Empty nesters are sad to see their kids leave the house. They can be even more distressed when they return home
When Ellie Krieger’s daughter finished college and returned home in May as a way to save money before her next move, Krieger was thrilled to have her back. Still, in their child’s absence, she and her husband had become accustomed to their own rhythm.
“We enjoy each other’s company,” she tells Fortune. “We definitely missed her presence, but didn’t feel the sense of empty nesting in a lonely sort of way.” And her daughter, she says, “was finding her independence.”
Soon, Krieger, a nutritionist and cooking show host, realized that the three of them once again living together in their New York City apartment would take more adjusting than she’d realized—not only around sharing the bathroom and figuring out dinner plans, but around shifting rules of parenting.
“I’m losing sleep because my daughter’s not home yet,” she admits. Her daughter does text her late-at-night updates, but still, Krieger says, “I don’t fall asleep until she comes home, which could be 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. I check every half an hour and would be unhinged if she didn’t update me.”
“But I see this as my issue,” she notes.
“Most challenging is trying not to be reprimanding—trying not to say, ‘Why is your room a mess? Why is my house a mess?’ Just living in more chaos,” says Roberta—who is using her first name for privacy. Her two sons, 23 and 25, are back living at home with her and her husband after college. She’s also anxious when they’re out late at night, driving, and says that her and her husband’s own lack of privacy is a “drag,” especially when the sons have their girlfriends stay over.
“The best part is that I know he’s safe when he’s here,” Elizabeth, whose son just graduated from college and moved home indefinitely, tells Fortune. Elizabeth, who is also using her first name for privacy, says she has existential worry about his future. “He doesn’t seem to be very motivated to find something,” she says. “Plus I don’t think he even knows what he wants.”
These moms are not alone when it comes to balancing the highs and lows of having a child move back in after college. About a third of American young adults 18 to 24, or 57%, live with their parents, as compared with 53% in 1993, according to a recent Pew Research survey. And while 45% of those parents say the experience has been positive, that doesn’t mean it comes without a learning curve.
“It’s a reframing,” Mark McConville, an Ohio-based clinical psychologist and author of Failure to Launch: Why Your Twentysomething Hasn’t Grown Up…And What to Do About It, tells Fortune. “It’s ‘You are now an adult … and so we are now housemates as much as anything else.’” And even with the best of intentions on each side, he says, “There is a natural regression that occurs. You get annoyed that your 25-year-old leaves the dishes in the family room, and they get annoyed that you’re reminding them about their dishes in the family room.”
Readjusting to a child’s return is “going to be different in different families,” says Laurence Steinberg, psychology professor at Temple University and author of You and Your Adult Child. “Nobody knows what the rules are, and nobody knows how to do this well.”
Part of that is because it’s understandably difficult to change ways of interacting that developed when they were teens. “Your child has moved back home, but they didn’t turn the clock back on their own psychological development,” he says. “I think that you do have to grant them independence. But it’s going to be bumpy, because nobody really is accustomed to it.”
Below, some tips for making the transition easier.
Communicate with your adult child
“I think that having a conversation about expectations is really important,” Steinberg says, suggesting that, with dinner plans, for example, an adult child could commit to being at a certain number of family dinners weekly, and agree to give notice if plans change.
Basically, everyone has to figure out what they expect from one another, and then communicate it clearly.
McConville says that could require a bit of mental gymnastics. “So if you’re my 23-year-old daughter, and you’re going out until 3 in the morning, why would that be my business? Unless it involves you driving my car and you’ve been drinking. But I kind of sort out with parents: What really is your business? Which is not about parenting. It’s about your right to comfort.”
Regarding the issue of an adult kid staying out really late and it causing distress, as with Krieger, he would suggest engaging with the child and explaining, “‘This is my issue, it’s not about you. I don’t know how to not be awake and worrying when you’re out late. And if you would just send me a text or give me a phone call, I will be able to go to sleep.’ I would make an appeal to try to solicit that mutuality from that kid. To me, that’s a reasonable request.”
Reframe the perspective—and get past the stigma
If you’re still having trouble letting go, Steinberg suggests this: Imagine you are dealing with a friend or even an adult sibling.
“Would you put restrictions on whether she can go out? No, you wouldn’t,” he says. “If you’re having trouble as a parent, try to imagine that this is just an older sibling of yours or a friend who’s living with you, and treat them that way,” he says, admitting that it will be “tough” but possible.
Overall, says Steinberg, it’s helpful to understand that while grown kids living with parents hasn’t been “normative” in the U.S., it has been elsewhere, including in Italy and many Asian countries. “And for reasons that aren’t exactly clear—maybe because the United States values independence a lot—it’s sort of seen as kind of a failure … But I think that as it becomes more widespread, it’ll lose some of that stigma.”
Face the financial issue of supporting an adult child head-on
Steinberg says he is frequently asked how to deal with the uncertainty of having a grown kid at home. “They say, ‘How long is this going to go on? I hadn’t planned on supporting my 35-year-old daughter,’” he says.
The next inevitable question, he says, is, “‘If I’m helping to support my child financially, does that give me any say in how they spend the money?’ And I think it doesn’t. Although I think that if you are seeing your child living a life of luxury on your dime, it’s fine to say something like, ‘It doesn’t seem like you need as much support from us as you’re getting.’” He would stop short, though, of monitoring credit card statements.
McConville says parents often ask if they should continue paying for a grown child’s cell phone or gym membership—and if the kid is capable of working and paying for those expenses themselves, he says, “I tell them that the answer is no.” But, he adds, “how you go about changing the ground rules of your relationship, to me, is very, very important.”
A formula he suggests with parents is to first agree upon a specific, logical, far-enough away date for change that will be carved in stone. “It might be something like, ‘Well, you know, on September 15, you’re going to be 21 years old.’” There’s something about tying it to the calendar that tends to make the child more accepting, he says.
“Because my theory is there’s an inner voice that’s saying the same thing, like, ‘Oh shit, I’m going to be 21 and I’m just playing video games.’”
When to worry about your grown kid—and what to do
A bit of lagging or apprehension after college is natural. But red flags may include a young person having trouble job hunting, “managing their life,” or taking steps to change the situation. And it could all suggest depression, says Steinberg.
“If my child was gainfully employed in a career-related job, I wouldn’t worry at all,” he says. “And I would see the living arrangement as mainly the consequence of a financial decision, in which case it makes a lot of sense.” But if you do feel you have reason to worry, he suggests, communicate that “gently” and also “make it clear that it’s out of concern, like, ‘you don’t seem yourself lately. Is there something going on that you want to talk about?’” Consider suggesting therapy if you believe they’d speak more easily to someone who’s not their parent.
McConville believes it’s pretty clear when a child is truly stuck. He asks parents to think of their kid as a line on a graph, and to think about the direction of that line. Is it ascending, even very gradually? Or is it flatlining? Or descending? For the latter, he says, “their behavior patterns are quite evidently not productive—staying up maybe playing video games or watching YouTube until 4 in the morning, sleeping until 1 or 2 in the afternoon.”
To address that and encourage change, he suggests recommending an abstract principle over a specific piece of advice.
“Kids don’t want to argue with abstract principles. So you don’t say, ‘You have to get a job by next Friday.’ What you say is, ‘If you’re going to live with us, you must be doing something constructive.’ That’s a very broad brush, but kids don’t argue with it because it just makes such obvious good sense.” Make it clear that anything constructive—whether working or taking courses or volunteering—is acceptable.
“That is actually a method of diffusing the power struggle,” McConville says. “And then you have to stand by it as a non-negotiable.”
Everything is temporary—and sometimes it’s great
In general, says Steinberg, “it’s uncomfortable for people to have negative feelings about their children.” In addition, he says, people don’t like uncertainty.
“You know when your kid comes home from college for the summer that, come September, they’re leaving. But when your kid moves back in after college because they can’t afford a place of their own, you don’t know when it’s going to end.” And further, if you think of it as being something that’s not normal, “then I think it’s natural for you to feel like, ‘I hope it ends,’” he says.
But it’s probably going to be temporary. And in the meantime, it could be wonderful: Remember that, according to Pew, 45% of parents—and 55% of adult children— found that living under the same roof has had a positive influence on their relationship. That tracks with what Steinberg heard from students who moved back home with parents during the pandemic.
“It wasn’t where they wanted to be living, but it wasn’t as bad as they thought,” he says. “Many got to know their parents as people—and that made them closer.”
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