Lost Decade: 1/3 of young people under 35 live with parents

[Cairber]

Another problem with the "don't have kids until 30" idea is that, while 30 only shows modest increases in chromosomal abnormalities, once you hit 35 it basically sky rockets. So if it generally takes 6months to 1 year to conceive and a pregnancy is 9 months long and breastfeeding inhibits ovulation for a further 6 months...well, it would be tough to have more than one well-spaced child without hitting that 35 zone.

But I may be biased . I like being a young mom and I have a very successful husband and the opportunity to work part time now and go into owning my own business once the kids are in school (taking over karate school I teach at now). I guess my own experience leads me to feel that kids before 30 are not an immediate poverty sentence or the like. But it was hard at first I admit, but now we are in a great situation through a lot of hard work, debt busting, etc.


On kids at home...

I've read this entire thread and I cannot decide how I would feel about my kids wanting to live with me after college. Obviously, like Red said, I would never want them sleeping under a bridge and eating in soup kitchens. I suppose I would feel OK with the situation if they were contributing to bills and actively seeking to better themselves.

[Lonestar]

It's called a moral responsibility

Laws are derived from morals.

And by the way, enabling bad behavior isn't "taking care of your children". Helping your kid through college or making a transition isn't a bad thing, and shouldn't be seen as one. Allowing your kids to live with you until some undefined point in the future is a bad thing.

Newsflash you cock. Before naming me whining about my standard of living going down if I move out, considering that I grew up in dirt poor neighborhoods most of my life and have gone instances where I barely eaten for days at a time and have gone ill for half a year due to money constraints but was still able to finish school. My standard of living has been pretty low my entire low. Besides that NO ONE HAS MEDICAL INSURANCE IN MY HOUSE BECAUSE NONE OF US CAN AFFORD IT. I'm pretty sure that my low income is more than what each member of my family gets, however sad that is. Lets see, I already suffered my entire life, why would I want to exacerbate the situation... hmmm?

You do realize you are just repeating what me and Aaron have been saying this entire thread, don't you?

"Wah Wah I don't want to do everythign possible to make me more marketable!"

I don't want to join the military/peace corps/job corps/move/become a graduate student, instead I'm going to continue to whine about how life has mistreated me instead of taking my fate into my own hands!

Okay lets see. I double-majored in University in two very in demand majors and got a good gpa. I am now making just enough to get a studio apartment in a ghetto and buy food. I would not be able to pay back my student loans and I wouldn't be able to go to the doctor if I get sick. This is the worse time to have graduated ever and young people are feeling it worse than any other group.

You "double-majored in a demanding subject and got a good GPA"? Good for you. What does that have to do with the price of beer?

Your reponse is "wha, wha, cry more."

My response is:

"Yup, this dumbasses are whining about how life has mistreated them instead of taking their own fate into their own hands".

Hey how about this, if you want to teach your kids responsibility don't spoil them growing up. Maybe having kids stay home teaches them a big responsibility... that is saving your money rather than spending it on frivolous things, taking out huge mortgages before they are financially secured? You know, the kind of things that would have prevented this current recession?

While kids can and should learn responsibility while growing up at home, MEN in their 20s who are DONE WITH COLLEGE and sitting around twiddling their thumbs while whining about how shitty their life has been is NOT teaching them responsiblity. It's teaching them that they can always camp out at Mom and Dad's indefinately.

WTF are you talking about Shep? You know how much a Pvt made in 97? 19K a year, we didn't start to make "ok" pay until well into the 2000's.

He's talking about how I had a chunk of change saved up when I got out. This of course ignores that (1)I was single without any dependents (2)I was in the USN on a ship so I got Sea Pay, which was an extra chunk there (3)One of the things they hammer into you is to have enough money for 6 months living expense(I had 3) in TAPS, and I got a job quick enough that I didn't have to worry about burning into it. (4)By the time I was halfway through my enlistment I had my vehicle paid off, so I had no major bills.

All of those, of course, are outliers for most folks exiting the military. Too many dumbass 19 year olds get in, get paid(what to them) is a "lot of money" and end up buying a car they spend 6 years paying off.

[Lonestar]

Which is a goddamn shame - I've had three supervisors who are former military sergeants and they were awesome as people managers. MUCH better than the MBA brats I've encountered. While I doubt the quality of former sergeants is universal the military does seem to turn out some fine examples of such people.

Depends. I think Knife was only an E5 when he got out, so that may be why he couldn't get a job base dupon people skills. My understanding is(unless the military lied to me more than usual) is that employers look at former military as prospective managers only after they've reached a certain paygrade or time in service. Like, I've heard of Marine Gunnys retiring and getting hried as the store manager at Home Depot for $80k a year, but that was only because he had 20 years under his belt and had reached E7(senior leadership position).

[Broomstick]

Another problem with the "don't have kids until 30" idea is that, while 30 only shows modest increases in chromosomal abnormalities, once you hit 35 it basically sky rockets. So if it generally takes 6months to 1 year to conceive and a pregnancy is 9 months long and breastfeeding inhibits ovulation for a further 6 months...well, it would be tough to have more than one well-spaced child without hitting that 35 zone.

But I may be biased . I like being a young mom and I have a very successful husband and the opportunity to work part time now and go into owning my own business once the kids are in school (taking over karate school I teach at now). I guess my own experience leads me to feel that kids before 30 are not an immediate poverty sentence or the like. But it was hard at first I admit, but now we are in a great situation through a lot of hard work, debt busting, etc.

Well, you chose to make parenting a priority. Which was sort of my point. It is possible to be a mother in your 20's and provide adequately for your children - but you have to work for it. Just as you would have to work for a higher education or your own business. All young women should know that if they wish to maximize their chances of having a child, especially more than one, they should plan to start having children in their 20's and plan their lives accordingly. If they want higher education or a powerful career they will most likely need to delay childbearing... and risk having only one, or even none. And both choices should be seen as equally valid but aren't.

Heck, I have a sister who raised two children, one with a serious chornic medical problem, then went on to earn an MD and is now working as a doctor. But she didn't do those two things simultaneously. She made choices, she made priorities, then did the necessary hard work to make it happen.

[Broomstick]

Which is a goddamn shame - I've had three supervisors who are former military sergeants and they were awesome as people managers. MUCH better than the MBA brats I've encountered. While I doubt the quality of former sergeants is universal the military does seem to turn out some fine examples of such people.

Depends. I think Knife was only an E5 when he got out, so that may be why he couldn't get a job base dupon people skills. My understanding is(unless the military lied to me more than usual) is that employers look at former military as prospective managers only after they've reached a certain paygrade or time in service. Like, I've heard of Marine Gunnys retiring and getting hried as the store manager at Home Depot for $80k a year, but that was only because he had 20 years under his belt and had reached E7(senior leadership position).

It's going to vary with the employer, and even with the hiring manager. In fact, I've known some people so anti-military they wouldn't hire any vet - despite such bias being illegal.

ANY management experience is in your favor if your applying to a management position. Whether or not you get the job depends on a multitude of factors, of which prior experience is only one. If someone is light on management experience but is otherwise qualified they may well get the job anyway. Except, right now, there is a glut of highly experienced people on the market.

[Lusankya]

Of course, the problem with planning on having children early is that you're relying on other people, and they're not necessarily reliable. While plenty of people do manage to find the right person early on in life, not everyone is quite so lucky. And certainly you don't want to make the mistake of having children with the wrong person.

At least plans for a career are more or less under your own control.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That's because of our fucked up health "system", and the better prenatal care only applies to women who have decent, private insurance - which is getting to be a smaller slice of the pie.

It still comes off to me as your basically advocating that I shoulder the burden and encourage my children to get artificial insemination at age 20 or something. Young marriages largely don't work, and one's maturity is certainly not going to be sufficient until after the age of twenty-five for any kind of relationship; god knows I learned that the hard way in my prior relationships.

Except women who start having children at 30 don't have them all at age 30. It is still better, biologically, for a woman to start having children in their 20's. Doesn't mean it's impossible to have them later - I'm a "late child" myself - but all other things being equal the 20's are better than the 30's from a physical standpoint.

Another maxim I consider vital to raising responsible children is that you should never let them outnumber you--one that I'm actually far more strict about than the age of having children. Raising more than two children at once probably will result in some being uninterested in education and so on, because you don't have the time to devote yourselves fully to nurturing and guiding them to achieve their full mental development. If you're healthy and vigorous and you want to adopt young children when your own are already 15 - 18 or so, and have the financial werewithal to do this, I'd certainly encourage it.

You also seem to be assuming that any girl child (or indeed, any child) you have will want to pursue higher education, or have the capacity to pursue an advanced degree. That is not always the case. Have you considered what you would do it you had a child that simply did not have the mental power to be a PhD or pursue an intellectually demanding career?

There are plenty of collegiate professions which are not particularly intellectually demanding. Yet it seems that through my father's four marriages and ten children, every single one of them has gotten a college degree or will shortly do so (me and my younger sister in that category), including the adopted children that count in that figure. Now a fair number of us ended up inconsolable neurotics, but that's because my father was ultimately beholden to old-fashioned theories of parenting and had too much on his plate, and too much instability. Focusing, tenderly, on two very young children and making sure to foster their development each step of the way will provide the most straightforward way of avoiding that situation. And should they be incapable even then, pursuit of a stable union job will necessarily occupy most of their 20's anyway.

Ah yes - that's why my sister who was born when my mother was in her 20's has four degrees, including an MD, and the of two of us born past 30 one of us was broke and homeless earlier this year and little old me is currently living below the poverty line....

The situation has only gotten worse.

If you had expressed that scenario as "tendency" or "increases the chances" I would have let it slide, but no, it is not guaranteed.

Perhaps not, but I want my children to genuinely be able to appreciate the world.

On the other hand, if she truly wants children as a major priority in life, and presuming she has a stable partner, I'd suggest informing her of the facts and suggesting she find a career of some sort with a short post-high school training requirement to establish some financial security in the form of a nest egg (they live on the partner's salary while banking hers), and strongly suggest that when her children are older that she return to school for more education and eventually a better career. Or make sure she understands she may need to be more frugal and/or accept a lower standard of living.

Being a parent should be seen as just as valuable as having a career, and taken just as seriously.

Do you see me taking it as anything other than deathly serious in this thread, exactly? I'd just love to hear why you think a stable relationship before 25 has any real chance of forming on a statistically significant level. The formulation I received, and from viewing the success it's had in that family so far, is that you won't be forgiven for having a children under 25 but we can work with figures over that. It's just wiser to wait. And I see you completely ignored my observations that if the social network for mothers in the US was better that my advice would change, or if I was living in a different country. I guess that wasn't what you wanted to think about, was it? Even though you yourself admit that the reason for poor prenatal care in 20 year olds is due to a lack of UHC.

This isn't about parenting being less valuable, Broomstick. It's about children being so important, so very important, that it's better not to have them at all than to have them when you're unprepared! You're nurturing an entirely new sapience into the world. That's extremely, deeply serious work, to be approached with patience, tenderness, and a serious reverence for the scale of your task, which will indeed continue for the next thirty years and give you precious little in the way of breaks. And that level of commitment to their children is something which most women younger than thirty cannot muster.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Of course, the problem with planning on having children early is that you're relying on other people, and they're not necessarily reliable. While plenty of people do manage to find the right person early on in life, not everyone is quite so lucky. And certainly you don't want to make the mistake of having children with the wrong person.

At least plans for a career are more or less under your own control.

Exactly so. Perhaps if families were more naturally cohesive in the western world, and the social networks of all western countries matched those of Scandinavia, these factors would be different, no, I know they'd lead to substantially different thoughts on my part. But as it stands right now, we need to be bringing well-educated, civilized people into the world, because there are far too many who might as well have been left alone with the Lord of the Flies in the modern world, and that takes a serious and considerable effort of many decades on the part of highly committed individuals, or else a vast effort of extended family and social services of the sort which don't exist in the USA. There's only a small percentage of women who are capable of doing the same as single mothers, and as it happens most of this advice I've received is from one of them.

[Cairber]

It's tough to debate this though because really the only evidence I have against your theory that young women cannot commit enough to their kids or that we lack the ability to have "patience, tenderness, and a serious reverence for the scale of your task" is that I am a young woman, outnumbered by my kids, who feels I have all these things and do all these things you seem to think are impossible for someone my age.

But then I see that you tempered your answer with:

I'd just love to hear why you think a stable relationship before 25 has any real chance of forming on a statistically significant level.

(bolding mine)

So I guess I read that as an indication that individual stories aren't what you are talking about but, rather, a generalization overall. You aren't saying "cairber, you are unstable, could never be stable because you had kids too young, don't have the patience, tenderness, etc" but, rather, just that my situation isn't going to be the norm if you have kids under 30.

I can't say I agree (as I have many friends who are in my same situation and not many of them seem to fit your description either), but I don't have any debate-worthy evidence to offer up in support of my position.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Around two-thirds of all divorces, Cairber, are in marriages which were contracted before the age of 25. Only 24% of first marriages contracted from the age of 25 or older end in divorce... Yet 33% of first marriages end in divorce. Here's some hard figures, as you can see, 49% of 18 year olds who marry, end up divorced.. But for those over the age of 25, it drops to 24%. Statistically speaking, those who wait until age 25 to get married are up to half as likely to have the marriage end in divorce than those who contract a marriage beforehand. This obviously supports the idea that those who both marry before 25 and have children before 25 are essentially flipping a coin on whether or not they'll end up single mothers.

[Cairber]

From the link:

Divorce is more likely when women marry at a younger age (48% of brides married before age 18 divorce in 10 years, compared to 24% married at age 25 or later)

That leaves a lot of ages uninvestigated. Marriages that occur between 22-25, for example, are usually going to have kids before 30. What are the stats on those?

[Dahak]

Why is this "move out with 18" so strong with some people here?
Given the German school system, with 18 I was still in my last stages of school and couldn't just move out.
My mother never pushed me out and I left at around 22 because it was easier to go to the university from the new flat. And I know a lot people who lived at home around that time and it was never a big deal. Most parents seem to have the feeling they need to give their kids the best support they can give, including housing. I would say parents who pushed their kids out at 18 would come across as somewhat cold and uncaring.

As for legalities, my father was legally required to pay for my first education up to 27 after divorce, not just until 18.

[General Zod]

From the link:

Divorce is more likely when women marry at a younger age (48% of brides married before age 18 divorce in 10 years, compared to 24% married at age 25 or later)

That leaves a lot of ages uninvestigated. Marriages that occur between 22-25, for example, are usually going to have kids before 30. What are the stats on those?

Some interesting numbers.

The percentage of households headed by single parents showed little variation from 1994 through 2006, at about 9 percent, up from 5 percent in 1970, according to the latest data on America’s families and households released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to Families and Living Arrangements: 2006, there were 12.9 million one-parent families in 2006 — 10.4 million single-mother families and 2.5 million single-father families.

Just over two-thirds (67 percent) of the nation’s 73.7 million children younger than 18 lived with two married parents in 2006. Also in 2006, there were an estimated 5.8 million stay-at-home parents: 5.6 million mothers and 159,000 fathers.

Other highlights:

* Average household size in 2006 was 2.57 people, down from 3.14 in 1970.
* Slightly more than one in four households (26 percent) consisted of a person living alone in 2006, up from 17 percent in 1970.
* About 5.7 million children, or 8 percent of the total, lived in a household that included a grandparent in 2006. The majority of these children (3.7 million) lived in the grandparent’s home, and of these, about 60 percent had a parent present.
* Among the 13 million children 15 to 17, about 2.3 million were working, and of these, 2.2 million worked part time.
* In 2006, 33 percent of males and 26 percent of females 15 and older had never married, up from 28 and 22 percent in 1970.
* The majority of men and women in 2006 had been married by the time they were 30 to 34 (71 percent), and among men and women 65 and older, 96 percent had been married.

It doesn't give detailed breakdowns but you can reasonably assume a significant fraction of the 12.9 million single parent families will be under 25.

[Cairber]

I am not sure how this applies to my question or the debate. I am sure that there are many single moms who are below 25 years of age, but a significant question would be 'how old were they when they got married?' and 'how old where they when they had kids?' If the argument is that you should wait until 30 to have kids and that marriages under the age of 25 are risky ventures at best, how do stats on divorce, kids, etc for the age of 18 do anything to support that? Sure, it's one age group that the premise is 'proven' for, but many ages for not accounted for.

Even looking at single moms who are now 22, 23, etc would not seem to do anything to support the argument unless there is some investigation of how old they were when they married and how old they were when they had kids.

I would agree that marriage below the age of 20 seems risky in these studies that have been posted, but why do 20-25 seem to get ignored?

I apologize if I am not making sense here; I will think on another way to word my question. (i edited to try and clarify)

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I would agree that marriage below the age of 20 seems risky in these studies that have been posted, but why do 20-25 seem to get ignored?

I apologize if I am not making sense here; I will think on another way to word my question. (i edited to try and clarify)

You were just misinterpreting my original post, in which I noted (though in retrospect didn't make clear) that there's a decline curve toward 25 from 20, so those ages aren't ignored; they have a higher divorce rate than 25 and a lower one than 20. So it is much better to get married at 24 than 23 and so on. But things don't level off at a minimum risk of first marriage ending in divorce until age 25. Note that the "first marriage" part is very important as second marriages are up to 60% likely to end in divorce, and third marriages, 75% likely to end in divorce. That's why the divorce rate is 50% even though only 33% of first marriages end in divorce, the people who do see their first marriage end in divorce almost invariably end up marrying and divorcing over and over again.

[Uraniun235]

Why is this "move out with 18" so strong with some people here?
Given the German school system, with 18 I was still in my last stages of school and couldn't just move out.
My mother never pushed me out and I left at around 22 because it was easier to go to the university from the new flat. And I know a lot people who lived at home around that time and it was never a big deal. Most parents seem to have the feeling they need to give their kids the best support they can give, including housing. I would say parents who pushed their kids out at 18 would come across as somewhat cold and uncaring.

As for legalities, my father was legally required to pay for my first education up to 27 after divorce, not just until 18.

I think a lot of it is an American cultural assumption that if you're living with your parents into your twenties, you're either emotionally stunted and over-dependent on your parents, or just being lazy.

[Lonestar]

Why is this "move out with 18" so strong with some people here?
Given the German school system, with 18 I was still in my last stages of school and couldn't just move out.
My mother never pushed me out and I left at around 22 because it was easier to go to the university from the new flat. And I know a lot people who lived at home around that time and it was never a big deal. Most parents seem to have the feeling they need to give their kids the best support they can give, including housing. I would say parents who pushed their kids out at 18 would come across as somewhat cold and uncaring.

As for legalities, my father was legally required to pay for my first education up to 27 after divorce, not just until 18.

Interestingly enough, I don't think anyone here is stating "throw them out at 18 no matter what", myself and others have had cavaets like "going to college" and "making transition" in there. It's the permanent or semi-permanent "I should be allowed to stay with my folks indefinitely until some undefined point in the future because life is hard!" crowd that is bothering me.

[Broomstick]

That's because of our fucked up health "system", and the better prenatal care only applies to women who have decent, private insurance - which is getting to be a smaller slice of the pie.

It still comes off to me as your basically advocating that I shoulder the burden and encourage my children to get artificial insemination at age 20 or something.

Uh... no.

In fact, I don't advocate artificial insemination or single parenthood. There are situations where they may be valid, even good, alternatives, but they are very much the exception and not the rule.

Please do not distort my argument - I advocate women start having children between 20-29, NOT "at age 20".

I prefer they be a stable partnership with another adult.

Of course, there are no guarantees in life. You could be 25 in a wonderful marriage to someone with a six figure income, and it could all come crashing down around your ears due to said person's death or a natural disaster. After which you muddle along as best you can because that's what people do.

What I am saying is that if having biological children is very important to a woman - and to many women it very much is - then ideally she should get going with this in her 20's. That's best from a biological standpoint. Society, of course, while claiming to be pro-children, is very much anti-parenting in fact as demonstrated by our shitty to non-existent parental leave, lack of social safety nets, appalling lack of universal health care, and various other atrocities.

Young marriages largely don't work, and one's maturity is certainly not going to be sufficient until after the age of twenty-five for any kind of relationship; god knows I learned that the hard way in my prior relationships.

That is YOUR experience - yet my parents married before 25 and spent nearly 60 years together. I married before 25 and I'm at 20 years and counting. My sister the doctor married for the second time before 25 and that marriage is going on 30 years. In fact, the only one of us who married past 25 weathered an ugly divorce several years ago.

I suspect there's more at work here than just the age at marriage. "Maturity" occurs at wildly differing ages for people. Some families will encourage true independence and maturity at an early age. Others will foster dependence well into adulthood.

I'm not disputing your statistics, they are real. But you shouldn't raise your children as statistics but as individuals, some of whom may defy the statistics. By all means, encourage them to higher education and careers, but be prepared for the one that decides to settle down and have children early.

Another maxim I consider vital to raising responsible children is that you should never let them outnumber you--one that I'm actually far more strict about than the age of having children. Raising more than two children at once probably will result in some being uninterested in education and so on, because you don't have the time to devote yourselves fully to nurturing and guiding them to achieve their full mental development.

Excuse me? So you're saying that because my parents had four children at least two of us were automatically neglected? Or that we were uninterested in education? (with 9 degrees among 4 children, and one of them working on yet another one, that sort of defies logic here)

It most certainly IS possible to raise more than two at once. I agree that in today's world two per couple is not an unreasonable ideal - just be aware that triplets can occur naturally, and birth control is not 100% reliable, and not everyone who finds herself accidentally pregnant will opt for abortion, even if they're a pro-choice atheist such as my mother.

You also seem to be assuming that any girl child (or indeed, any child) you have will want to pursue higher education, or have the capacity to pursue an advanced degree. That is not always the case. Have you considered what you would do it you had a child that simply did not have the mental power to be a PhD or pursue an intellectually demanding career?

There are plenty of collegiate professions which are not particularly intellectually demanding.

So vocational training is not an option for your children? Having children THEN going to college (assuming a stable financial situation) is not an option? You're not very flexible, are you?

If your hypothetical daughter decides to marry at 20 and start having kids, putting her further education on hold what are you going to do? Aside from being furious at her rebelliousness?

Focusing, tenderly, on two very young children and making sure to foster their development each step of the way will provide the most straightforward way of avoiding that situation. And should they be incapable even then, pursuit of a stable union job will necessarily occupy most of their 20's anyway.

Why would you think that a "stable union job" - by which I assume you mean trade or factory work - would occupy a decade? What if they go into the military at 18, then marry at 20?

Children having a habit of growing up to be individuals with their own opinions. At a certain point you just have to accept that they've planned a different course in life than you expect. I'm surprised you don't internalize that, given some of the curve balls you've thrown your own family.

And, actually, you don't have to have your children close together, especially if you start young. A five year separation, even six, has merit.

If you had expressed that scenario as "tendency" or "increases the chances" I would have let it slide, but no, it is not guaranteed.

Perhaps not, but I want my children to genuinely be able to appreciate the world.

Just don't try to force them too hard into a mold. As I said, kids have a way of surprising you, of going off on tangets, and generally being contrary in some respects.

Do you see me taking it as anything other than deathly serious in this thread, exactly?

Actually, in some respects I think you're taking it a little TOO seriously.

I'd just love to hear why you think a stable relationship before 25 has any real chance of forming on a statistically significant level.

Experience from my own family, where long term stable marriages exist where the two partners married in their early 20's.

I don't disagree that a lot of marriages end in divorce. I do, however, think you're confusing statistics with destiny. Frankly, some marriages are so terrible they SHOULD be terminated - Dr. Sister's first one lasted six months, and thank goodness they had the sense to end it then, they never should have gone through with the wedding in the first place. Fortunately they didn't have religious hang ups about divorce, which enabled them to correct their mistake and get on with their lives. As proof - her second marriage is 30 years and counting. Part of the problem is people getting married for the wrong reasons, and staying married due to bullshit like religious prohibitions on divorce.

It's just wiser to wait. And I see you completely ignored my observations that if the social network for mothers in the US was better that my advice would change, or if I was living in a different country. I guess that wasn't what you wanted to think about, was it? Even though you yourself admit that the reason for poor prenatal care in 20 year olds is due to a lack of UHC.

Oh, I didn't ignore it - but a woman who is 22 can't wait 10 or 20 or 30 years for this country to change if she wants to have kids at what is biologically the best age window. I think it's appalling, the current state of these things in the US, but you have to deal with reality as it is, even while trying to make it better. I'm not going to question a woman who chooses to delay child bearing to her 30's, I DO want her to be fully informed of potential consequences of doing so.

This isn't about parenting being less valuable, Broomstick. It's about children being so important, so very important, that it's better not to have them at all than to have them when you're unprepared!

You know, most conceptions are to some degree accidental, you know that, right? Birth control is never 100%. Not everyone will opt for an abortion when birth control fails. Waiting until everything is "perfect" is pointless because perfection never arrives. Children need a good environment, not a perfect one.

You're nurturing an entirely new sapience into the world. That's extremely, deeply serious work, to be approached with patience, tenderness, and a serious reverence for the scale of your task, which will indeed continue for the next thirty years and give you precious little in the way of breaks.

No, it lasts a lifetime. Assuming you are a halfway compentent parents you NEVER stop nurturing your children, although the form of your support certainly does change over time. That's the reason that, when my nephew who was fully adult, on his own, and self-supporting had his car accident and was lying in a coma my sister dropped everything and ran to his side. That's why when my Dr. Sister had to have a Cesarean in her early 30's her mom went to Buffalo and spent two weeks caring for both her daughter and her grandchildren.

Parenting doesn't stop at 18 or 20 or 25 or 30. It lasts forever. Or at least as long as you keep breathing.

And that level of commitment to their children is something which most women younger than thirty cannot muster.

Oh, bullshit - you do great disservice to many young parents, both female and male. I'll grant you, in past generations a better job was done preparing people to have children and be adults before 25. Our society infantilizes what should be fully grown adult humans. Of course, encouraging people to move far away from their parents doesn't help - in the old days the grandparents would customarily provide advice and guidance (along with some babysitting) to new parents. A lot of families have lost that, and it's to our detriment as a society.

[ArmorPierce]

Laws are derived from morals.

So I assume that you're also against universal health care are not moral responsibility of society at large even though those things exist in other countries because it doesn't exist in America?

And by the way, enabling bad behavior isn't "taking care of your children". Helping your kid through college or making a transition isn't a bad thing, and shouldn't be seen as one. Allowing your kids to live with you until some undefined point in the future is a bad thing.

What bad behavior is being enabled by having a kid stay home? I could understand if the kid was a complete bum doing nothing... you are stating that a child staying home into his 20s is a failure of a human being. WHY? Saving money on unnecessary things is bad? Is your world completely backwards where saving money is seen as a negative?! It's what more people should do. Your kind of thinking is why the average debt in America is well into the thousands range.

Interestingly enough, the people that I find moving out early are usually the fuck-ups... not people that are pursuing success in life.

You do realize you are just repeating what me and Aaron have been saying this entire thread, don't you?

"Wah Wah I don't want to do everythign possible to make me more marketable!"

I don't want to join the military/peace corps/job corps/move/become a graduate student, instead I'm going to continue to whine about how life has mistreated me instead of taking my fate into my own hands!

I am doing everything possible to make myself more marketable you twat. That's why I graduated with two majors and why I am saving money so that I can pay for things to further my marketability. I would not be able to save ANY money if I moved out. By staying home I am improving my marketability.

You "double-majored in a demanding subject and got a good GPA"? Good for you. What does that have to do with the price of beer?

Explaining that even though your anecdotes may have been just as bad that it is statistically worse for the general population of young people than it had been for previous generations in the latter part of the 20th century.

My response is:

"Yup, this dumbasses are whining about how life has mistreated them instead of taking their own fate into their own hands".

Oh yes... rugged individualism is all you need in life. As I mentioned before, what you suggest is the ideal course would deter me from 'taking my fate into my own hand.'

While kids can and should learn responsibility while growing up at home, MEN in their 20s who are DONE WITH COLLEGE and sitting around twiddling their thumbs while whining about how shitty their life has been is NOT teaching them responsiblity. It's teaching them that they can always camp out at Mom and Dad's indefinately.

Again you make all these statements like they are facts with out any supporting evidence. So every where else in the world where kids stay with their parents well into their adulthood is the norm are failures? Pooling in resources all the while increasing your marketability is a bad thing? You do realize that the current economic crisis is in a large part due to just that, right? People leaving home as soon as possible instead of pooling in their resources and going on to buy houses that they could not afford on their own. Please show me your evidence that if people stayed home things would be worse. No anecdotes this time because that's worth shit. Anyway you can continue screeching about 'young people these days' when it was the baby boomers living in excess that caused the troubles that we are facing today and young people are disproportionately facing.

[Surlethe]

Around two-thirds of all divorces, Cairber, are in marriages which were contracted before the age of 25. Only 24% of first marriages contracted from the age of 25 or older end in divorce... Yet 33% of first marriages end in divorce. Here's some hard figures, as you can see, 49% of 18 year olds who marry, end up divorced.. But for those over the age of 25, it drops to 24%. Statistically speaking, those who wait until age 25 to get married are up to half as likely to have the marriage end in divorce than those who contract a marriage beforehand. This obviously supports the idea that those who both marry before 25 and have children before 25 are essentially flipping a coin on whether or not they'll end up single mothers.

You don't have a valid conclusion: to infer "if I, in particular, marry before 25 and have children before 25, then I will have a 50% chance of being single mother" from the statistical evidence requires you to assume that you are statistically average. Making a particular prediction requires taking into account a host of individual factors that the general statistical picture obscures, such as the strength of the individuals' family/social network, the family background, the attitudes going into marriage, the level of commitment, each individual's history of relationships, how informed and decided each party is about future plans, the peoples' personalities, and so forth. For examples, see Cairber or myself.

[Lonestar]

So I assume that you're also against universal health care are not moral responsibility of society at large even though those things exist in other countries because it doesn't exist in America?

Why would I be against UHC?

What bad behavior is being enabled by having a kid stay home? I could understand if the kid was a complete bum doing nothing... you are stating that a child staying home into his 20s is a failure of a human being. WHY? Saving money on unnecessary things is bad? Is your world completely backwards where saving money is seen as a negative?! It's what more people should do. Your kind of thinking is why the average debt in America is well into the thousands range.

I've already mentioned a few caveats to MEN staying at home in their 20s. Sometimes shit happens, roger that. Staying home indefinitely, however, just teaches the children that they can camp out at mom and dad's indefinitely. I don't believe for a moment that a majority of the "1/3 under 35" in the OP staying home are paying into maintaining the household in any significant manner. They are just being leeches on their extended family so they can go spend their money for their own enjoyment, not "saving money".

(I might add that if they were "Saving money" they weren't paying into the household all that much. And no, doing the dishes while living rent-free doesn't count)

Interestingly enough, the people that I find moving out early are usually the fuck-ups... not people that are pursuing success in life.

As long as we're trading anecdotal stories, every single person I've met that stays at home are social defects who can't cut the strings and have never assumed direct responsibility for anything significant.

I am doing everything possible to make myself more marketable you twat. That's why I graduated with two majors and why I am saving money so that I can pay for things to further my marketability. I would not be able to save ANY money if I moved out. By staying home I am improving my marketability.

You are so full of shit. Joined the military? Job corps? Americorps/Peacecorps? Did an internship between semesters? Grad student? I can think of users ON THIS BOARD who tried one or the other(or a combination thereof) of the above, and they did it without staying at mommy and daddy's.

Explaining that even though your anecdotes may have been just as bad that it is statistically worse for the general population of young people than it had been for previous generations in the latter part of the 20th century.

Is that the sound of a violin I hear playing?

Oh yes... rugged individualism is all you need in life. As I mentioned before, what you suggest is the ideal course would deter me from 'taking my fate into my own hand.'

How? Joining a -Corps or the military wouldn't do either. I don't think you know what exactly either entails.

Again you make all these statements like they are facts with out any supporting evidence. So every where else in the world where kids stay with their parents well into their adulthood is the norm are failures?

Congrats on failing to repeatably ignore the caveats I've thrown in there, helping out with college/making a transition etc. Isn't bad. It's this permanent living-at-home mentality that is. Especially when you have ambiguous benchmarks for when to leave.

Pooling in resources all the while increasing your marketability is a bad thing?

Buddy, there is nothing you have said that indicates you are taking part in a resource pool to increase you're marketability. You've made vague allusions to staying at home so you could afford to pay for your own health insurance. If the lion's share of your monthly revenue is NOT going into your household, then you ARE having a largely parasitic relationship with your parents.

You do realize that the current economic crisis is in a large part due to just that, right?People leaving home as soon as possible instead of pooling in their resources and going on to buy houses that they could not afford on their own.

(1)You seem deadset on ignoring the caveats that myself, Kendall, and others are throwing into the thread. AT NO POINT have we suggested to kick children out at the first opportunity. Not once in the fucking thread.

(2)AT NO POINT in this thread have we been proposing that kids "kicked out" should go off and buy gi-normous McMansions they can't afford. A few of us have even noted that we lived in shitty apartments in our early 20s(in my case, shitty barracks and open bay berthing on a ship), and bummer. Sometimes we can't all sit around praying for that magical 6-figure income to drop in our laps while freeloading off of mom.

Please show me your evidence that if people stayed home things would be worse. No anecdotes this time because that's worth shit. Anyway you can continue screeching about 'young people these days' when it was the baby boomers living in excess that caused the troubles that we are facing today and young people are disproportionately facing.

Are you honestly saying I can't reach a reasonable inference that the"1/3 of people under the age of 35 living with the folks", the progeny of one of the most financial successful generations in the history of this country, have a serious entitlement complex?

And I'm not a baby-boomer, I'm 27. Dumbass.

[une]

Language is actually one that I wouldn't be surprised if someone failed at even after getting a degree in it. Simply put, it's hard to easily teach because 90% of people have an absolutely wrong approach to learning a language that will cripple them at any level beyond 1st year of study levels of babytalk produced after long pensive meditation, and in many languages it exacerbates the problem even more than that (Spanish-English for instance the bad approach I'm referring to isn't as much a problem as say English-Japanese or Russian-Swahili).

Even that small minority (probably more than 10%, which is hyperbolic, but still a tiny bit) who do have the right approach probably have it by accident anyhow and don't realise the importance of what's letting them actually not be complete failures at foreign language.

Or I might be completely off, but I won't diverge into my thoughts on adult language acquisition here as it'd divert the thread.

I'm sorry for replying to this so late, but getting my lessons ready for the new term has kept me very busy.

Actually, the problem I had with my school wasn't just the approach, but that the expectations for students were very low. The head of the Japanese department was of the opinion that four years of study wasn't enough time to learn Japanese even to the intermediate level and structured the whole curriculum around that idea.

The perfect example of this is how they taught Japanese characters. Most universities, those that take Japanese classes seriously at least, teach hiragana and katakana in the first month of Japanese 101 and then move onto kanji. However, at my alma mater teaching hiragana and katakana took all of Japanese 101 and kanji wasn't even introduced until Japanese 102. When kanji was introduced it was taught so slowly that after 3 years of Japanese study, students were only expected to know about 500 kanji total. After reaching 500 kanji, they stopped teaching it.

Seriously, they just stopped. My professor said, "You only need to know 500 kanji to recognise 80% of the kanji in a newspaper. So we'll stop here."

I could go on and on, but I'll stop here.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm conceding this thread, since I don't know what the argument is about anymore. What I should have just answered when Broomstick first came charging in here was that, yes, I'd financially support my daughters and grandkids without reservation if they have them before 30, or in the right circumstances before 35. What the hell else would I do with my money?

[Big Phil]

I'm conceding this thread, since I don't know what the argument is about anymore. What I should have just answered when Broomstick first came charging in here was that, yes, I'd financially support my daughters and grandkids without reservation if they have them before 30, or in the right circumstances before 35. What the hell else would I do with my money?

Considering the hellhole you think this world will be in a few years, why on earth would you entertain having children? I know we're way off on a tangent here, but I have no idea why you're even having this discussion.

[Mayabird]

Umm, Marina kinda can't have her own kids, but plans to adopt when she can. The kids are already born, but this way they have a better chance of being productive people in life, instead of the next generation of baby-ovens.

And while I'm here, a little asterisk to that advice from my mom. There's a good family history on both sides of women having kids even into their forties (granted, one my aunts born when my father's mother was 44 has Down Syndrome, but my mom was born when her mother was 40, and IIRC it's been the same back a few generations), and my mom personally had no trouble at all conceiving and giving birth to two kids in her mid-thirties, so my biological clock probably has a longer timer than average. Also I might have three kidneys but that has nothing to do with the argument or its tangents.