In the old days when a kid turned 18 and finished high school many would leave home. Or maybe be kicked out. Thats pretty rare nowadays but I know one woman who is a friend of my wife who said after HS graduation her Mom said “ok, I’ve fulfilled my obligation, now pack your bags and get out”.
Do you know any people who left at 18;
I have never known anyone who actually did that.
But my best friend’s parents did something similar. His oldest sister was 6 years older then we were. She was cute and popular, but an absolute cunt to live with. She was a C-D student but had been accepted to one college, Ferris State College in Big Rapids, Michigan. By mid-summer, after her senior year, she decided she didn’t want to go to college in a hick town way up north. She would stay home, go to Community College, and then transfer to a better school.
Her parents, especially her mom, were terrified at the prospect of Cathy being home for another year or two.
They flat out told her she didn’t have the option. They blamed it on the importance of her getting out on her own, but the truth was they couldn’t stand living with her. At first she refused to go, arguing that they couldn’t “make” her go to college. Once it was clear she had no choice, she went.
So, not kicked out at 18, but sent to college against her will.
Not that I know of, but I do know that this was the stereotype until like after the Vietnam war and the G.I. Bill. Before this, it was uncommon for the average child to even think about going to college (my guess is something like 1 in 10, and virtually only males.) Also in the 70’s saw the rise of standardized tests like the SATs as a kind of rite of passage for high schoolers, and their near universal adoption by colleges for admission, even though many studies have shown a very low correlation between success in SATs leading to college success.
Today, every child is expected to go to college, so it is much rarer to see children kicked out immediately after high school.
My parents position was at 18 you had to pay rent. In practice it was a nominal fee.
I was kicked out at when I was 18. It had nothing to do with age, I’d told them i was gay.
When I was on Site Council of our local high school, the principal said it happened fairly often, and we are in a solidly middle class area. But I have no data.
Pretty common where i grew up in the late 70’s. my parents made it clear that was their policy from a young age. i could come back in the summer and holidays if i was in college. i went back my first xma and summer, and never after.
A friend of mine just let a friend of her grandson move into her basement apartment for minimal rent. His parents kicked him out the day he turned 18 and he had no where to go.
One of my classmates was told by his parents that he was either going to be in a college dorm room, the military, or in his own place the autumn after he graduated high school, his choice. I know his older brother was certainly out of the house by that schedule.
Seen some cases like this in the late 80s when I was working in a semi-official social sector NGO (we weren’t supposed to have any contact/involvement with the general public, but some people still ended up knocking at our door presumably based on the NGO name). One that I remember was an apparently very nice kid who was kicked out unanounced on his 18th birthday because, IIRC, his parents didn’t approve of his girlfriend.
I could think of some other examples (like one of my current coworkers), but all from back then in the 80s or before.
A few of my coworkers did this to their kids. Overall the attitude, to me, seemed to be what Alpha Twit described upthread. As one of my coworkers put it, “I’m not coming home to some kid hanging around the house whining about not having anything to do!”
Another coworker had daughters maybe a year or two apart. Neither of them were interested in college of any kind and I remember one of them having either two or three PT jobs so she could maintain her car. Neither of them had any kind of ambition, and it bothered my coworker a great deal. What broke the camel’s back was the rent going up and the daugnters not being able to contribute to it. My coworker told them to leave. Last I heard the girls were somewhere in Colorado, in their own place, and in school.
A coworker’s son went into the military. He’s now stationed overseas. Another coworker’s son married his longtime girlfriend and now they have three children. I think he eventually went back to school for some kind of certificate.
I remember the coworker with the daughters saying something like, “It may seem harsh but it gets them off their asses. The hardest thing as a parent is to follow through with it.”
I hang out at the personal finance subreddit. Every day there is a thread started by a 18 or 19-year-old who has just been suddenly evicted by his parents and desparately trying to figure out what to do.
That was always my first thought whenever my coworkers talked about what they did. If I had been their kid, I would’ve panicked like nobody’s business. I went to college FT and lived on campus at that age; nevertheless, I sometimes wonder what I would’ve done had I not gone that route and I was forced out of my own house.
It wasn’t like I had relatives or anywhere else to stay at the time because I didn’t. I had a couple of PT jobs but I never could’ve survived on them 
I suppose this could have been the done thing when it wasn’t hard to find an unskilled, decent paying job with nothing more than a high school diploma. Those days are long gone.
I graduated high school in '72. My parents had made it clear that I’d either be in college or have a full-time job upon graduation. I was working part time and saving for college, so I wasn’t booted out, altho college was on my dime. For that reason, they didn’t charge me rent, so there’s that.
Interestingly, there was money for my brother, the only male offspring, to go to college… and to a private high school. Yeah, my folks were kinda sexist. I dropped out of college after a year and enlisted in the Navy and never lived with my folks again.
We used to tell our daughter she’d be booted out at 18. In reality, she got a full scholarship to college. Combining that with the prepaid college program we’d enrolled her in as a toddler, pretty much all she needed were her living expenses. She worked part time thru college and we helped subsidize her rent. After graduation, she lived with us for a couple of years, paying “rent” - actually, a contribution to utilities and groceries. But she’s been on her own for several years now and I like to think that we helped prepare her to function as an independent adult.
I think if the parents are going to do this, they can’t just throw the kid out at eighteen. They need to transition the kid into independence. Before the kid turns eighteen, he/she ought to have some work experience, be able to cook and clean and have some clue about finances. It would be wrong to just kick the typical sheltered American teen into the street.
Two of my siblings and I left home at 18. I joined the military and the other two went away to schools. Our youngest brother stayed at home until Mom kicked him out at 28. The two who went to school paid their own bills.
All three of my kids went away to college. We did help pay for it. One came back home for a while after college until she got a good job.
In all the cases above, we were brought up to be independent and make decisions so it was easier to leave home. Also in the cases above, no one was forced to leave home (except for my 28 YO brother - he had to be kicked out of the nest or he’d still be there).
A friend did it to her “problem daughter” kinda/sorta as a joke. Daughter returned from celebrating her 18th at 3 am and found the door locked (family never locked the doors). She had no key, so she knocked on the door.
Mom came to door and yelled, through the glass, “Go away! You’re an adult.” She then went back to bed.
This repeated several times, each time daughter was more distraught.
Eventually, dad woke up. Asked wife what all the commotion was about. She told him.
The next time she knocked, dad let his daughter, now sobbing, in. Mom and daughter tell two wildly different tales today (this was all 15 years ago).
I left home at nearly 17. It didn’t take. I bounced back in and out a few more times.
A friend was kicked out at 18. Her mother always told her she would kick her out when she turned 18, and apparently she wasn’t joking. Poor kid hadn’t finished school yet or anything. My parents took her in for a while - they felt so sorry for her. She was a good kid.
A guy I used to know had an absolute asshole for a grandfather. Back in the day he’d go into his kid’s bedroom on their 18th birthday, take all their stuff out and rip up the floorboards so they couldn’t come back. He was just an awful human being.
This happened to a very good friend, although that was nearly 60 years ago. He finished first in his class at South Philly High, which automatically won him a full scholarship at Penn. He expected to live at home and commute (not uncommon in those days), but his father said no, he would have to forgo the scholarship and go to work to supplement the family income.
A very understanding dean of the dormitories at Penn said that, well, he had an unrented dorm room and my friend could occupy it for a year gratis. Meantime, he got a job at the same lab I was working on and needed to make an arrangement for the following year. He could now afford a cheap apartment, but needed a roommate to share the rent. I said sure and we found a pleasant efficiency a half mile off campus for $50.
I had to opposite experience. I was 21 and when I told my mother I was moving out, she went ballistic. The relatives will think we couldn’t get along. What will Cousin Ruthie think? I ignored this blather and moved out.
Interesting contrast.
The story upthread about the girl locked out by her mother reminded me of a story with a tragic ending. It must have happened a couple decades just a few blocks from where I live. The daughter of an immigrant family was given a 10 PM curfew when going out one evening. She got back at 11, but the door was locked. Apparently she begged but was refused. She was found raped and murdered in the morning.
My older brother and I both left home right after graduation, though I , like Eliahna
ended up going back a couple of times (on account of being a no-good drug addict). I don’t know that my parents would have “kicked me out”, but I couldn’t wait to leave and I’m sure the feeling was mutual. Not sure why anyone thinks of it as kicking a kid out, though. A kid should have had some kind of job as soon as he was legally able to and started thinking about the future as far as if he’s going to go to college, work full time, whatever. I mean, it’s not as if one isn’t aware their own graduation is the end of high school.