of both families and households grew from 2000 to 2007, after shrinking slightly in the 1990s. The average family in 2007 had 3.2 people, up from 3.14 in 2000.

The Good Guests: What to do when we're visitors in our child's home.

Those of us who have children living in other parts of the world--another country, another state--rub up against a special dilemma: Remembering that it's their home, not ours; that they set the "good housekeeping" rules. It's not easy since we make our presence felt whether we try to be low key or not.  Here are some highlights from an Ask Amy column that deals with the way at least one grown child views the visit.

"It is a very stressful time for me. They are not particularly good house guests"
"I find myself overly stressed and wishing the visit would end."
"I've thought that things might be better if they could stay at a hotel when they come. My mother thinks this is unheard of and I’m a horrible daughter for thinking of such a thing."

Ooooph. A pretty harsh view--and this is from a daughter who admits to loving her parents and wanting them to come visit. Personally, I always opt for the hotel alternative when possible. It's a real stress-breaker--for everyone, and that includes me. And you? What do you do to make multi-overnights more comfortable for everyone? Or don't you think there's a problem?

Meanwhile, here are some highlights from Amy's answer:

 "Tell your parents that while you love them dearly, you feel more at ease when you can manage your routine without needing to accommodate every minute of their routine."
"After you tell them, if they lay on the guilt trip, resist feeling guilty or apologetic. If they decide not to visit, resist feeling guilty or apologetic. Continue to be as loving and caring as you have in the past "

Money Matters: Helping support a grown child

At last, a financial planner who isn't all bean-counter and estate-protector. There is, says Aaron Katsman, more to having an adult child move back home than rental agreements or fees for food. And more to providing them with a temporary stipend than a loan contract.

Keying in on the recent, economy-based phenomenon of older adult children--in their 30s and 40s--losing a job and either moving back home or needing significant financial assistance, he makes some points that struck a common-sense chord with me:

"Isn’t the point of having money, aside for trying to provide a comfortable lifestyle, to try and help out those less fortunate? Wouldn’t a struggling daughter fit that bill?"

"If parents are themselves stretched financially, they don’t have to actually shell out money for the child. Rather, they can provide a roof and help that way."

"Neither parents nor children view moving back home as a desirable outcome, but if left with no choice, would you actually refuse to support your child?"

You can read more on this blog, http://bizzywomen.com/

Re-Nesting: To have or have not a contract with your adult children

Parents of 20-somethings--especially recent college graduates--are experiencing a steady march of children returning to the nest. It's a hostile economy out there: difficult job market; horrendous credit crunch; rising prices for everything. And it's not just the 20-somethings, as the reports noted in earlier blog entries make clear. But all that raises the question of what sort of rules should parents set when the kids come back to the nest.
An interesting discussion of the issue is in a recent College Times story:

Written contract or no?  "Experts say there is no right answer because the dynamics of each family are different." That said, CT's experts say, it's important "to have a plan, preferably in writing, that spells out the new relationship. It can be as simple as a contribution toward household expenses, or it can be chapter and verse, but the reunited family needs rules."
One of the experts quoted is John  L. Graham, a business professor at University of California at Irvine who co-authored a book about the move-back phenomenon, "Together Again, A Creative Guide to Successful Multigenerational Living." It's not only about young adults returning to the nest but elderly parents moving in as well.

Re-Nesting: They can go home again

We've got yet another study on grown children and money. This time it's not about how we parents are helping them pay their bills or buy a house  (we can be so wonderfully generous, can't we?), but about the pressures that force them home again and how we ought to deal with the boomerang kids.

A recent story in the Washington Post looked at the three-year trend for moving back home: nearly half the about-to-be college grads plan to do so after they graduate. The survey, courtesy of MonsterTrak, also found an uptick in this year's rate-of-return: where 22 percent of last year's survey respondents said they planned to live at home for six months or so, a year later, 43 percent of them are still there. Chief among the reasons for staying put:debt--college loan and credit card.

Moving back home for an extended time isn't necessarily healthy for either the parents or the grown children. They lose their independence and we get to see our grown child's habits up close and personal.

The Post story listed some issues that should be discussed "before the bags are unpacked." These start with rent [will it be levied], length of stay and personal financial information.  The experts quoted in the story say we parents have a right to that information in order to keep tabs on our adult child's progress toward independence [and a move out of the house].  "If they don't want to be accountable to you,"  the advice reads, "then they need to get up and out of your house."

Tough love. And a form of love that doesn't sit too well with some of us. Having to have a contract with our children? Ick. Charging them rent? You'd have to be in desperate financial straits--unless you were putting it in a savings account for them so they'd have a nest egg ready when they're ready to move onward and out.

Any other thoughts on where you'd come down on dealing with a re-feathered nest?

Money Matters: Setting limits when you make a loan

When you lend your grown kids money--and it's a loan, not a gift--you may be risking a whole new set of pressures on your relationship. "What seems straightforward can become a straitjacket if families aren't careful," a recent news story reports. It asks the key questions:  How do you keep family harmony when money is given to one child and not others? What happens if a son or daughter can't -- or won't -- repay the loan?

Some pointers::

1. Call it what it is--a loan or a gift? If you actually don't expect any payback, give the money unconditionally; otherwise it's not really a gift, but a debt in grandiose disguise.

A loan is much more work.

2. Discuss the need.

"If parents are going to be the bank, they should act like the bank," says a financial adviser. "You've got to treat it seriously; kids need to understand this is not petty cash."

3. Keep it simple

Draft a document stating how the loan will be structured. Get a promissory note in writing and set a repayment schedule. "You've got to set the tone. All the other family members are watching."

4. Don't play favorites

Not all children are the same, but parents generally prefer to keep things equal among their children. 

One solution is to reduce the borrower's share of a trust or inheritance by the amount of the loan, which counts as part of your assets.

Final words of advice from a financial adviser: "If you've got a challenging relationship with your kids, you for sure don't want to be their banker. If you have a good relationship with your kids, you want to be careful about being their banker. Nothing can make a good relationship go bad than money." 

House and Hearth: The grown kids buy their first home

When paterfamilias and I bought our house--the one we're still living in--our children were five and six years old. My mother flew up from her condo in Florida to help with the dirty work of moving in. She and I hand-transferred to the new house a fragile antique wall clock and a gold-framed mirror that used to be hers but were now mine. Paterfamilias and I were taking up the carpeting the former owner had nailed down all over the house. We had the wood floors stained and burnished before we moved in. What I remember most about those first few days in the new house is my mother carrying things back and forth between kitchen and dining room, rags wrapped around her bare feet. "This is a good way to keep the floors buffed," she told me as she shuffled around. "You should do this all the time."

I'm reminded of this because Alpha Daughter just bought her first house. She closed on it on a Friday, and we flew up on Saturday to look it over. She and her husband were planning to strip out the old carpet and redo the floors before moving in. While we were poking around the front yard and inspecting its bushes, a neighbor came by--all big hellos and welcomes and wanting to know who was moving in. Then another neighbor appeared on the street. The first neighbor waved her over. "Lois," she said, "here's the new family that's moving in, and it comes with a Bubbe."

That would be me. Bubbe is Yiddish for a granny. And there certainly was a very active five-year-old clambering up and down and around the front steps. But use of the term was a bit of a shock for me--I'd always thought of a Bubbe as a person who's sidelined to the back seat of the car--a person who's no longer part of the main events of family life. Part of what happens as our children get older, something my friend Marian, the psychiatrist, calls "flattening the heirarchy." Others use the term Bubbe in a more benign way--as the neighbor did, to connote that the parents of the new owners were around.

This Bubbe, unfortunately, doesn't come with the house. Paterfamilias and I live a ten-hour drive away. I may never tie rags around my bare feet as my mother did. But like her, I hope to be there on moving day to help out with whatever needs doing. It's what we parents of grown children do, whether we think of ourselves as a Bubbe or not.

Re-Nesting: It's not just the 20-somethings who are moving back home

Here's a shocker of a report: Grown children are moving back in with their parents. Not just the 20 somethings who are starting to make their way in the world, but the 40s and even 50s who have been out in the world and on their own. The slumping economy and credit crunch have a lot to do with it. You might say, everything to do with it.

The trend has become notable in the past six months. The grown children who move back in are either single, single-again, laid off from a job, unable to make ends meet with the job they have or hoping a brief time at home at no- or low-cost will help them put together the wherewithal to buy a house or move up in the world. You can read a recent AP story here.

One point the story makes is this: Such moves can be a drain on parental retirement resources, and financial advisers are saying that they have to show their clients--the parents--where to draw the financial line.

It's a point an AARP story makes even when it's younger grown children who move back home. There's a need to plan for it--emotionally as well as fiscally.

Life Styles: The stats on kids living at home

One of the big three ways in which parents help their adult children is by providing them with a roof over their  heads: the parent's own roof. In the past 20 years in Canada, the percent of adult children (20 to 24 years old) living at home has gone from 41 percent to 57 percent.
The same study that came up with those figures also found that 64 percent of parents who live with adult children report high satisfaction with life. Only 49 percent of parents who live with no adult child at home reported the same sense of satisfaction.
Another point the study makes: Living with adult children means the continuation of conflicts over money, children, house chores and responsibilities--until the kids move out.
But they do move out. Few parents reported living with children who are in their 30s. But that may change as the economy sinks.
The reason parents are giving their young adult kids aid and comfort? "Today's young adults are more likely to need their parent's support for longer periods of time," the report said.
You can read more about this here