Out of College and Back in his Old Room
A question arises from the now common occurrence of economically-challenged college graduates moving back into (or just not moving out of) their childhood rooms. Is it such a bad thing? Central to human biological and social history is that children grow up, set up and manage their own establishments and produce children themselves. It’s not happening that way in a lot of families these days, but parents can make a success of an adult child’s unplanned return home. Much depends on what happens when he or she gets there.
A fundamental problem for many parents is that kids are adult only in physical maturity. When my father was thirty, he was building a house and supporting a wife, two children and one on the way. That boastful truth about my father is a little like the old “I walked ten miles to school in the snow” story. This is a different generation, people hasten to assert. It’s a different world. You have to understand….
In fact, no young generation is truly fundamentally different from its predecessors. But the parents may be different. If you have never required your adult son to be more than a kid, he will be a kid until your expectations change.
It stands to reason that any young adult who truly wants to find a “real” job also wants to be an independent and responsible adult. The job part of that laudable and natural goal cannot be fully satisfied as long as one is living at home and being financially supported. However, any fully contributing member of a family can rightly regard himself as independent and responsible – and be so viewed by his parents.
Fully contributing means more than sporadically doing chores. It means that one is not a “kid back home” but a person with status in the home deriving from responsibilities that everyone else can depend on him or her to discharge. It means there is a household of three adults rather than two adults plus a freeloading kid. It can be like a business office of colleagues who are all fully engaged and contributing to the success of an enterprise.
You may be skeptical, but children throughout time have been underestimated by parents and other older people. You wouldn’t have to dig too deeply into biographies to find some great scientist or head of state who as a child had to punch more than he weighed because his father was unemployed, alcoholic and passing out on the floor (apparently Ronald Reagan was confronted with that very thing). Circumstances have transformed many children into fully contributing members of a family, but when things are cushy, as they have been for many of today’s kids, the kids have little chance to show what they are made of. You merely need to establish an understanding of how your adult child is going to fully contribute – assuming you like having the family intact and want the arrangement to work.
Specifics are important. Having potential does not obviate the need for guidance. Your adult child has never had to deal with the many and varied exigencies arising from having a home and family. It is much more complex than studying for an exam or making the right moves to please a professor. Groceries need to be bought. Bathtubs need scrubbing. Phone messages must be delivered instead of forgotten. Visiting relatives need to be picked up at the airport. You go to the gas station before the tank is actually empty. Don’t guzzle the last 8 ounces of milk at night, leaving none for Mom’s coffee in the morning. Kids will fail at those things if parents fail to instill in them a sense of cooperation and responsibility for the collective good.
One important aspect of personal development and self-esteem is opportunity to perform at whatever we’re good at, and to employ our talents and skills in the service of contributions. Nancy, you make beautiful salads, so why don’t you do that while I do the meatloaf? Doubtless it has never occurred to many parents to ascertain the kinds of work in which a young person might become contentedly absorbed. At a young age I discovered the joy (you’ll just have to believe me) of ironing.
“Money is always a problem,” observed a female character with a small role in the Sixties classic, Blow-Up. How true. If your son has no job, he probably has no money. Without one’s own money it is hard to feel independent, grown-up or respected. That is a principal rationale for being a fully contributing family member. No one with a brain would accuse a busy and capable homemaker and mother of not contributing just because only her husband brings home money. A son who gives the house a needed paint job is very different from one slumped in front of the television.
There is something possibly propitious today in the challenging circumstances of an adult child in the parental home (the latter memorably described by E.B. White in an essay as “a place where I considered it unsuitable to be at my age”). The Millennial generation may be less likely than previous generations to harbor the dream of “getting out of this place” and having sex and beer parties all night in one’s own apartment. Often they are friends with their parents and don’t resent them as dated, clueless ogres intent on depriving the young of fun. Many realize that they were born too late for the halcyon decades of jobs on every corner, cheap gas and the fairly easy affordability of one’s own car. They want to do well (many also want to do good) but are facing an economy indifferent to their willingness to play by its rules. The “have a nice day” society has arisen partly in response to the economic uncertainty that makes it smart to be at least superficially friendly to everyone. Still, courtesy as a default behavior is more useful in any socially tricky environment than having too much ego or edginess. Restricted in mobility and opportunity, many of today’s young people are turning to gardening and the creation of local solutions to local problems. All that may conduce to success in unexpectedly reconfigured families.
Consider the appearance of the old room to which a child returns, because it really should not remain the same place. It may be wise to expect that the room be cleared of teddy bears, the Barbie collection and Star Wars decals. Out in the cruel world, a room of one’s own is known as a studio apartment. It is a serious personal residence in which one performs duties, has fun and engages in projects. Except for a couple of cherished objects, childhood paraphernalia should be relocated to an attic or basement (unless your daughter wants to dispose of it) and replaced with bookshelves, computer, adult desk and reading lamp. A personal environment appropriate to the time and situation will help create a reality that she is not forever a child, but a serious person from whom worthwhile things can be expected.
