Heh, I said something similar to my fiance about a week ago. Things are a bit tight this month because we were (stupidly) relying on his annual bonus to pay some bills. Turns out the bonus has been delayed a month so we’re cutting back on extra mortgage repayments and buying nothing but the bare necessities this month. A friend, who still gets pocket money and doesn’t even pay her mobile phone bill, was skeptical when I told her we couldn’t afford to go out to dinner with her next week.
And yet for some reason I don’t think that way about Guy. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I think it’s kind of sensible if he’s able to save so much especially when the housing market is hard to break into here. Yeah it’s not particularly glamorous to be living with his mum right now, but in a few years when he’s making five times his age with a large home deposit he’s got to start looking pretty good, right? But I’ve been out of the dating pool for awhile, so maybe there really is a huge pool of personable, baggage-less, financially secure guys out there.*
I didn’t mean that last sentence to be as defensive at it sounds, since I don’t really have much invested in the situation and started this thread out of curiosity. I’m just too lazy to figure out how to write it in a less defensive-sounding way.
I can speak to both sides of the issue because I am in the rare situation of actually being employed by my parents.
I lived in River North (high rent area of the downtown Loop area of Chicago) for several months while attending DePaul some time ago with a friend. Good times. Had all the freedom in the world and it fostered a sense of responsibility within me. Problem was, I couldn’t afford it with school and a light work schedule, plus issues with my roommate who is also a close friend (issues which left us on non-speaking terms for quite some time, but we’ve since reconciled). I moved back home at first because I had nowhere else to go while planning to relocate, but things changed. My parents are real estate developers who work out of the house in a fully-finished seven-room basement office and wanted me to help out with the business. We build new construction condominium homes all around the Chicagoland area, and they needed someone competent to handle computer work, accounting, billing, budgeting, marketing projects, graphic design, and anything else necessary to take up the slack. I did not embrace the decision with open arms at first, because while it was an easy way to have a job, it still feels like getting an allowance from mom and pop, and I had to wonder what a position within a family-owned company would look like on my resume to a future employer.
Still, they pay me a reasonable wage, probably a little less than I would be making elsewhere given my work history and increases in cost of living, but I could probably afford to have my own place and still work for the family … which would be really odd because I’d be commuting home in the morning and leaving it at night to head back to my own place, but alas. After having lived at home for a little longer than anticipated, I’ve gotten into a rut because I’ve become acclimated to it and by no means am I in love with the situation. I think it’d be funny to move out and commute to my own house for work, but part of the reason my parents work out of the house is the same reason I’m still living here. It’s convenient, yet I feel guilty about it. My parents are also 60 and while most would consider that young, they aren’t obese or morbidly ill but by the same token they don’t get out much and aren’t active so they need a hand with physically-demanding tasks rather often. The only thing they help me out with is a break on rent and an occasional partial reimbursement for college tuition (because yes, I still am working on my B.A. in Project Management, because at 26 I still don’t really know what I want to be when I grow up). I suppose I also get a break on food a few nights of the week because when I’m not eating out, I get to snack here. I am, in particular, not super-thrilled about the prospect of paying rent again when my original goal was to save up several thousand for a down payment on a condo.
So, do I rely on my parents? Not anymore than I would from any other employer, but that is because my situation is somewhat unique. I think when someone like the (shallow) girl in this OP hears that a guy lives at home, they assume he has no job and plays video games all day. This is probably not too far from the truth in more than a few examples, as I know guys like this myself. Who cares about it, I say fuck 'em if that’s how they judge people. If that’s how a woman thinks, then I’m not really interested in knowing her anyway, and that’s no skin off my teeth. I date here and there, and if it gets to the point where we’d like to go home and she refuses to have it be at her place, I’ll just drop her off and wish her a good night. Surprisingly, this has the remarkable effect on some women of making them want a guy even more, hehe. I’ve had my fill of bedding women in the past, but it just isn’t that high on my list of priorities or I’d have moved out again already. Let’s face it, that’s really the only reason people move out anyway. One of my big internal conflicts is that I could probably make more money working elsewhere (and have made ultimatums to that effect with my parents) and consequently have my own place, but my parents have encouraged me to stay because they’re making an investment in me by teaching me the ropes of the business. Problem is that with all my exposure to the real estate industry, I’m turned off from wanting to have anything to do with it because so much of it is so helplessly infantile that it disgusts me. My dad is an experienced and professional developer with three decades of experience and yet the string of legal threats, unprofessional contractors, inept lenders, useless brokers, vacuous salespeople, and incompetent buyers never seems to end. The list of personal demotivators goes on and on. My parents have learned how to deal with all these things over the years, but it has turned them into partial workaholics who don’t trust anyone. I don’t really trust anyone either, but I don’t know how I could ever cope with the constant professional struggle of someone always trying to fuck me out of a dollar. This notion has got me wanting to leave the nest yet again, though the real question is whether I should keep the job.
I think I should just ask for a pay raise so I can move out, ey?
Well, as long as you are in college +one year. Really, you will not mature until you move out. After you move out, it’s Ok to occassionally hit up the folks or a few bucks, beleive it or not most actualy prefer that you do. (They get to feel needed. But not a lot, a few bucks.)
However, once they need you to look after them, then it’s fine again. I had to do this for my Dad fo a year, until he passed.
In my opinion, parents that keep their kids around because they don’t want to let them go are making the same kind of mistake as the kids who take advantage of it. Even birds know that some time, you have to kick the babies out of the nest for their own good.
I have a 9 year old daughter, and I can’t imagine her leaving. I dread the day. And yet, I’ll do everything I can to help her grow to adulthood, make sure she gets a good start on life, and then ease her out of the nest so that she can continue her journey into adulthood and learn the skills she’ll need when she begins her own family.
That’s great. Now be honest - would your parent’s finances be better off if you weren’t there? Would they have more freedom to travel? More privacy to be a couple again without a family around?
It may be that your parents want you to stay, and you all get along great. But sometimes that’s a rationalizaton. And in any event, you’re still not getting the life experience you would if you weren’t still under wing.
Hey, there’s lots of well-meaning but weak parents around, and lots of bad ones, too. So what? The fact of the matter is that you are ‘sponging’ off your parents if they have to reduce their lifestyle or are prevented from fulfilling their desires because their kid gets his or hers. Of those kids who live at home to save money for travel or cars - how many of them travel more than their parents, or have nicer cars than their parents do? I know that was the case for a friend of mine, who worked a union job making good money while living at home rent-free. He sunk all of his money into his car - his mom rode the bus.
It doesn’t have to be that they are ‘losers’. Maybe they exhibit a lack of fire in their belly about getting out in the world that she dislikes. Some people feel the same way about someone who has no interest in traveling, or who didn’t go to college. Everyone’s got their standards.
Even if you’re responsible and your parents love you and want you there, it seems to me that the desire to stay home does say something about your character. Not necessarily something bad, but different. I loved my mom and enjoyed living at home - and couldn’t wait to move out. There was a whole world waiting for me. I wanted that responsibility, the bills, the need to make my own way in the world. Living at home DID make me feel like a ‘loser’ after a certain time. Your mileage may vary, but maybe the girl is looking for a man a little more driven.
When you learn to fly an airplane, you hold the controls right from day one. Within a few hours, the instructor is letting you fly every manoever. You do the takeoffs and landings, etc. A few hours after that, and you’ll be flying without the instructor saying a word. You’re totally in control of the airplane. You’re getting no help whatsoever.
And yet… The biggest milestone in an aviation education is your first solo flight. It’s a big, big deal. There’s a huge difference between flying the airplane yourself while in the back of your mind knowing that if anything bad happened, your instructor is poised to take control, and knowing that THIS time, if you screw up you die. No one to bail you out.
After that first solo, you’re a pilot. And you feel like one. Before that, you were just as good at the controls, but it was totally different.
You still know, deep down, that if you lost a job you wouldn’t have to pay rent. If you screw up your finances and run out of living money, mom will still cook supper for you. That if something breaks in the house, mom or dad will know what to do. If you have an emergency expense, your parents will understand and let you slide on the rent for a month or so. You’ve got a parachute.
I’m sure that you could. It’s not rocket science. But the fact is, you don’t. Obviously, your values are different than those of us who couldn’t imagine living at home once we had the opportunity to start our own lives. And that’s fine. But it is a value difference, and the girl in question has every right to not want to date a person with those values. I’m sure there are plenty of others who don’t care.
Again, it’s not just about laziness. I know someone who still lives with his parents at age 40. He’s a lawyer, and does exclusively pro-bono work. His parents are well off, and support him. And in turn he helps look after them. It looks like an arrangement they’re all happy with. But this person is - different. Kind of emotionally stunted. Easily flustered. Shy. Unsure of himself when around his peers. Nice guy, but I don’t think his parents did him any favors by keeping him sheltered through his formative adult years. I suspect he’s going to be devastated when his parents die, and have a very difficult time adjusting.
I lived at home for almost a year after college. It was a time where I could help on the farm, and look for a job. The problem I had was that my parents wanted to manage my money and time. And, worst of all, I was constantly being checked on. “Did you get any interviews today?” “How many jobs did you apply for?” It drove me nuts! Eventually, I told them I got a job, and I moved in with my girlfriend 3 hours away on a very short notice. Girlfriend was okay with it, parents thought it was great that I was making money. I did start working through a temp service almost immediately and soon got a place of my own. Eventually moved out, broke up with girl, moved to a different area, and have been on my own for 8 years. The girlfriend did say a few times that it was loserish that I was in my 20s and living at home. I’m in my 30s now and hoping I get a job that’s about a 45 minute drive from my parents, but that’s mainly because it’s away from here (I need a new start).
The odd part is that it was harder living with my parents and brother than being on my own. The nagging about not finding a job, the shitty advice about job interviews, the fact that my dad was so godawful cheap that he kept the house freezing cold, never being able to buy and keep food in the house, etc. It was a nightmare. Thank God it was under a year, but they really made me regret moving back home. I had an apartment in college, and I should have just stayed there.
I keep seeing this. I chose this particular post, but I could have chosen half the posts in the thread.
Why do you equate “live in the same house as your parents” with “sponging”? IT’S NOT THE SAME. There’s lots of spongers who don’t live with the parents and lots of people who live with the parents and don’t sponge.
I’m going to respond to some of these in pertaining my situation…
I suppose it’s not so much that they want to “keep” me. It’s more that they really don’t mind and have stated so on many occasions. If at any point I was infringing, I’d leave on my own. In fact, I’m looking for a house at the moment - I’ve had the itch for the last half year to get out…
I see what you’re saying, and comend you for not using the “teach her a lesson, you’re out no matter what at 18” routine. I guess my easing out just took longer then your average late teenager.
I help out with a lot of the chores and fixing up around the house. This includes maintaining their vehicles and computers. When dad needs an upgrade, I purchase the parts and install it all. The same with their cars… I help out with food all the time. That’s on top of the $200 a month I put towards the mortgage. So in all honesty, technically, they would be worse off financially, not crippled, but it’s appreciated that I help.
Any peticular examples?
That’s what I’m talking about in reference to the lazy stay at homes. You knew a guy who took advantage, but it doesn’t mean that all of us are like that. I have a feeling that a lot of the negativity aganist it is because of an encounter of guys like this. If that were me, I’d be damn sure to take care of her needs before mine. Not saying I’m a hero… just that I’m more conscientious of my folks needs since I live at home and am getting a break.
Agreed. I suppose it’s obvious that I lack that fire, but like I said, I’m pursuing this now… Before that, I guess I figured what am I really missing out on? Paying more bills? Hosting a party (not the partying type)? I would like my own garage I suppose, but it’s not really an immediate need. Bringing a girl home? -This may be one of the most important concerns, but it doesn’t have me feeling down… so not THAT big a deal. But considering how the world works, most girls don’t want to date a guy that lives at home, so there is that.
Admittedly, I’ve felt different from day one. Whether I move out now, or later, I will always feel that way. I’m pretty introverted. Some may say it’s due to parent coddling or such, I strongly disagree. I was never really treated that way by my folks at a young age. Outside of living at home, I have a pretty independent personality. If I moved out at 18, I’d still feel the same today. So yeah, I am “different” I suppose. I’m going to get shit on for that regardless of my living situation.
Gotcha. I have experience with a C-152, so I can relate to your analogy. There’s no doubt that there’s an adjustment, but I don’t see how maturity falls into it. Like I said before, there are lots of people out on there on their own that seem like children in how they act.
These things are true, but they’re also true for those out on their own. Many people have had hard times strucken upon them only to hit up dads savings or IRA for a loan while out on their own. I would not expect such a thing. One thing that will not be tolerated, is that if I lose my job, they’ve made it very clear that I would need to get another right away. They don’t want me to be that kind of a leech.
Values I can understand. Being called a “loser” because of it?
Hmm… this looks like an extreme case. I’m shy too, but don’t think I’m emotionally stunted. In large groups, I can be unsure about myself -I think most can relate. But I’m pretty confident around my close knit of friends that I do have. I have a feeling that if this guy was pushed out, at say 25, 30 or 18 even, he would still encounter issues with himself. That’s kind of his core personality, and I’m sure it sucks for him, but that’s who he is, regardless of living situation.
Idle time at work!
So on the subject of maturity… does anybody care to expand on the idea of people that moved out at a “normal age” that don’t yet have there shit together after, I don’t know, 5+ years? Yet are somehow desirable in contrast to the OP’s “guy”?
I’m 28, and my brother’s 26, and we and our mother live together. We’re all on the house title, and we split the mortgage, utility, and grocery bills. Brother grocery shops. I cook, clean, and launder. Mom runs the pets’ lives. My brother and I have bachelors degrees, but don’t use them in our work.
We rarely see each other due to our schedules, and it’s totally a roommate situation. Does that make me and my brother losers? I certainly don’t think so. Stable, decent roommates are hard to find, so why shouldn’t I take advantage of staying with people I know I can live with?
When I was younger and dating, I seldom dated a man over 24 who lived at home.
I found that they had limited experience in life and also, we were always at my place!
I supposed now with so many going to college and university, it seems logical to live at home longer because of costs etc.
But, from a parental note, my stepson is 22 and approaching his last year of university. After university, get a job, get an apartment/house and fly, little bird, fly. It’s parent time now!
One of my boyfriends in the US. Of course, his mother saw me as “the enemy,” not the least because I’d point out that for a 32yo guy who moved out at 17 to not know how to use a washing machine is… absolutely undesirable in my book.
I know other cases, both male and female and both Over Here and Over There. Apparently some of our Dopers think that it’s better to be “on your own”, but having Mom do your grocery, your washing-and-drying and occasionally pay your bills, than “at home” but doing the grocery, the drying and paying half of the bills. I just don’t get it.
Lilbro, being in a dorm while in college and then later back at home, still could cook enough to keep himself fed for a couple of weeks without repeating dishes or buying premade. The “spongers” idea of cooking is Pizza Hut.
I think that the most important thing that you miss by living at home is simply the experience of having a place that’s YOUR OWN. The space, and everything in it, is yours, and reflects you. When the place is a mess, there’s no one to blame but you. When the place could make the cover of Martha Stewart Living, the glory is all yours.
No matter how much you “help out” around your parents’ house, you’re just helping out. It’s not *your * home, so you’re not invested in the same way. You won’t understand this until you leave, but there’s a profound difference between maintaining your own home and doing chores for your folks.
Also, booty calls in the childhood bedroom? Only a turn on decades later.
I guess the best way to say it, is that I don’t have to be kicked in the balls to know it hurts. Just because I’m not on my own, doesn’t mean I’m oblivious to my situation. I know what it’s like to acheive something on my own without help, and the feeling that goes along with it.
We have a 36 year old niece who still lives at home. Her mom says she can stay there for the rest of her life if that’s what she wants. We all find it very odd that she doesn’t want her own place. She also went through a two-year period of unemployment (waiting for the perfect job with perfect pay). Finally, her parents put their foot down and told her she had to have a job, so she’s now working at the mall at a jewelry store (not even sure how much money a job like that brings in).
My son had a series of false starts before he finally established himself securely in his own place at 25. I think he returned four times. During the periods he was at home he didn’t try hard enough to change his situation. Finally, we gave him a month to get it together and move out. He did, and we’re all much better for it. He has roommates (which, as far as I can tell, he prefers). There are many lifestyles to choose from, and I really don’t care what the roommate situation is as long as he’s paying his bills. Independence from the parental units is important. Failure to launch, to me, is an indicator of other problems; either on the part of the parents or the kid (which in our case, I think it was a little of both).
I think the reason people cannot separate the issues is that they cannot concieve of the notion of extended family living or how it might work. And really, I think people not raised with the notion are unlikely to come to it without some kind of catastrophe behind it. It certainly requires some significant tradeoffs in terms of power that most people not raised within it would find to be deal breakers.
The currently popular, though mostly unarticulated, paradigm of family life in the United States appears to be that parenting is a job one performs for about 18 years give or take. Those kids are supposed to break free of their family and then as adults decide whether or not they want to keep them around. The idea seems to be that if one has done one’s job well, the kids will freely choose to keep the family around, though hopefully will not come around too often as it might interfere with parent time. Imposing upon one another is Not A Good Thing.
Children who do not break free sufficiently are, you see, unable to form their own Nuclear Family with anybody else – they are not sufficiently independent to do so. Which is why the young lady in question wrote off her swain. He has to be willing to marry her and leave his family behind if necessary.
I can see where the young lady feels this way, but at the same time, who’s getting married that fast? We’re talking about a date here. If it got serious enough that she would want to cohabitate with him, and then if he didn’t want to leave, then something is up.
Does anybody know of any history on this subject from over the centuries throughout civilization? This cannot be the first time this has been talked about.
I think that most people *have * made the distinction, and conceded that there are valid reasons for living with one’s parents into adulthood. But the thing is, IMO, if the PARENTS aren’t significantly benefiting from having their offspring in the house, then it is, to whatever degree, sponging.
Living with your parents because *none * of you can afford otherwise (for whatever reason) is a mutually beneficial arrangement. Living with your parents because *they * can’t take care of themselves (for whatever reason) is caregiving. Living with your parents because *you * can’t or won’t take care of yourself (for whatever reason) is sponging, even if your parents are agreeable to it.
Kayeby, I wouldn’t date Guy either. People who live at home past college seem to me like they’re extending their adolescence. I want to date an adult, not a kid. The exception, as several posters have already mentioned, is if you move back home to take care of ailing parents.
Parental Advisory, I think it’s great that you pay rent and help out around the house. It’s a different, though, when the bills are in your name, you have to buy all of the food, and you’re the one responsible for dealing with landlords/repairs/crazy neighbors, etc. Even when one is living with (non-parental)roommates, it gives a person more experience in dealing with this kind of stuff.
While I tend to agree that living at home for too long can be indicative of a lack of maturity or an unwillingness to ‘grow up’, I just don’t see the stigma attached with that kind of living arrangement as being totally justified.
I’m 26 now, but I was living at home until just last summer. I was also going to school and working. My situation was a lot like ParentalAdvisory’s in that my parents just liked having me at home, and I liked having the company. I can be pretty introverted as well, and the stress of living alone would have been a serious distraction during school, especially since I was cramming two degrees into my four years and was plenty stressed as it was.
As for my parents, I think they really appreciated having me around as an adult rather than just their child. I helped out with cleaning and groceries, and furthermore we had a very good relationship. There’s a social aspect that can’t be understated, too. My parents aren’t generally very social, but in their house my family had informal debate and discussion forums on an impromptu basis. I lurked here on the Dope for years without posting because if I ever found something I wanted to discuss, or read an article that outraged me, my parents were always around to discuss it with, and vice versa for them (No, they’re not dopers… yet ). So I just don’t see that the benefit for the parents has to be purely monetary or practical.
A number of my friends in university were in the same situation, and weren’t using their parents to avoid responsibility, but genuinely liked being around their family and used the freedom that living at home afforded them to accomplish more than they could have otherwise (like managing student associations, building up volunteer experience, developing extracurricular job skills, etc.). If they had opted to live on their own during those years, all that extra effort would have gone into simply making ends meet.
As it stands, most of them are now moving out now and finding better, more skilled jobs, with substantially less debt than they would have been able to manage otherwise. The lack of experience in scraping to get by isn’t totally applicable, since they’ve got things set up pretty comfortably, and independence for them isn’t the whole ‘struggle in poverty until you hit your stride’ bit that people I knew in high school experienced when they moved out on their 18th birthday. Instead, they’ve hit the ground running. The benefit isn’t just for the children, either.
OTOH, I realize that my friends may very well be the exception. I’ve known other people who lived at home because they were simply lazy or scared to fend for themselves. However, in those cases it’s pretty clear from entirely separate criteria that they have problems with maturity: working dead-end jobs, spending all of their income on entertainment, treating their parents as servants, and so on. The difference is that these are people that have clearly never given up on being teenagers, but living at home isn’t necessarily indicative of that. It’s not even a requirement.
I was unfortunate enough to know other people who didn’t live at home, but had every bit of the attitude of the ‘losers’ that did. They were not people I’d describe as mature in any sense. They had no sense of responsibility whatsoever. They would ‘forget’ to pay their utilities, and end up racking up hundreds in arrears. When the gas got cut off (in Canada, mind you… in winter) their solution was not to finally pay the bloody bill. It was to chop up and burn the furniture in their apartment for heat. And yet, with all this, their cable tv and internet was paid every month. A year later, when the apartment was trashed, they simply wrote off the damage deposit and left.
So I guess what I’m getting at is that IMHO just the simple fact of a living arrangement doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about maturity or responsibility. I think that rather than relying on generalisations, it’s more useful to look at the broader pattern of a person’s behaviour and reasoning to gauge something like that.
And on the other side of the cultural coin, my parents just broke down in tears after I, at age 24, told them I wanted to move out by the time I was 27, or at the very most, 30. sigh
). So I just don’t see that the benefit for the parents has to be purely monetary or practical.