If you have a student graduating from college or graduate school in the next few weeks, chances are you may be getting that bedroom or basement ready to welcome them home again. It can be an emotional time – and you and your student may have different emotions about the impending living arrangements.
The last few weeks of senior year, including senior festivities and all of those activities surrounding “lasts” and Commencement, are both exhilarating and exhausting. Your student will be moving from the ultimate high to coming face-to-face with the reality of determining what’s next. Or it may be possible that your student graduated a year or two ago, gave a try to a new job and living on their own and is now returning home once again to rethink whether that was the right move.
Your student has become one of the Boomerang Generation – returning back to where they started. They aren’t alone. According to the Wall Street Journal, the percentage of students living at home with parents is the highest it has been since 1940. The Pew Research Center in 2016 found that 32 percent of young adults 18-34 were living at home. Seventy percent of those were happy with the arrangement, 96 percent helped with routine chores, and 75 percent contributed to expenses.
