My siblings recently moved out, leaving me to contemplate the fact that I'm still at home. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand I'm somewhat embarrassed about it. I don't want to be a burden to my parents and I don't want people to think that I'm still living with mom and dad because I can't hack it on my own. On the other hand, it's not as if I'm living in the basement, subsisting on potato chips and reruns of Star Trek (though I do occasionally enjoy both chips and Star Trek when the mood strikes me). I'm not a parasite. I have a job and I have plans to eventually go back to school: I even cook dinner once or twice a week! (Yeah, gold star for me) The reality is, though, that I can't move out now even if I wanted to; I'm too poor.
It seems I'm not the only one. Apparently a lot of people in my age group aren't leaving home after graduation like our parents did. So are we Generation Y kids just lazy bums mooching off our folks, or is there a good reason why we haven't flown the nest yet?
Here are some articles I stumbled upon recently that shed some light on the issue. For reasons that will soon become clear, I like number 2 best....
1) Kick those lazy layabouts out! This article posits that adult children aren't leaving home when they should because they've been enjoying the good life at their parent's expense for too long and they don't know how to make it on their own: The Sydney Morning Herald: Boomers go bust over kids
2) Good news! According to this article, adult children leaving home later is not a new trend and, though it may seem strange to our Boomer parents, it's not necessarily a bad thing: The Star: Failure to launch, but is it failure?
3) This one should come as no surprise, given our present economic situation: "In the spring of 2011, 5.9 million young adults aged 25 to 34 lived with their parents, up from 4.7 million before the recession." Time Moneyland: More Young Adults Are Poor, Live With Their Parents
4) Because we're living with our parents, we have more freedom to pick and choose jobs that we enjoy and that allow us to have a life outside of work, rather than having to slave away at jobs that make us miserable just to pay the bills: Huffington Post: "Mils" In The Workplace: Re-Defining 20-Something
Let me know if you come across any other interesting articles about this subject. I have yet to find an article that speaks directly to us as Gen Y-ers; most of them seem to be addressed to our parents and our future employers. As always, feel free to chime in with your first hand experiences!
