5 ms·

I really don't understand the argument of "time to grow up" if a person lived without parents fine for years. Obviously he/she had already grown up.

save_ferris 6y ago
I think it’s cultural. American society absolutely looks down on those that live with their parents as failures. If I were to guess, some parents might see their children asking to return home as a reflection on their ability as a parent to prepare for the “real world”, but that’s just my guess.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Only a certain vocal rich segment of American society.
  - danans 6y ago
    I don't think it has much to do with wealth. In fact, in old societies primogeniture practiced by the wealthy meant that the eldest son was expected to stay at home. The second sons with limited inheritance often set out on their own. In the US context, it has historical connections to the glorification of pioneerism and expansion through the western frontier (along with the genocide that accompanied that). After that, in the post WW2 period, opportunity in the US was so abundant that a (commonly white male) school dropout could walk into a factory and get a job with benefits. The same person could then afford a modest house (not the gigantic houses of today), support a family on a single income, and had access to affordable health care and good public education for their kids. In the context of that sort of opportunity, staying at your parents' home in adulthood was far more indicative of personal failings, and that's where the current trope disparaging adult (mostly male) children living at home originated. But given how diminished all of those opportunities are today (no lands to forcibly take from less technologically advantaged peoples, no new factories, expensive housing where jobs are available, high qualifications required), it's a trope that's pretty irrelevant today.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      I'm not sure how irrelevant it is (though Covid may change that). If I wasn't engaged I would have gone home to WFH immediately during the pandemic, it would have been nice to spend time there and be with family (rare opportunity for easy ability to work remotely and spend time with family on the east coast). That said, most of the successful people I know moved out to areas with more opportunity and those that stayed behind (particularly those that live at home) are more likely to have 'personal failings' of some sort. Maybe this isn't true if you were lucky enough to grow up in an economic hub to start, but if you didn't there's still some truth to it. Obviously during the pandemic this changes and no longer becomes relevant since remote opportunity and being able to save money by living home (since everything is locked down anyway) makes way more sense. Most people don't think independently from the cultural context though so it'd take a while for this to update. Why live in Palo Alto and waste lots of money on rent because of stupid housing policy when you don't have to? When you can't go out and do stuff?
      - danans 6y ago
        You are conflating two independent phenomena here. One is the pandemic related pattern of young people moving back in with their parents. The other is the cultural judgment reserved for young people who never leave their parents home well into adulthood. I was addressing the latter. > That said, most of the successful people I know moved out to areas with more opportunity and those that stayed behind (particularly those that live at home) are more likely to have 'personal failings' of some sort. Sounds like you are almost defining "personal failings" as "unable to gain the skills to compete and thrive in a high opportunity area". If that's the case, perhaps we should reconsider whether such a high level of achievement should be required in order for a person to establish a basic non extravagant life on their own independent of their parents.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        > Why live in Palo Alto and waste lots of money on rent because of stupid housing policy when you don't have to? When you can't go out and do stuff? I hear sentiments like this a lot lately, and it feels short-sighted to me. COVID restrictions are not going to be around forever. There are financial, professional, social, and other costs that come with moving somewhere else. For people who genuinely don't like it in $HCOL_AREA regardless of the pandemic, and see this as a way to get out permanently, then that's great, and they should do that. If it's more like "it's expensive here and I can't go out to my favorite bars/restaurants right now", the latter half of that situation should fix itself by next summer, and hopefully earlier in some fashion. Sure, that's a while to wait, but isn't much time when considering that an alternative is to uproot your entire life.
  - nickpeterson 6y ago
    Honestly I hear this much more from those closer to poverty. I think they view it as children should be self sufficient so I no longer have to pay for them. I think a lot of what people consider “cold hearted” in the modern world is really just veiled economic uncertainty. People would rather be considered strict than poor.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Nah, rich people boost their kids through life. Poor people are the ones who subscribe to Labour Theology: Hard Work is Righteous, Assisting Kids Ruins Them.
Aeolun 6y ago
Depends. When I stay with my parents I somehow forget that I can do the dishes and washing myself. I very deliberately have to remind myself.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Isn't they because your parents refuse to grow up? A roommate wouldn't tolerate that.
  - pengaru 6y ago
    Not OP, but at my parents' home it's such a classical traditional division of labor that the housewife does all the cleaning, it's her domain, her full-time job. She'd be self-conscious of not doing her part (and annoying) if someone else was doing it. It wasn't even considered normal for me to cook anything in the kitchen while I still lived at home. It was like being in someone else's workshop and using all their tools and putting things back not quite where they like them or wasting soap/water when washing implements or being too messy or abusive to the equipment. It was impossible to not cause some sort of trouble, I literally started grilling outside daily to not touch the kitchen and still feed myself real food as a young adult. One could argue it was the parents refusing to grow up, but it's also arguably a predictable outcome when the husband works like a blue-collar dog to pay the bills and the wife doesn't have to work a formal job. Obviously the husband is going to expect the wife to keep the house clean and do all the cooking, if she slacks off on these relatively trivial duties while he's grouchy and overworked, bad times for sure.
    - tubularhells 6y ago
      Moroccan household?
      - pengaru 6y ago
        Italian, Scorsese's short film ITALIANAMERICAN [0] is uncannily representative, @~7:20 the husband outright declares cooking isn't his line of work. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxYl93p0ksc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxYl93p0ksc
antisthenes 6y ago
Living with parents and being "grown up" are almost entirely orthogonal in well-adjusted societies. The fact that it's somehow related in American culture is very unfortunate.
- wahern 6y ago
  It's not peculiarly American, it's a Western European, especially Northwestern European, pattern. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917824/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917824/, particularly the multigenerational household columns in the various tables.[1] And I'd bet it's related to the phenomenon of late marriage that has historically distinguished Western Europe from most of the rest of the world for the past 500 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line I'm tempted to admit that the expression of this otherwise shared culture might be intensified by some of the more distinctive aspects of American culture (e.g. pioneer spirit, as mentioned elsethread), but I hesitate because assuming America is exceptional is a bad habit I'm trying to kick =) [1] That paper is something of a rebuttal to the argument that NW European culture (including North American culture) was always strongly nuclear. But the lack of multigenerational living seems pretty clear; what they seem to show instead is that the trend of the elderly living alone is relatively new. Which doesn't seem surprising. A culture that pressures children to move out of the home doesn't imply a culture that pressures the elderly to live alone.
schwartzworld 6y ago
it's what shitty parents say when they prefer their privacy but don't want to articulate that.
refurb 6y ago
There are people who never grow up if given the opportunity to keep living with their parents. My cousin is one of them. Get a job? Why? Go to school? Why? Things are fine. I have someone to cook my meals and a warm bed to sleep in. My uncle ended up booting my cousin out of the house. It was the best thing that happened to him. He matured significantly, went back to school, has a great job. He even admits it himself that he was in a rut that would have never ended had he been able to keep living at home. Living at home sheltered him from the real world.
- danans 6y ago
  > There are people who never grow up if given the opportunity to keep living with their parents. My cousin is one of them. The case of a totally unmotivated individual not engaging themselves in school or work is totally different than the case of working young adults who want to live independently of their parents, but can't afford to do so due to high cost of living, high debt, or other financial factors. I know people who have been in both categories, and they are not much alike.

save_ferris 6y ago

I think it’s cultural. American society absolutely looks down on those that live with their parents as failures. If I were to guess, some parents might see their children asking to return home as a reflection on their ability as a parent to prepare for the “real world”, but that’s just my guess.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Only a certain vocal rich segment of American society.
- danans 6y ago
  I don't think it has much to do with wealth. In fact, in old societies primogeniture practiced by the wealthy meant that the eldest son was expected to stay at home. The second sons with limited inheritance often set out on their own. In the US context, it has historical connections to the glorification of pioneerism and expansion through the western frontier (along with the genocide that accompanied that). After that, in the post WW2 period, opportunity in the US was so abundant that a (commonly white male) school dropout could walk into a factory and get a job with benefits. The same person could then afford a modest house (not the gigantic houses of today), support a family on a single income, and had access to affordable health care and good public education for their kids. In the context of that sort of opportunity, staying at your parents' home in adulthood was far more indicative of personal failings, and that's where the current trope disparaging adult (mostly male) children living at home originated. But given how diminished all of those opportunities are today (no lands to forcibly take from less technologically advantaged peoples, no new factories, expensive housing where jobs are available, high qualifications required), it's a trope that's pretty irrelevant today.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    I'm not sure how irrelevant it is (though Covid may change that). If I wasn't engaged I would have gone home to WFH immediately during the pandemic, it would have been nice to spend time there and be with family (rare opportunity for easy ability to work remotely and spend time with family on the east coast). That said, most of the successful people I know moved out to areas with more opportunity and those that stayed behind (particularly those that live at home) are more likely to have 'personal failings' of some sort. Maybe this isn't true if you were lucky enough to grow up in an economic hub to start, but if you didn't there's still some truth to it. Obviously during the pandemic this changes and no longer becomes relevant since remote opportunity and being able to save money by living home (since everything is locked down anyway) makes way more sense. Most people don't think independently from the cultural context though so it'd take a while for this to update. Why live in Palo Alto and waste lots of money on rent because of stupid housing policy when you don't have to? When you can't go out and do stuff?
    - danans 6y ago
      You are conflating two independent phenomena here. One is the pandemic related pattern of young people moving back in with their parents. The other is the cultural judgment reserved for young people who never leave their parents home well into adulthood. I was addressing the latter. > That said, most of the successful people I know moved out to areas with more opportunity and those that stayed behind (particularly those that live at home) are more likely to have 'personal failings' of some sort. Sounds like you are almost defining "personal failings" as "unable to gain the skills to compete and thrive in a high opportunity area". If that's the case, perhaps we should reconsider whether such a high level of achievement should be required in order for a person to establish a basic non extravagant life on their own independent of their parents.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      > Why live in Palo Alto and waste lots of money on rent because of stupid housing policy when you don't have to? When you can't go out and do stuff? I hear sentiments like this a lot lately, and it feels short-sighted to me. COVID restrictions are not going to be around forever. There are financial, professional, social, and other costs that come with moving somewhere else. For people who genuinely don't like it in $HCOL_AREA regardless of the pandemic, and see this as a way to get out permanently, then that's great, and they should do that. If it's more like "it's expensive here and I can't go out to my favorite bars/restaurants right now", the latter half of that situation should fix itself by next summer, and hopefully earlier in some fashion. Sure, that's a while to wait, but isn't much time when considering that an alternative is to uproot your entire life.
- nickpeterson 6y ago
  Honestly I hear this much more from those closer to poverty. I think they view it as children should be self sufficient so I no longer have to pay for them. I think a lot of what people consider “cold hearted” in the modern world is really just veiled economic uncertainty. People would rather be considered strict than poor.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Nah, rich people boost their kids through life. Poor people are the ones who subscribe to Labour Theology: Hard Work is Righteous, Assisting Kids Ruins Them.

Aeolun 6y ago

Depends. When I stay with my parents I somehow forget that I can do the dishes and washing myself. I very deliberately have to remind myself.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Isn't they because your parents refuse to grow up? A roommate wouldn't tolerate that.
- pengaru 6y ago
  Not OP, but at my parents' home it's such a classical traditional division of labor that the housewife does all the cleaning, it's her domain, her full-time job. She'd be self-conscious of not doing her part (and annoying) if someone else was doing it. It wasn't even considered normal for me to cook anything in the kitchen while I still lived at home. It was like being in someone else's workshop and using all their tools and putting things back not quite where they like them or wasting soap/water when washing implements or being too messy or abusive to the equipment. It was impossible to not cause some sort of trouble, I literally started grilling outside daily to not touch the kitchen and still feed myself real food as a young adult. One could argue it was the parents refusing to grow up, but it's also arguably a predictable outcome when the husband works like a blue-collar dog to pay the bills and the wife doesn't have to work a formal job. Obviously the husband is going to expect the wife to keep the house clean and do all the cooking, if she slacks off on these relatively trivial duties while he's grouchy and overworked, bad times for sure.
  - tubularhells 6y ago
    Moroccan household?
    - pengaru 6y ago
      Italian, Scorsese's short film ITALIANAMERICAN [0] is uncannily representative, @~7:20 the husband outright declares cooking isn't his line of work. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxYl93p0ksc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxYl93p0ksc

antisthenes 6y ago

Living with parents and being "grown up" are almost entirely orthogonal in well-adjusted societies. The fact that it's somehow related in American culture is very unfortunate.

wahern 6y ago
It's not peculiarly American, it's a Western European, especially Northwestern European, pattern. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917824/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917824/, particularly the multigenerational household columns in the various tables.[1] And I'd bet it's related to the phenomenon of late marriage that has historically distinguished Western Europe from most of the rest of the world for the past 500 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line I'm tempted to admit that the expression of this otherwise shared culture might be intensified by some of the more distinctive aspects of American culture (e.g. pioneer spirit, as mentioned elsethread), but I hesitate because assuming America is exceptional is a bad habit I'm trying to kick =) [1] That paper is something of a rebuttal to the argument that NW European culture (including North American culture) was always strongly nuclear. But the lack of multigenerational living seems pretty clear; what they seem to show instead is that the trend of the elderly living alone is relatively new. Which doesn't seem surprising. A culture that pressures children to move out of the home doesn't imply a culture that pressures the elderly to live alone.

schwartzworld 6y ago

it's what shitty parents say when they prefer their privacy but don't want to articulate that.

refurb 6y ago

There are people who never grow up if given the opportunity to keep living with their parents. My cousin is one of them. Get a job? Why? Go to school? Why? Things are fine. I have someone to cook my meals and a warm bed to sleep in. My uncle ended up booting my cousin out of the house. It was the best thing that happened to him. He matured significantly, went back to school, has a great job. He even admits it himself that he was in a rut that would have never ended had he been able to keep living at home. Living at home sheltered him from the real world.

danans 6y ago
> There are people who never grow up if given the opportunity to keep living with their parents. My cousin is one of them. The case of a totally unmotivated individual not engaging themselves in school or work is totally different than the case of working young adults who want to live independently of their parents, but can't afford to do so due to high cost of living, high debt, or other financial factors. I know people who have been in both categories, and they are not much alike.