{"id":877,"date":"2013-08-29T12:51:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T12:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/boomerangs-and-doubling-up.html"},"modified":"2013-08-29T12:51:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T12:51:00","slug":"boomerangs-and-doubling-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/boomerangs-and-doubling-up.html","title":{"rendered":"Boomerangs and “doubling up”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In the spring of 2007, 17% of all households were \u201cdoubled up.\u201d\u00a0 In spring 2011, that percentage had climbed to 18.3%.\u00a0 That\u2019s according to the census data<\/a>, and is occasionally cited as\u00a0further evidence of economic hardship and the inability of young adults to get a good start in life.<\/p>\n

(Sometimes, the concept of being \u201cdoubled up\u201d is also used as a definition of homelessness \u2014 if a family loses their apartment and stay with their parents temporarily, they\u2019re\u00a0\u201cdoubled up\u201d and, consequently, homeless.\u00a0 According to the National Center for Homeless Education<\/a>, the NCLB definition of a \u201chomeless child\u201d includes those \u201cchildren and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason.\u201d\u00a0 On the other hand, the official HUD definition of homeless<\/a> includes those who are doubled-up only if they\u2019re living in an unstable situation, in which the parent not only isn\u2019t on the lease or title, but also has moved twice in 60 days.)\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The conventional wisdom is that being \u201cdoubled up\u201d is a Bad Thing.\u00a0 Young adults will end up like the young men of Italy, mama\u2019s boys who live at home more-or-less indefinitely, are sapped of all motivation to find a home of their own, and are no longer marriage material, let alone father material, driving down the birth rate.\u00a0 (In their defense, the mama\u2019s boys themselves would say that they live at home because they can\u2019t find a job!) <\/p>\n

So I was very interested to see Eve Tushnet\u2019s defense of \u201cdoubled-up\u201d arrangements in the Weekly Standard<\/a>. She cites a recent Pew Research report<\/a> on young adults living at home, whose overall percentage, in the age group of 18 \u2013 31 year olds, has increased from 32% to 36% from 2007 to 2012, and cites some harm in our mentality criticizing the live-at-homes: <\/p>\n

This is perhaps the biggest negative effect of living at home these days: It postpones marriage and, in many cases, childbearing. Today, young adults believe that they can\u2019t get married\u2014that it\u2019s wrong to get married\u2014before they\u2019ve achieved economic independence. For reasons that can be crudely summarized as \u201cterror of divorce,\u201d young adults believe that it\u2019s only morally acceptable to get married once you\u2019ve undergone an extensive period of finding yourself and attaining financial stability. <\/p>\n

The belief that young adults must be able to live independently before they can marry is new, and it\u2019s damaging. At the pregnancy center where I volunteer, about half of the women intend to marry their children\u2019s father eventually. What are they waiting for? A steady job, an escape from welfare and charity, a sense of financial solid ground. But if a woman names one specific goal she must attain before she can marry, 9 times out of 10 that goal is an apartment of her own: moving out from under Mom\u2019s roof. So she puts her name on the years-long waiting list for Section 8 subsidized housing, and she applies for yet another part-time job, and she goes back to community college, and she hopes that her relationship with her baby\u2019s father will survive. Without marriage, it usually doesn\u2019t. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the New Urbanism that yesterday\u2019s End of the Suburbs book (attempted to) explore is connected to this: in older neighborhoods, homes were well-suited to multi-generation living arrangements, with granny flats, apartments above the garage, even three-flats in which the younger generation lived in one of the flats. My grandparents had such an apartment as a wing of their house, though they had a tenant instead of a family member living there. Now, suburbs have, with rare exceptions, thouroughly zoned away such multi-generational living except as an elderly parent or un-independent child living as a dependent, in a bedroom, without any semi-independent living space appropriate for people who are, well, semi-independent. <\/p>\n

Of course, on the other hand, in a very dense urban area, semi-independent living spaces don\u2019t exist either, when a family rents or owns a single flat in an apartment building, as is the case in a typical European city center. So this isn\u2019t a matter of urbanism vs. suburbanism but of zoning restrictions. (And if above-garage apartments became common, you\u2019d have complaints about excessive on-street partking that suburbs dislike \u2014 around here, overnight on-street parking isn\u2019t even permitted except temporarily for guests.) <\/p>\n

Fun fact: the Pew site above links to a report on European multi-generational housing<\/a>. Here\u2019s the actual PDF<\/a>. And, yes, 48% of Italian men ages 25 \u2013 34 live at their parents\u2019 homes, as do 55% of Greek young men, and even higher levels of some former Communist bloc countries. The lowest rates? The Scandinavian countries, which are significantly lower than everywhere else.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the spring of 2007, 17% of all households were \u201cdoubled up.\u201d\u00a0 In spring 2011, that percentage had climbed to 18.3%.\u00a0 That\u2019s according to the census data, and is occasionally cited as\u00a0further evidence of economic hardship and the inability of young adults to get a good start in life. (Sometimes, the concept of being \u201cdoubled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBoomerangs and "doubling up"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the spring of 2007, 17% of all households were "doubled up."  In spring 2011, that percentage had climbed to 18.3%.  That's according to the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/boomerangs-and-doubling-up.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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