Senior Katie Bettis is ready to climb into her car and drive away from Baker to begin her life as a graduate – at her mom’s house.
The 21-year old theater major plans to hunker down back home until she stacks up enough cash to live on her own.
“I definitely want to get a good amount of money in the bank before I go and try to find a place,” Bettis said. “I know a lot of places want you to pay the first two months of rent in advance. For me personally, I’d really like it if I had the first three months set up so I could still have a month to adjust because I’ve never really lived on my own.”
The first stop for more than half of this year’s graduates is their parents’ house, according to Monster.com. They’re a part of the Boomerang Generation – young adults pulled back home after launching out on their own. Forty-six percent of women and 53 percent of men ages 18 to 24 still live at home, according to 2006 U.S. Census figures, though the data includes those living in residence halls.
Today’s graduates emerge saddled with debt, and it’s become normal to retreat home after earning a college diploma. Jane Adams, author of “I’m Still Your Mother,” said the economy isn’t to blame as much as cell phones, iPods, Internet and digital cable. Such luxuries have become daily essentials and graduates are reluctant to lower living standards.
“I hate to say the word spoiled, but the fact is this generation has grown accustomed to a certain amount of comfort, and they don’t want to give that up,” Adams said. “Many kids say, ‘Why should I share an apartment with three other people and take the bus until I can afford to buy a car?’ Instead, they want to live the same way they’ve been living up until college.”
Whatever graduates earn at their first job will probably not allow them to live as comfortably as they could at home, Adams said. But their parents didn’t start out that way either. They started out sharing apartments, taking buses and scrimping on costs by eliminating extras.
Now financially secure, the parents of today’s 20-somethings aren’t lifting up the welcome mat.
Bettis – whose 25-year-old sister, Laura, still lives at home – said her parents have been more than understanding about her plans to move back.
“They’ve been really supportive of everything,” Bettis said. “I almost think they’re too supportive.”
Though it might seem harmless, the inability to say no might hurt parents in the long run.
“It’s keeping (parents) from getting on with their own lives,” Adams said. “It’s extending the period of caregiving much longer than parents expected. Lots of parents, for instance, wait for their children to leave home so they can sell their house, retire or move to a smaller apartment or something like that.”
Though it’s always been relatively normal for emerging graduates to make a pit stop at their parents’ house before lunging out on their own, Martha Harris, professor of business and economics, said the stays have grown longer and now occur more frequently than she remembers.
“Parents weren’t as receptive to the idea when I was in college,” Harris said. “You were supposed to move away, start your job and leave. It’s gotten a lot more acceptable on the home front (to come back).”
Harris, who has a 19-year-old son finishing up his freshman year at Kansas State University, attributes parental coddling as the main source driving students back home. She said starting salaries match the costs of daily living and the economy isn’t preventing students from living independently.
“We’re called ‘helicopter parents,'” Harris said, “because we’re always hovering, intervening and jumping in.”
Harris said the Baby Boom Generation is filled with parents who were likely to make a stink at schools, soccer games or birthday parties when they believed their children were treated unfairly.
Even with their children entering or graduating college, it’s hard for many to break the habit. Harris once had to fight the urge to call the K-State financial aid office to fix some problems on her son’s student aid report.
“It’s tempting,” she said, “but I told him no, you can handle it.”
Though some students take advantage of parents’ open arms, Adams said as long as students understand and respect the conditions and the rules of the arrangement, it’s OK to head back home.
“If parents allow their children to move home while looking for a job or going to graduate school, it’s OK,” Adams said.
Students like senior Joy Mapes who have been too swamped with college course work to launch job searches are using their parents’ houses as launching pads. Mapes plans to live at home during the summer so she can search out a job.
“I’m going to spend my time looking for a real job – like a career job,” Mapes said. “It’s been so hard to look for jobs since I’ve been so busy with everything, so this is like an enforced break.”
More and more students are suffering from the end-of-the-semester itch, said Susan Wade, director of the career development center.
“Even the top students need a break, ” Wade said. “Students are exhausted. They’re just really feeling pressured by the amount of work they need to get accomplished here, so they’re putting off their job search until graduation. I’ve always seen some of that, but for some reason it seems more pronounced this year.”
Adams encourages students to nail down an estimated time of departure if they decide to move into their old bedroom after college.
Mapes doesn’t need encouragement. She plans to snag a job and bolt.
“I will have a job by the end of the summer,” Mapes said. “Anything longer than that and I might go insane.”