Over Half of U.S. Young Adults Now Live with Their Parents

Multigenerational housing is really a very sensible option: your parents probably have a house large enough for them and several other people, they have items like kitchenware and furniture for those people, plus various tools that have been picked up over the years to deal with problems you don't yet realize you'll one day encounter. It makes little sense to duplicate all this every generation while the previous iteration sits idle. It might hurt consumer spending if young adults can spend the first few years of their career saving instead of buying out the wazoo, but it is certainly a more efficient use of resources.

Parents can provide both knowledge and material support for various tasks related to home making and child rearing. It's nice to have someone who's done it before right there to answer any question and give you a hand rather than reinventing the wheel every generation. Splitting up chores more ways leaves everyone less exhausted, and allows for more specialization. You may not like your parents' style, but it's better than doing everything yourself.

The benefits go both ways. As your parents age, they become more feeble. Live in children can take care of their parents without spending a fortune on professional care services. Further many risks of old age like falls are greatly mitigated the more frequent there is human contact. Money that would have been spent on young laborers can instead be put towards retirement savings, again perhaps a macroeconomic loss but great for the individual.

Multi-generational housing is common in many societies. That it is uncommon in modern western culture is really an anomaly: the industrial revolution and subsequent scientific advances meant a sudden boom in the population and rapid changes in lifestyle, you couldn't simply have everyone stay on the farm their whole life, most people had to move to a city and start a new household. Now that populations are stabilizing, it makes sense that we would revert to the system we had before.

Just as an example: one gal asked about my living situation, with regards to roommates. I was forthright about it, gave a little "what can you do?" shrug. I was a little startled as her vocal tone immediately changed to a mocking one as she delivered a "Awww, widdle at_a_remove wivves with his Mooo-mmy!" and then sneered. (Note that this person would describe herself as kind, liberal, thoughtful, and so on)

Similarly, if less vituperatively, some simply announce "I could never date a guy who lives with his mother!" immediately after, although I had not offered a date.

It is sometimes a struggle to be pleasant in these situations. I sometimes do want to ask if they would like to be abandoned by their children if they were older and fell upon hard times, but I restrain myself.

I will say that I got a useful degree ( computer science ) from a university I could afford and have already paid off my debt.

I mostly agree, I don't know what people were thinking what was going to happen when they majored in underwater basket weaving.

I don't pretend know why people chose to go so deeply into debt. I do know a lot of smart people I respect made this decision, so it is more complicated than simply saying "screw the millennial."

However: There is now a mess that is damaging our society. When there is a fire going on, one does not stand around pointing fingers trying to figure out who started the fire. We put the fire out and figure the rest out afterwards. Millenial student debt is stifling their ability to build wealth, participate in the economy, and damaging their quality of life to the point they choose not to have children. I think this is a problem worth solving.

Single income families are a very recent aberration that covers a tiny slice of human history. In medieval Europe for example everyone gathered the harvest.

It’s largely an outgrowth of extreme prosperity and urbanization.