I think the parents of young adults need to read this thread. Some of these stories aren’t easy, but I’m a firm believer that people don’t grow in the ways they need to grow if they never do anything hard.
Went to college at 18, but when I graduated at 21, I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I moved back in and got a job. I don’t know about where you all grew up, but I grew up in the Bay Area, which is a pretty pricey place to live, and it just wasn’t feasible to get my own apartment and live on my own on my meager, “first job” salary.
My parents gave me a lot of “you have to figure out what you want to do with your life!” type speeches and I agreed with them, and I definitely didn’t want to live with them forever, but I felt stuck. Eventually I moved across the country at the age of 23, to a state I’d never been to, where I didn’t have a job lined up, and where I knew absolutely no one. In the long run, it was a good thing - I became pretty independent pretty quickly.
Through a twisty set of circumstances, I have recently found myself living with my parents again. It’s definitely temporary, and my parents drive me up the wall, but I have to say it’s kind of neat too. Over the last eight years, I have seen my family maybe once or twice a year, if that, and it’s good to have this time with them, since I’ll probably be moving to the other side of the country again in the near future.
In stages.
First: going to college. By Spanish definitions, I was still “living at home” in the sense of still being under parental authority (as is customary in Spain, they paid for my college); by Mom’s anger levels, I was not. She would have liked me to go to college 1h away and go home every weekend to do the ironing and leave food cooked for most of the upcoming week: having been able to sell Dad on letting me study a branch of engineering which was available in a single school in the whole country, I went far enough that I only went “home” on vacation. She retaliated by taking over my room and moving me into the smallest bedroom, which she also proceeded to make even smaller by adding a baroque wardrobe that takes up a lot more space than it’s worth.
When I finished my coursework, I had to write a “research or design project”: I did this at home - and applied for a PhD abroad at the same time, without telling my parents because I knew that a) Mom would be angry, b) Dad wouldn’t understand (hello, have you looked at unemployment rates? My whole generation was leaving), c) it would lead to drama at a time when I needed to concentrate on my research. I got accepted, broke the piggybank and jumped into a plane less than 3 weeks after my viva.
Went back home 4 years later to help care for Dad, who was dying. I had a second reason to do this: my employer abroad had decided to force me to “go illegal” (they wanted me to go on working for them, but without a permit), and the work market at home had gotten less horrible.
Shortly after Dad died, I got a decent temp-to-perma job in a local factory and got the hell out of Tucson, renting an apartment. Mom was again furious… but then, she’d also been furious whenever the parish priests or her friends told her to stop strangling me. She eventually got over it - almost - but then, she’s been out of her own mother’s house since 1964, and Grandma is still trying to get her to move back in.
Negotiating with Mom is impossible. She refuses to yield, then eventually she yields - but she never fulfills her side of a bargain. You want to leave her skirts, the method consists of opening your hand and saying “bye, I’ll be coming for lunch on Saturday; is that a good day?”
When I graduated from college at 21 I moved back in with my parents while I looked for a job. Got one within a week or two, and started paying room & board to my Dad; the job was close enough that it made more sense to stay than to find my own place. After about a year and a half I decided that I had enough saved up that I could start living on my own, and started looking for an apartment. Found a place, bought some furniture and moved some that my parents said I could have, and settled in. A few months later I got a new job, where I stayed for the next thirty years.
Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins…
Thanks, I do too!
I lived at home after high school, went to business school, worked many many jobs, mostly temp jobs. Finally got a good one in a social services agency. Living at home was agony, just agony, though I had the finished basement to myself. I was constantly reminded it wasn’t MY house. I didn’t want anything to do with my horrible family upstairs and paid some nominal rent and did my own cooking and kept to myself. I had a boyfriend and there was nowhere to entertain except in the basement. My mom was infuriated I had ‘men’ down there until all hours. It was very awkward, and only now do I realize how she must have felt - but I was madly in love and thought only of me and my boyfriend. … After a while, I complained about my situation to one of the social workers, and she said, “I have a married sister in a little house, the upstairs is a flat, I’ll ask her if she would rent it to you”. Answer: yes! Within a month, I was moved in. It was a tiny, tiny flat in an old, old house, but other than unbearably hot in the summer, perfect for one. Rent: $135 a month!!! I stayed there till I got married about 7 years later. … I now wish I had the fortitude to pack up and move across the country, because I’m still in the same city and have to still deal with what’s left of the horrible family as they deteriorate. But I had this great job, and was so depressed and beaten down, it was all I could do to just get up and go to work every day…
I think what’s interesting about the thread too is that leaving home physically doesn’t mean 1) forever or 2) emotionally. Especially for people under 30. Because of the military and very cheap (government subsidized, via loans etc) housing and college expenses, 30 or 50 years ago leaving home meant you were gone. Now with life expectancy up, more research emerging on how our brains are still developing in terms of delaying gratification and general maturation well into our 20’s and the declining middle class all contribute to boomeranging or relying financially or emotionally on your parents until a much older age.
Only in the past 6 months have I really felt that I’ve emotionally completely flown the coup. I graduated in May of 2009 and while I’m active in my youngest brother’s life on a 1-2 day/week basis, I no longer place a huge value what my parents say like I used to. Hearing them lecture me on what I “should” be doing with my life (an everpresent factor, no matter what I was achieving or how successful I was at it - typical immigrant mindset) no longer angers me or depresses me like it used to; conversely rather than argue I smile and pretend to listen and take their advice. They too have evolved by not lecturing as much as they used to.
I do firmly believe that the evolution of leaving home is not just the burden on the person leaving but also on the parents somewhat giving up the rights to loudly expressing their opinions on the lives of their children and the choices they make.
Here’s another story, not me, but my best friend’s daughter:
Friend and husband not getting along, getting a divorce. (A real dysfunctional family, the kind that call the police on each other twice a week. Restraining orders. Screaming matches.) They had a 17 year old daughter in high school, with boyfriend, one night he came by with a truck and started loading up her bed, her clothes, all her stuff and taking it all away. Friend yapping like a demented Pekingnese, but the girl was out of there. She and her boyfriend lived in an apartment, and he graduated that summer and got a job as a mechanic. The girl finished high school AND worked at Taco Bell at all hours and was made manager at age 17. Then she got her drivers license (after 6 road tests), got a car, started community college courses, went to beauty school, and got a good job and was made manager at that salon at age 19. What a go-getter that girl was. Is! … When I hear certain 20-somethings still loitering around their parents’ houses wondering aloud what-to-do with their lives, should they go to graduate school, should they try to become a French professor, should they try to get an internship, and ‘mom, can I borrow the car’ - I think of that young girl who took action, went out, and DID something.
Attending local college at age 18, moved into an apartment with a friend just for fun (1977). No drama, probably 7-8 miles from my folks’ house. Started working full time as a truck driver, then moved further away to live with a cute girl. Married cute girl, found job in Europe and moved there. Then found a job in Louisiana, then Texas, then Washington, then Arizona… and so on. By my count I’ve had 17 different addresses since leaving my parent’s house.
My initial move at age 18 wasn’t really intended to be permanent, and I’ve always gotten along great with my folks. Just kept finding better jobs and more interesting roomates.
Still married to the girl, btw.
I was raised by my father and my teenage years were not very happy ones. Typical teenage angst crap. Dad really did all he could for me but, I was ready to leave at 16 so I called the police department and inquired. They told me I could move out at 17 and there wasn’t anything my father could do about it. So I waited a few months. One week after my 17th birthday I packed by clothes and albums into my POS (‘78 Mustang that broke down weekly!) and moved about 3 hours away. It was 1987, I had just begun my senior year in high school. I had friends that had an apartment (they were in college). They allowed me to share their apartment for $199 per month.
I tried to enroll in the local high school, but was told that since I did not live with my parents and was not married that I would not be permitted to attend the school. So, I got a job. I worked for a year, moved another couple hours away with my friends and eventually wanted to go to college like they were. I took the SAT test, barely scored enough to get in, and began attending the University of Texas. I graduating with an accounting degree four years later.
My father and I didn’t speak for about 6 months after I left. One evening a cop knocks on our apartment door looking for me. He tells me that my father would really like to know how I’'m doing. It took me several days to make that phone call, but all Dad said was that I proved to him that I was more independent than he wanted me to be.
This amazes me, as do many other stories in this thread. I guess I was lucky, but I can’t even imagine my parents throwing me out of the house that young. Although my best friend’s father did exactly the same thing as Kalypso’s and the parents of my older brother’s best friend made him move out on the day of his high school graduation (they were wacko). My mom let him move in with us and he lived in the basement for almost a year while he got on his feet. I should add that he didn’t have a job when he was in high school so I’m not sure how they expected him to support himself.
My folks would have let me live with them for as long as I wanted but I moved out when I got a job overseas. When I was leaving, my pop was really upset and I said to him, “Dad, you didn’t think I was going to live here forever, did you?” and his response was, “No, but I hoped so.” Made me get all teary, it did.
…with 75 cents in my pocket, a week after my 18th birthday.
I’d graduated from high school fully 6 months before, so I was long ready, just had to wait for the magical day.
I didn’t quite expect that day to include my dad being dickish and my equally-stubborn temper propelling me out the door rather than deal with it anymore, but it worked out. 
My mom was upset, but nobody was surprised. It worked out ok.
High drama. When I graduated HS at 17 1/2, I had no money for college, but lucked out getting a job in a lab at Penn that allowed me to become a PT student taking, including summers, 24 credits a year. After two years as a commuter I had enough money to get an apartment down at school with a friend. When I told my mother, she was outraged. “You leave home only when you are married!”, “What will Cousin Ruthie think; she will think we can’t get along.” This went for several days. Finally, she accepted it, albeit reluctantly. And so I moved near campus. I still often came home with a suitcase full of dirty clothes on Saturday morning and returned Sunday night with a suitcase of clean After two years, we gave up the apartment (I don’t recall why) and I lived home for a year. Then another apartment and sent back and forth until I had finished grad school six years after I first moved out. That last year I was home and she helped type my thesis. Then I got a job at Columbia and had to get an apartment in NY and never lived home again. What, if anything, Cousin Ruthie thought or said was never vouchsafed unto me.
This was probably fairly typical of a Jewish mother in the 50s. My father kept out of it, as was his wont.
On the other hand, all my kids went off to college at age around 17-18 and, while they did come home most summers, they were essentially gone.
Went to college on the other side of the country but went back home for summers and Christmas vacation. When I graduated I wasn’t organized enough to have a job lined up so I moved back with my parents. To a house I’d never seen because they sold my childhood home and moved about a month before I graduated. When I got “home” I didn’t have a bedroom because it was filled with boxes of books and dad had hurt his back so not all the furniture had been transferred to the new house. I stayed there for almost 2 years while I studied for the MCAT, got my first real job and payed off my student loans.
I moved out to an apartment within walking distance of work. I was very excited about finally having my own place. I’m sure my parents were excited about it too but they never pressured me to move. I was then laid of about 2 months later when the biotech company I was working for suddenly lost its funding.
I lived in various apartments for a few years until the middle of my 3rd year of medical school when my clinical rotations were going to have me out of the state for 3 months in a row. I gave up my apartment and went back to my parents with the intention of finding a new place when I got back from my out of state rotations but never got around to it.
I matched in a residency on the other side of the country so after med school I moved out of my parents place for what should be the last time. That was about a year and a half ago. I still go home for Christmas though.
About halfway through my senior year, my mom got a better job in a town 90 miles away. I did not want to change schools mid-way through the year, so I opted to stay put and live on my own. I had a full time job, so paying the bills wasn’t a problem, we just put the apartment and the utilities in my name. I had to fill out some paperwork for the school stating that I was no longer under parental supervision, but that was it.
Enlisted in the Army at 18. Came home afterward for a couple of months. Went to work for the gubmint and got an apartment with a cute little blond. I’m out.
----Life happens, college, two marriages, two divorces, one kid—
Then, approximately 40 years later, my father is deceased and my mother develops Alzheimers. Then has a stroke. Then another. And one more.
She lives with me now.
Ah, the Circle of Life.
I just did it! I moved out a month after I turned 22 (October of 2010.) I did it because I’m planning on moving out of the state next year and thought it would be easier to transition if I knew what it was like to live away from my parents first. It was not high drama, but my parents, especially my father with whom I’m very close, were/still are very sad. They constantly remind me I’m welcome to come home anytime, and wish that I would. They are paying for my school and help with the rent- they reason that since I stayed in town for college, they saved money on dorm costs, so it’s fair- but I guess you could say that I’m not really “on my own” because they do help me. I do work about 30-40 hours a week though, and pay all of the other bills myself.
I find all of the stories from posters whose parents kicked them out to be so sad- didn’t you all feel abandoned? Or is that a generational/class thing?
Congratulations, Rosetta!
This thread has actually made me feel much better about my kids moving out. I did it absolutely wrong, but here are all these stories of people who did it right. And even the ones who didn’t made it work somehow.
So, did she support him? Or did she end up kicking him out.
I starting boomeranging in & out from 19. When I came home from a major overseas trip at 27 I stayed home till I got married. (6 months later)
Now my father has died & I go up to Auckland & stay with Mum. I was doing it for a long weekend every second weekend, but had to stop over Christmas when my work got busy. I’ll be resuming this arrangement in March.Its not easy 2 adult women living together but I love her.