Today, Explained - The kids are all home

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Living with your parents is so hot right now, with more adults doing it now than at any other time in the modern era. First, we hang out with a member of Gen Z who’s moved back in with the folks. Then, a closer look at the trend with Donna Butts of Generations United. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Rob Byers and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Dan from Nashville, Tennessee. Hey, remember that time we went to Nashville because we heard it was a really hot housing market and we were like, call us if you know anything about it. And then you did. There's not a chance that we're going to buy a house in Nashville. Now it's honestly kind of impossible. Like, I mean, I don't have any expectation of owning a home in Nashville. Yeah, the cost of living in Nashville is crazy. You said, oh, my god, it is hard.

My name is Laila Ahmed. I am calling from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm 23 years old and I am a member of the downtrodden sensei that is currently living with their parents. Downtrod at 23. In places like Nashville, Young people can't afford to buy houses, so they're moving in with the people who already did, their parents. This is happening in America more than ever in the modern era. Multi-generational housing is back, and the story of that is coming up on Today Explained. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas.

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Yes, I am. Hey, I'm Noelle. It's really nice to meet you. 23-year-old Layla Ahmed lives in a subdivision east of Nashville in a brick house that is brand new and real nice. Yeah, I really feel at home here. Really? Can I move in? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No, this is really nice. Yeah, I really feel at home here. Really? Can I move in? I'm kidding, I'm kidding. No, this is really nice.

Layla's a Vanderbilt grad, class of 2022. She majored in child development and political science. She was also pre-med somehow. And then after school, she took a gap year to study for the MCAT and got a job at a nonprofit that advocates for refugees. Layla makes about 50 grand a year, and yet... After graduation, you moved back in with mom and dad.

Yes. What was the biggest shock? The biggest shock, I think, was the lack of, like, boundaries now with my parents. Because when I went to college, it was kind of like, you do your own thing. You come home when you want to. You leave when you want to. You're not necessarily beholden to a schedule. Coming back to my parents, it kind of felt like going back to high school again, where my mom is telling me that I need to wake up and study. I can't come home at random hours of the night. I can't be out with friends, or else it seems like I'm not working hard enough. When you made the decision to not move out, how much of a role did being able to afford something play in?

A pretty significant role. I kind of explored the option of being able to move out with a couple of my friends who were in the same income level as I was. They were working either non-profit roles or like they were bartending straight out of college looking for like their first real job. And we came to the conclusion after much twiddling our thumbs that we might not be able to afford what we would like to. How many places would you say you guys looked at? Dozens, if I remember. And then we kind of gave up. I think I was the most, I was the person who was being a realist in the situation, looking at income, how much we would have left over after we paid for rent each month. And that was just devastating because my mom has told me my whole life that I'm not the best saver,

but really looking at income and finances, like after you're paying for your own place and like car insurance and all the things that you need to live as an adult, it was like, wow, this is real life. One of my friends was really, really, really gung-ho about moving out of her parents' house. And I think if I called her up today right now and I told her, hey, I want to move out, she would be willing to sacrifice whatever I needed. And then there was the issue of what do we do if one person makes more than another? Do they want to pay more to have a larger room? It was tense for a moment. We ended up arguing and things, but then we were all back together now. When you were making that decision,

I'm wondering, was there part of your brain that said, oh, if I lose my job, for example, I'll just ask mom and dad to cover my rent for a month or two? No, I don't think I had that thought specifically because I have helped my parents to buy this home. I kind of gave them a good portion of my savings. I helped them go through the process of looking for a home and I knew that they had depleted their savings to buy this house. Okay. So anybody who wants to say like, young people today are so spoiled, you gave your savings to your mom and dad so they could live here. Yeah. So we were looking for a really, really long time. What my mom was a stickler for is that she wanted a home that was in a good neighborhood because we were moving from like, I wouldn't say we lived in

a bad part of town, but it just necessarily wasn't the best part of town, like not the best schools. So she wanted to move, especially my younger siblings out of that situation. We were looking for new build. And then something that was, this is like a very strange thing that she wanted, but she wanted a home that was all brick on all four sides because she comes from Somalia where the houses are like concrete and like not going to blow over if a tornado comes around. And we have tornadoes here in Nashville. This very pretty, beautiful brick house, I would imagine is some, in some ways, like we think of this as the achievement of the American dream house, I would imagine, is in some ways, like we think of this

as the achievement of the American dream. And I'm curious, what was your parents' arc? Like, how did you see them financially evolve as you were young? Yeah. So when I was younger, my mom was a homemaker. So she lived at home with me and her primary focus was like focusing on me and my siblings, making sure that we were good to go in terms of school. And my dad was the one who was working all the time. I didn't see my dad all the time when I was younger because he was just always at work. What did he do? He's a cab driver. Okay. He still is. And then once I got older, Nashville became a more expensive place to live. And so my mom had to start working,

even though she might not necessarily want to because my brother was still in middle school. So she started working herself and started saving her money as much as she could. And then I saw them put all their money together, ask my parents' siblings for help. I helped out a little bit and then put all of their savings towards buying this house. So when you think about what the future looks like and how long you might be here at home, what goes through your head? What goes through my head is that I definitely don't want to be here forever. I would like to feel like an adult during this young period of my life,

especially because people say that your 20s are the time to have fun. ever. I would like to feel like an adult during this like young period of my life, especially because people say that like your 20s are the time to have fun and begin to feel that sense of independence so that once you become in your 30s and 40s, you know what living on your own looks like. You're not like shell-shocked for the first time. I definitely want to know what that feels like. And I think that's one of the things I'm most scared about in thinking about how I might be not wasting my time, but just maybe starting everything late compared to my peers or just on what I thought pushed out into the world, I might not be ready. And then everyone's going to be looking at me like, oh my gosh, she's pushing 30 and she is having all these financial problems. Why? But I think I'm sitting tight right now.

I'm waiting to grow in my career, definitely. Do you feel like you're putting off any of the adult life milestones by living at home? I guess what would be an example of an adult milestone? Like getting married? Like having kids? Let's say getting married, having kids, having a crazy 21st birthday party, having a terrible boyfriend. You can't have a terrible boyfriend because your dad would get him. Oh, because I'm at home? Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a terrible boyfriend because your dad would get him oh because because

I'm at home yeah yeah do you have a terrible boyfriend no not right now god bless girl what happened I'm free I'm free now but um yes okay yes because I feel like whenever you're you're just thinking about your romantic life it's like I have to hide in my room to do whatever I want to do, talk on the phone. I have to lock my door because my brother might bust through, things like that. Have you ever had a boy judge you for living at home with your parents? No, but I judge boys if they live at home with their parents, which is bad. What is the assumption you make if you meet a young fella and he says he lives at home with his parents?

Knee jerk, where does your head go? So bad that he doesn't have any money. And I'm like, then you should be putting your energy towards that, not me. That's so bad. I just said that a lot and I'm like, I need to change the way that I think. When you go out on dates, do the gentlemen come here to pick you up or do you go and meet them out? Well, I go meet them out because my parents are Muslim. And we have a thing where it's like you'd never know that a Muslim girl is even dating until she announces that she's engaged.

I don't even I've never even had a conversation with my mom or dad about like, I'm going on a date with this guy. OK, so we're just not discussing it. No, which is I'm even scared to talk about it right now with you guys. Cause I'm like, if they hear this, they'll kill me. You are such a good daughter. Do you think there's anything about you that annoys your parents? Yes. Tell me more. I'm messy. Not horribly messy, but I could be neater. Even though they try to put the stipulations of like come home before it becomes like the witching hour outside, I still push the limits of what I can do. I think by nature I'm a rebellious person, so I'm not really bothered by breaking too many rules. They would rather me follow all the rules that they have placed. I like the house to be cold.

They like it to be warmer. Little things like that. Little things that you deal with when you're living with other people, right? Yes, yes. Definitely. What are maybe the benefits of living here? The benefits are that since my siblings are still here, I mean, they're at school right now, but you kind of have like still that built in like support system from siblings, family. So I get my fix in of love that way. I think leaving, I would be very, I'm very much attached to them.

And I would feel like I'm missing out on milestones. I definitely felt that way when I was at college. This is like so sappy and sad, but I genuinely remember laying in my bed in my dorm freshman year. And I can't remember, I think it was my brother's like eighth grade graduation. It was something so insignificant when you look back on it, but I couldn't go. And I cried.

I was like so sad. I was like, I'm missing my brother's milestones. What's even the point of all this? I think it's because I'm nine years older than him. And since my mom started working, I kind of felt like I helped to raise him a little bit. I think the other thing definitely that I like about living at home is that you just get to save and it helps you feel more secure in whatever you plan to do in the future. And you get to do things like go on vacation with your friends

and maybe have a little bit more disposable income than you would if you were putting that all towards rent. It's hard because I've talked with my friends about how, like, we may never be able to afford a home, but still paying rent feels like dumping money into, like, just the air. It's going towards nothing. What is something that you want people to know about this experience? I would say just in popular culture, there is a perception that like

those who live with their parents into their 20s are either bums or people who are not hardworking. I definitely would say that we are just maybe a more risk-averse group that is hoping to prepare for whatever this rapidly changing world will look like. Laila Ahmed, not a bum, one of so many people moving back in with their parents. More on just how many in a minute. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend.

With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. Thank you. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. So it is not just Nashville. You guys called us from all over the country and told us you are living that multi-gen life. Hi, my name is Kevin Bryant and I'm calling from Clemson, South Carolina. Hi, Today Explained. My name is Renee. I'm a nurse practitioner and I live in the Boston area. I moved to Lopez Island, Washington from Portland, Oregon in the middle of the pandemic. And since then, about a year ago, two of my adult children moved in too. So we are very full. We are, all beds are filled now. My wife and I are living with her mother

and our 13-month-old son. And while we are as grateful as can be, it presents as many challenges as you can expect. I pay with my soul. My sanity is at stake every day. It's so frustrating being an adult, trying to raise a child, and living back home with your family. Pray for me. Pray for her, y'all, and all these other people in the same boat. It is a lot of people. Donna Butts studies them. Donna is the executive director at an organization called Generations United.

We're one of the only organizations that has surveyed the families themselves, and we issue a report. It has been every 10 years, sort of monitoring the trend in multi-generational living, and then we advocate for intergenerational housing. In particular, when you think about multi-generational families in this country, it's gotten a real stigma attached to it. It's not a kid that's a college graduate with a degree in logistics that has the ability to make 120k. He's not living in his daddy's basement. And so what we've done, though, is we've created a lot of barriers, whether it's how many names you can have on a utility bill. There are different things that we've done that have made it just more difficult for families to be together, come together, and support each other. Where does this American ideal of mom, dad, two and a half kids, maybe a dog, white picket fence,

how far back does that go? Where's that come from? Well, it used to not necessarily be really American. I mean, when you think about the turn of the 20th century, really people lived in multi-generational households. But I think when we saw a really big push was after World War II, when people became more mobile. What every one of those men had uppermost in his mind while he was away in the service, all 15 or 16 million of them, which is nearly a tenth of our entire population, or almost a quarter of the nation if you figure a wife for every man, they were thinking of home. When they would move away from their families for jobs,

for a less populated area, for a better home, they started to move away more and more, and so that's when we really started to see the decrease in multi-generational households. And they were thinking about how they wanted to live and where. Not holed up in one room back at their family's place. Not cramped in a dingy little apartment. And we then said that was the way that people should live, that they should be independent. No, sir. We wanted the real McCoy. A place of our own. Not just any old place, though, but a place of which every average man could proudly say,

this is my home. So as they started to move away, then what still happened was that people, if they found themselves in financial need, or if they were ill, or they needed help with care, whether it's child care or an aging parent, they started to come back together. And we've seen the largest increase when our country has had a recession or a housing bust.

Now look, many young people, what we older folks call the millennial generation, are having a hard time finding jobs, dealing with the collapse of the economy in 2008. You know, we're having to change our lifestyle because our world is changing. What people are surprised by is they always think that the numbers are going to decrease again, but in fact, they continue to rise because it works for a lot of families. They may have come together because of need, but they stayed together because it works and it benefits them. Is this your place? No, no, no, no, no, no. No, because it works and it benefits them. Is this your place? No, no, no, no, no, no. No, I live with my mom.

Oh. Yeah. You hungry? Hey, Ma! Can we get some meatloaf? The first time that we did a survey of multi-generational households was in 2011. So, it was during or in the aftermath of the housing bust. there was recession, people were having a hard time. And at that time, what we found were about 7% of the families were living in a multi-generational household. We came back 10 years later during COVID because we wanted to see how that was impacting. And what we found was in the 10 years since we had talked with families, the numbers had gone from 7% to 26%. So it was a huge increase. And the numbers have continued steadily from 2011 to 2021 and beyond

to continue to increase. The pandemic has accelerated a change in housing in this country that began well before COVID-19 spread. Millennials, adults between the ages of 24 and 39, continue to move back home with their parents. COVID caused a real increase in the families because people lost jobs or they were sick. Middle generations, adult children became concerned about their aging parents. We all heard horror stories of older adults who were shuttered and alone and miserable because they were alone. So I think for a lot of people, it helped them rethink how we should actually house older adults in the country. We got a phone call in the middle of the night and somebody fell. I just thought that it

would be nice to just have to be able to go downstairs. For many, they also found that having a healthy grandparent move in with them and they were trying to deal with their children taking classes on Zoom while they were trying to work on Zoom, having that extra help was really, really important. They were supposed to send their last child off to college and enjoy the empty nesting life. But yeah, they've inherited three more of us. And immigrant populations do affect the number of multigenerational households

we have in the country. When we've seen dips, it's because one of the factors is because immigration may be down. And I know in my work in other countries, when we talk about multi-generational families, people look at me like, what's wrong with you people that your numbers are so low? This is how we live. This is healthy. This is what you do. And again, what we've done is stigmatize it for other people. And we need to realize that it's not a matter of us going back. It's a matter of us going forward to something that is better and healthier for many families. So if it's one in four Americans now living in a multi-generational household, is the stigma lessening as the numbers grow?

You know, it's starting to lessen, mostly because almost everyone knows someone. But also, as a country and as a worldwide, we're becoming much more aware of our environmental impact. And multi-generational households have been shown to have a smaller environmental footprint because they're housing more people under one roof. They're using the same utilities. They may be using the same car. It's more of that sharing economy as opposed to everybody has to have their individual assets. They can pool assets. So I think that one of the things that people are starting to realize is that they are environmentally helpful. If the factors that are contributing to a rise in multigenerational living are dealt with, let's say that we solve the student loan crisis.

Let's say colleges become cheaper. Let's say daycare becomes cheaper. Let's say the U.S. decides it's just going to go ahead and build more housing. If we solve the underlying issues that contribute to a rise in multigenerational housing, do you think we will see less of this happening? I don't think we'll see less of it happening. And what I base that on is when we did our survey of the families, and many of them said that they came together because of COVID. But 72% said that they intended to continue to live in a multi-generational family for the long term. And I think it's also a way that we can address some of the other issues that you just mentioned. Student debt. If young people don't have to try to make ends know, rent and other things if they can live.

So that would help with the student debt. When it comes to care, one of the things that we as a country need to think about is we sort of segregated by age, child care, adult daycare, elder care. And if we would look at caregiving across the age band and look at how we can develop interventions that, like a child care center in an adult daycare center or primary school that's in a senior living community, if we can do things like that, we can help with the costs, but also with the integration that I think is so important among generations. That was Donna Butts of Generations United.

Today's show was produced by Amanda Llewellyn and edited by Jolie Myers. It was engineered by Rob Byers and Patrick Boyd. And Laura Bullard is our fact checker. The rest of our team includes Halima Shah, Avishai Artsy, Hadi Mawagdi, Miles Bryan, Victoria Chamberlain, Jesse Alejandro Cottrell, David Herman, and Sean Ramosfirm. Our supervising editors are Amina El-Sadi and Matthew Collette. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder, and I'm Noelle King, and this has been Today Explained. Today Explained is distributed by WNYC. The show is a part of Vox, which is totally free, thanks in part to contributions from our listeners like you. You can join us at vox.com slash give.