One-third of millennials have no need to travel for Thanksgiving

Throughout the Western world, a growing number of millennials aren’t returning home for the holidays, they’re already there. Well over one-third of adults age 18 to 31 live in their parents’ home, according to the Pew Research Center.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne recently attempted to dissect the causes and consequences of this growing trend. They reviewed 20 studies involving 20 million people worldwide and found finances are the No. 1 reason young adults remain or return home.

Years ago, a college education usually offered a ticket to a higher paying job. Today, with more college graduates and fewer available jobs, that’s no longer always true. There are more unemployed young adults now than at any time since the 1950s, Alan Dunn, founder of HowtoSaveMoney.com wrote in an op-ed for Forbes.

Many students graduate college with huge student loans and no job prospects. For those fortunate enough to find a job, salaries often are inadequate to meet the increasing cost of living.

“A diminishing middle class makes it more difficult to live independently on an entry-level salary,” Dunn said.

According to the Melbourne study, when adult children stay home or boomerang back, it can create benefits for all. If adult children are employed and the family pools its resources, the arrangement can help relieve financial stress for everyone. Young adults can take advantage of the opportunity to save money and become equipped to successfully launch in the future. And adult children at home can alleviate the social isolation many parents experience as they age.

But the picture isn’t always quite so rosy, the researchers said. When young adults return home, it can hamper their independence when they are trying to establish their adult role. And adult children living at home may compromise parents’ privacy and present a financial hardship and extra burden of responsibility.

According to Katherine Burn, one of the researchers, “boomerang kids” seldom help out or make financial contributions to the household.

“This can often cause resentment and conflict,” she said. “After all, there goes the caravan for retirement or that long-awaited European holiday. And parents who live with adult children say they feel they’re being taken advantage of, in terms of the household chores.”

Glenn Stanton, director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family and a research fellow at the Institute of Marriage and Family in Ottawa, Canada, points out the independent nuclear family is a fairly new concept. The industrial revolution had a huge impact on family structure.

In frontier days, it was normal for a son to stay home and work the land with his parents. The difference between that scenario and the one that often happens today, Stanton said, is that in frontier days adult children worked and contributed to the family economy. The problem today isn’t adult kids staying or returning home, it’s kids staying dependent on their parents.

“In one sense, we are going back to larger extended families but it’s not an independent strength-based move,” Stanton said. “Independence is a gift parents can give to their children.”

According to Stanton, God designed humans with a need to feel significant. Young children pretend to be firefighters and restaurant workers because they are practicing filling that basic human need. Parents don’t help kids by supporting them into their 30s, Stanton warned.

“The human soul does not thrive when it’s not contributing to the good of the community,” he said.