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Living with mom and dad well past childhood has become socially acceptable, according to a new survey.
The vast majority of Americans believe moving back in with your parents as an adult is an understandable decision not meriting judgment, according to a new survey by Harris Poll for Bloomberg News.
Indeed, almost 90% of the 4,106 adults surveyed felt that, amid so much student debt, such an insecure job market and record-breaking inflation, there shouldn’t be stigma around the decision to live at home and save.
It’s a good thing, because almost half of young Americans are currently doing just that.
While no longer quite at the record highs reached in the early days of coronavirus lockdowns, when nearly 50% of 18 to 29-year-olds lived with their family, about 23 million (or 45%) are currently cohabiting with relatives.
That’s the same rate as the one that followed the Great Depression.
While there used to be a strong stigma against grown children not living on their own, it being seen as them having failed to launch, US residents empathize with the larger financial fallout impacting the housing situations of Millennials and Gen Zers.
Of those surveyed, three-quarters agreed that the youth of today are trapped in a broken economic situation that deserves a significant share of the responsibility for preventing getting a place of one’s own and leaving the nest.
“We’re in an economy where it’s harder to live independently,” George Washington University social psychology professor Carol Sigelman told Bloomberg. “Adults recognize that it’s tough these days.”
For Lillian Zhang, 23, living at home now is a way to ensure she’ll find financial stability eventually.
“I have my whole life to move into a nice apartment or house,” said Zhang, who has already saved up over $100,000.
Although successfully saving, that this strategy has become a necessity for herself and many others is a bummer for Zhang.
“It’s sad because back in the day you could just have one job, support yourself and save money for a house,” she said. “But I feel like it’s really difficult to do that in this economy.”