Man Lives With Mother, Film at 11

I am a 25-year-old living with his mother, the walking stereotype of a millennial. Raised on unearned parental affirmation, equipped with elevated self-esteem, we graduated from college only to face the most dismal economy since the Great Depression. One result, according to a 2012 Pew study, was that 36% of the nation’s 18- to 31-year-olds were bunking in their parents’ homes.

They call us basement kids and nest dwellers.

But it doesn’t always happen that way. …

Four months later, I was hosting my first Christmas. A few hours after dinner, my parents dropped the bomb: My mother’s job search had ended in Los Angeles. She’d be moving in with me.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but I immediately fell ill. Bedridden for a week, battling a 102-degree fever, I desperately tried to think of a way out.

But I knew my parents needed help with the loan payments, and I couldn’t bring myself to move out and leave my mom to navigate Los Angeles alone. (A lifelong resident of suburbs, she once had shown me a parking ticket and asked if she needed to pay it.)

This past February, my mother moved in. We share a place next door to a pair of gospel singers and within earshot of a weekly mariachi dance party.

For the past year, my independence has been in dignified retreat.