This family reunion is no picnic

Thank goodness your folks didn’t empty your old room. At least you have a place to rest your head after that layoff or foreclosure, even if it means sleeping on a twin mattress under an old White Snake poster at mom and dad’s. With the economy still sluggish and the job market bleak, some adults are having to move back home with their parents, at least until they get back on their feet financially. We talked with Jan Ligon, an assistant professor of social work at Georgia State University, about house rules, multigenerational living and partying in your parent’s basement.

Q: Though there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence out there, the Census Bureau says 3.6 million parents had adult children in the home in 2007, an increase of 67 percent over 2000. So what’s going on? All these adult kids can’t be slackers.

A: Not at all. In many cases, they are highly educated and employable. But jobs are down, and this thing has tanked and affected people across the board. And so a parent may be the best place to turn, temporarily.

Q: Yeah, but who wants to be 43 years old and have to move back in with their parents? Or 33, or even 23? There’s got to be a tremendous amount of shame associated with that.

A: I think that feeling of shame does permeate more through males, because males aren’t supposed to be messing up and coming back home. We don’t necessarily view the female the same way.

Q: It has to be difficult not to slip back into those old parent-child roles.

A: That’s what’s really tricky. All of a sudden, everything is different for everybody. The parent has gotten older. The boomerang kid has gotten older. And then, all of a sudden, they’re back in this house. It could be very necessary and the right thing to do, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to be an easy thing to do.

Q: Yeah, I can see a train wreck approaching. Yet, is there a danger in parents doing too much to help their out-of-work kid who has lost his 401(k) and his house to foreclosure?

A: It’s one thing to try to help someone under certain circumstances. It’s another thing to help someone to the point that you’re doing things for them that they could be doing for themselves.

So if I go back home and I’ve been doing all the cooking for myself, and I go back to Mom and Dad’s house and Mom does all the cooking for me for the next six months, I’d argue that there’s a hint of enabling there. Because if I know how to cook, then I ought to contribute.

Q: But what if you make a really messy kitchen when you cook and your mom hates it?

A: My suggestion would be that folks need to set down some contracts or at least some basic guidelines of how things are going to work during this temporary living arrangement.

And there needs to be limitations set as to how long we expect this arrangement to last, to financial understandings about who’s going to pay for what, around who’s going to do what in the house.

I don’t think the assumption should be, ‘Oh, he or she lost their job or their house, so we’re going to let them move in and we’re going just sort of let them chill for an unspoken amount of time under no particular rules or regulations.’

Q: What about if the kid wants to have sleepovers —- like with their boyfriend or girlfriend?

A: It’s mom and dad’s house. If I’m back in there, sure you have to negotiate, but some things are just not negotiable. What if mom and dad don’t drink or smoke and the kid does? These are the real deal things here and some just are not negotiable.

Q: No keggers in the basement then?

A: Nope. But it’s better to be completely upfront about this early on.

Q: Is this where you have to put the parent/child roles aside for a while and treat each other as equal adults?

A: Everybody’s an adult in this situation, but I wouldn’t say everybody’s equal. If it’s not my house, and I’m being helped out here, I’m more of a guest. A guest infers temporary… . It’s a matter of respect.

Living