Across Georgia and the nation, high school seniors must declare by Wednesday where they plan to attend college in the fall. It’s often a bittersweet deadline for parents who, while relieved their child has finally decided between Tech and UGA or Auburn and Clemson, must accept the reality that their babies have grown up and are moving away.
They needn’t fret. Chances are their babies will come home.
And stay.
More than half of college graduates move back home. In fact, a 2012 Pew Research Center study found that nearly 40 percent of young adults ages 18 to 34 are living at home, earning them the nickname, “the Boomerang Generation.”
But those returning fledglings aren’t fouling the nest. In fact, both parents and adult children are generally positive about the extended cohabitation, says Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, author of the new book, “When Will My Grown-Up Kid Grow Up?” due out May 7.
In essence, age 30 has become the new 20. Arnett says it’s not quite an extension of adolescence as a longer transition into adulthood.
A professor of psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts who began his academic career at Atlanta’s Oglethorpe University, Arnett coined the term “emerging adulthood” to describe the slower progression to full independence. His ongoing research on emerging adulthood involves surveys of young adults, including one last year of more than a thousand 18- to 29-year-olds. For the book, he and co-author Elizabeth Fishel also surveyed 400 parents.
They found parents are not necessarily desolate about their almost-grown children’s return to the nest. Nor are they upset over their protracted parenting responsibilities.
“On one hand, parents look forward to having their own lives back and more of their time and energy for the things they want to do rather than carting their kids to soccer practice and piano lessons,” said Arnett in a phone interview.
“On the other hand, they miss their kids. This is a generation of parents who is close to their kids, closer than parents in the past,” he said. “They were generally distant from their own parents, and they didn’t want that distance with their own kids. By and large, they succeeded.”
And that can be seen in the more involved roles that parents play in their children’s college choices, including sharing the anxieties over where to go.
“Our message here is, relax,” Arnett said. “We all place much more weight on this decision than is really merited. Where you go really doesn’t matter much. What’s important is that you go.
“Getting a college education is more important than ever in this new economy that is so information- and technology-based. Find a place where your kid can go and be happy being there,” Arnett said.
But Arnett warns that the first few months of college can be tough, and unhappy freshmen may reach out to their parents for reassurance, advice and sympathy.
“There’s a lot of disparaging comments about how often parents today keep in contact with their kids at college,” said Arnett. “If your kids need to be in contact every day, don’t discourage them. It is a tough time. It is a lonely time. And it is a stressful time. With each year, your children will need less contact. After a few years, they will get to their mid 20s, and you may want more contact with them than they want to give you.
“But for now, don’t make them feel bad about calling in that first year with a need to tell you that their roommate came home drunk at 2 a.m., or their econ exam was really hard,” he said. “Be that shoulder they can lean on that first year, or you may find them dropping out.”
Parents must recognize that their newly minted college freshmen counted on them for a lot of support in high school, from getting them out of bed in the morning to typing their term papers at night. “You go to college, and all that support is not really there anymore,” Arnett said
While parents ought to listen to their college student’s problems, they ought to think twice about solving them, said Arnett.
“Most emerging adults are mortified if their parents call one of their professors about a grade or call an administrator to complain about the dorm food. They want to be more self-sufficient, and parents should give them the space to do that unless there’s some kind of serious issue at stake.
“Other than that, parents are well-advised to give their kids some space to make their own decisions, even if those decisions may not be wise ones,” he said. “We often learn more from unwise decisions than from wise ones.”
Despite this generation’s longer road to adulthood, Arnett said nearly all of them get there eventually. They return the car with the gas tank filled. They unload the dishwasher. They pay their own bills. And they become not only adult children to their parents, but good friends.
