The Challenge of Parenting Kids in Their 20s

I was at dinner with a colleague and his five children the other evening. Most of his kids, like mine, are in their twenties, living at home, or trying to launch with varying degrees of success. Comparing notes—my five children are between the ages of 21 and 31—we remarked on how different this period of life is now from our own experience at that age. Where we could expect to buy a home that was four times our annual salary, our children can expect to carry a mortgage seven times theirs. Where we once perceived career choices, our children struggle for entry-level work that provides a pathway to a pension. Where we were fairly certain that human beings could, but would not nuke the planet, our children are fairly certain our planet is a lost cause that is unlikely to provide a home for their children (if they have any at all). All of this and a crisis of identity, with so many choices amid a social media universe that makes every choice political, explains why emerging adults (as they are referred to in the literature) are reporting epidemic levels of anxiety, depression and loneliness.

For a parent, it leaves one confused as to how to help.

What is clear is that expectations regarding normal developmental stages are becoming confused. Children are staying at home longer. For some families, this is a cultural preference. But for many others, it is a symptom of a cohort of youth with fewer economic prospects and more emotional insecurities. These days, 42.3% of young adults live with at least one of their parents, a stunning increase from 26.9% in 1981 and 32.1% in 1991. Men are more likely than women to be at home, partly because women tend to enter longer-term relationships earlier than men. Still, the rate of young adults who are in committed relationships and living as couples has been declining steadily, from over 68% 30 years ago, to just 45% today.

All of this means that our young adults are camped in their bedrooms and behaving like boarders, yet we struggle to know what to charge them monthly as their contribution to the family household. When they finally do consider moving out, we struggle to know how much of our own income to share with them, with our own ever-present insecurity about retirement income.

My conversations with many parents have confirmed a few things that we should expect when caring for a twenty-something:

1. Our homes will continue to be an extension of our children’s homes for far longer than we anticipated. Our garages will be their storage lockers (without fees), our bank accounts will be their savings accounts, our signature will be their security and credit guarantee, our home equity is likely to be their down payment, and our vehicles will be their transportation. (If we’re lucky, they’ll come back with the same amount of gas in the tank.)
2. Our adult children will be more emotionally fragile than we were. They will not accept confrontation or criticism. They will tell us the world is a difficult place to live and that we “don’t understand.” They will insist that their lives are harder than ours, even if we gave them a good start.
3. They will care deeply about the planet and human rights and animals and say they are trying to make the world a better place, implying that our generation messed it up badly. They will also be terribly upset by how fruitless their efforts seem to be and will resist our advice that they can still make things better.
4. Some (not all) will want a quality of life far beyond the effort they are willing to put in.

I don’t mean to sound cynical, but between a world that is shortchanging our children of a secure future, and their own personal story of vulnerability, there are challenges ahead for them to launch and establish their own lives. As their parents, I don’t think we begrudge our adult children love and support. I just don’t think we expected them to be so dependent on us for this long before we could turn the tables and start depending on them a little more.