The fact that we have deincentivized marriage is a huge issue. Married couples are usually wealthier but everything that used to push people to do that has been roadblocked by govt.
Sure but getting 20 people to live together for an extended period of time is logistically difficult. Two people who already want to be/live together can more easily commit to long economic partnerships like buying a house. It's important to note that while people have been getting married for a long time, having two incomes is relatively new and only recently the norm since women were discouraged from entering the workforce until WW2 and up until the 70s.
Some argue there is a "Two-Income Trap" where having two incomes did make certain things more affordable for the middle class like housing but eventually it simply drove up the price of housing & other goods. So now a dual income is simply normal and only having a single income is a disadvantage. Therefore it's not super surprising to see single young adults moving back home.
In certain super high CoL areas like the Bay Area we do see a bit of a trend towards 3+ communal living (post college) in the form of group homes. While this decreases the burden of real estate prices, in most cases residents are not building up equity in the home since they rent. In some cases they may be saving enough to offset the lack of equity but that's probably not very common.
Single income families are a very recent aberration that covers a tiny slice of human history. In medieval Europe for example everyone gathered the harvest.
It’s largely an outgrowth of extreme prosperity and urbanization.
> Marriage does not mean both couples will be working.
That's true. But a full-time homemaker usually generates economic value that saves money in a long litany of ways. Staying home with kids saves on childcare. Being able to cook meals saves on eating out. Laundry and cleaning saves money on housekeeping costs. Not to mention all of this labor is accumulated tax-free (i.e. if you work to pay for some expense, you have to pay tax on the income first.)
> Conversely, you don't need to be married to be in a relationship with two incomes.
You absolutely don't. But the statistics are unambigious. Unmarried couples are substantially more likely to split than married ones. The dissolution of a household tends to be an expensive affair that permanently impedes wealth accumulation.
Not to mention that because of this, unmarried couples are substantially less likely to join their finances. Therefore they tend to get significantly worse deals than couples with joined finances. For example two-incomes who jointly sign a mortgage can get a much better APR, than when the mortgage is in one person's name.
Yeh and people are givin that for a college degree yet that is associated with wealth even though married highschool educated people out earn single college educated people.
Forget what the government does its generally easier to build wealth with two people than one. Theres more flexibility to prevent failure.
I'm sorry, but aren't you pointing out the obvious? Of course 2 people make more money than one. Are you saying that the individual that is married makes more than a single college educated person?
Also I'd question that statistic - the older you are the more likely you are married and more likely you are further in your career.
Yeh but what you think I am saying is a married high school educated person make more as a couple than a single unmarried college educated person. Except thats not true. The married college educated man alone makes more than the single unmarried college educated women/man typically.
You do get tax breaks, and a number of other benefits (in particular related to having children). You also get a tax break on a certain amount of paid interest on a house purchase.
Plus, there's the whole " allowed to be next to your loved one in the hospital" thing that's overlooked until it's needed.
So, no 40 acres, but there are benefits beyond two incomes.
I have no idea what tax breaks I'm supposed to have gotten from being married. Our collective taxes went up after being married. Is the tax thing folklore from the era when only one partner worked? And mortgage interest being deductible has nothing to do with marriage.
I (well, We) got one. It's going to vary based on your number of dependents and your tax bracket. Tax law being so super-easy-to-understand here in the states. /s
WRT mortgages, given some of the other threads in this discussion pointing out that something like 70% of millennial homeowners were married, it certainly seems relevant.
EDIT: It looks like it really depends on the income levels of both parties. Two well paid professionals will probably see a penalty filing jointly, whereas a single professional income will likely see a benefit.
Sure doesn't. My wife and I made the same amount of money, within 1% of each other, when we got married. We both changed out deduction from single to married. Tax bill came around and we owed 10k.
Even the article admits the data contained therein is more an interesting point than an actual decision criteria for anyone getting married:
>Few couples base their marriage decisions on the tax consequences that may result.
I'm willing to bet the number of 20-somethings that have "tax considerations" deciding their marital status can be measured in basis points. Furthermore, nothing I see there is a "new penalty", while the numbers have varied over time, those rules look to be exactly the same as they were 20 years ago.
First, this has been around for a long time. So it has nothing to do with the topic at hand which is recently less people getting married.
Second, you are nuts if you think this has ANY significant impact on people getting married.
Third, you can file married filed separately.. so while I'm not up on all the details of that, you can probably avoid the simple impacts it might have.
To be clear, I don't have a strong opinion about this, and I'm not making a claim that marriage is a good or a bad thing, I'm just answering your question.
The usual argument that says that the government disincentivized marriage is through social safety nets like welfare, particularly ones that pay more for single parents without a spouse in the house, as well as mechanisms like child support payments.
The usual argument that says society has disincentivized marriage is basically through access to sex. There used to be a culture of enforced monogamy, where there was enormous social pressure to be married before having sex, and especially before living with one another. Now, that stigma is largely gone, so the incentive to get married has diminished substantially.
Again, not making a value judgement, just answering the question.
There are strong incentives in higher income brackets for tax purposes and such.
In the lower/minimum wage sphere, marriage can have the opposite effect. You can loose access to various government programs such as food stamps because suddenly your family income counts.
I've heard that support for single parents and low earning single parents has been increased in recent decades, which has led to lower rates of marriage and subsequent erosions to the general fabric in that socioeconomic sphere.
So a few things the government does is favor oneside in divorce and family courts. They will give housing and money through programs to keep people single via section 8 and foodstamps programs. They incentivize single motherhood by allow fathers to be replaced by government checks.
All these things whether good or bad makes it less likely people settle for pairing together like they typically would have.
I worked with a bunch of "millennials" at my previous job (the entire social media team). This is anecdotal, but, yeah, a lot of them were worried about having a stable career first before they could commit to marriage.
I think it would be helpful and you wouldn't be getting negative reactions if you actually posted some examples. I can't think of a single thing government has done to "roadblock marriage".
Under the Obama administration marriage benefits were extended to same-sex couples EXPANDING the government's push for more people to be married.
> I can't think of a single thing government has done to "roadblock marriage".
Land use restrictions, housing regulations, and zoning laws substantially increase housing costs. Affordable family formation is the major driver of marriage rates. Housing costs are the primary component of affordable family formation.
The marriage rate isn't different enough across these states to justify the argument of housing. In fact, most places where housing is cheapest isn't the place where marriage rates are higher than the national rate.
Oregon and Washington outperform many southeastern states, in fact they surpass every southeastern state, according to the US census. And while N-E and CA do have a lower marriage rate, it isn't that much lower.
There are economic efficiencies there that are lost. Also makes people make longer term decisions. That said it does reduce the liquidity of the labour pool by causing the “two-body problem”.
Because married people throughout time are wealthier. Married people make more money, married millenials own 70% of all the houses millenials have bought, married people are half as likely to be in proverty. If you have to choose a way for people to get wealthy between a college degree and marriage marriage would be the better decision by far.
Marriage does not make people wealthy at all. Instead, wealth makes people more likely to marry.
People with real issues, whether mental or criminal or sick etcetc both don't marry and have significantly smaller income. People with issues divorce more often and have smaller income too.
Except for the fact that we know people with lower income become wealthier than peoeple with lower incomes. And we know that the poverty rate for married lower income people is twice as low as the poverty rate for singles.
> Except for the fact that we know people with lower income become wealthier than peoeple with lower incomes. And we know that the poverty rate for married lower income people is twice as low as the poverty rate for singles.
We dont know that.
Unmarried lower income people are more likely to have criminal record, more likely to have mental health issues, more likely to be the ones having hard time to keep jobs, more likely to have drugs related issues. Among women, those who got pregnant before marriage and much harder time to get any money and also are less interesting romance target for guys.
People nowdays see marriage as something you do once you are set by your standars and that strongly biases who marry.
The fact that a college educated person earns less than what you claim is a mentally unwell, non job having drug addict is sad but no all to unobvious. Why would you think a teaching degree or psych degree major would earn more over their lifetime than a plumber or construction worker.
The fact is single women benefit the most financially from marriage since single uneducated and college educated women have a much higher than average poverty rate.
Even if I assume you have stats to back that up, don't you think there's an itsy bitsy chance you're operating with a huge correlation / causation fallacy here? Does getting married automatically make you more wealthy, or are people who are already wealthy more likely to get married? It seems almost obvious that if there is any causation, it's in the latter direction.
Married people are much more financially secure and thus capable of investing in the future. They can not only share expenses, but they amortize risks and can share trade-offs. This is borne out statistically (https://www.city-journal.org/html/why-marriage-good-you-1200...), but also is painfully obvious on inspection. If you’re going to start a business with someone, would you rather do it with a Partnership Agreement in place, or an unwritten “we’ll work together long as it’s convenient for both of us” understanding?
A marriage of equals does not work. If every decision has to get a consensus it leads to ample opportunity for deep resentment, stress and a lower quality of life overall. One parter must be the dominant one.
Well we have well enforced laws against that which should doubtless remain unchanged. I’m saying the expectation going into a marriage should be that one partner is dominant so there are no power struggles much like a hierarchy in a company.
We have laws against that, but not much well enforced. Most of domestic violence happen in private without witness. Even if aggressor is removed temporary, they live together so it is easy to retaliate after. Plus, it is shameful to be victim of domestic abuse. So, reports are few and come in too late and it is hard to prove they are true.
Plus, the enforcement is hard. And even harder since domestic violence rates among cops are higher then those of general population.
> I’m saying the expectation going into a marriage should be that one partner is dominant so there are no power struggles much like a hierarchy in a company.
Aaaand this is literally what leads to abuse. See, the perfect compliance is not possible nor actually human. The one dominator is bound to do dumb or egoistic decisions here and there. Or decisions that ignore needs of partner due to ignorance. With partner being submissive and not providing feedback, dominating person is bound to become worst and worst.
Plus, actual humans have real need for own agency. And when that agency manifests, again, the one who feels entitled to rule it all becomes abusive.
Well anecdotally the only good marriages I’ve seen adhere to the above. The partner provides feedback but have no say in the final decision. In a marriage one person needs to be submissive. I’ve been married for more than a decade and we’ve never been happier. Individual agency is only important if you don’t have a community based aspect to your life that respects you explicitly for the larger good your submissive role plays for a better outcome from a community perspective. People need respect, individual agency is just a route to accomplishing that.
You are happy and that is all that matters? Yeah, exactly the issue with that setup. It is you first, then some nonsense about why other has to sacrifice for community.
Ah yes, like how the federal government makes you pay taxes on the "value" of health insurance when you insure your common law partner but not when you're married ? Come on.
I agree in that married couple are normally muti-income households which makes them wealthy
I disagree that it should be the role of government to incentivize or decentivize marriage
We can resolve this by allowing people to form their own "households" for tax purposes and it should not matter if they are related, married, sleeping with each other, etc.
If they live in the same house, they should be treated as a household and be taxes according to that (or individually if they desire)
I would like to see an end to all government regulations on interpersonal relationships.
My heart goes out to the young adults forced to continue to live in abusive family situations due to economic instability right now. Achieving financial independence from my parents probably saved my life as a young adult, and I worry for young people in bad situations who will now have trouble getting away.
Yes, specifically adult children. Mooching off parents, doing drugs, on unemployment, etc. I'm specifically thinking of Live PD episodes; luckily nothing in my direct experience.
The US is a gerontocracy. We are going to end up exactly like Japan, a whole generation of young people passing on kids due to economic and environmental stress with no-one to replace them.
The stats tell the story. Young people are the largest part of the workforce[0], but we work for lower wages and have a TINY amount of the wealth in comparison to older generations[1].
The number of my friends who are hamstrung by massive student loan debt is sickening. The US is bleeding my generation dry.
That's true for the established wealthy (and generally white) population but the US is bolstered by strong birth rates in minority populations and among recent immigrants so it has a much healthier demographic future than somewhere like Japan.
> we work for lower wages and have a TINY amount of the wealth in comparison to older generations
Not to detract from the point about student debt, which is absolutely on point, but isn't it expected than younger people would always hold less wealth and have lower salaries on average than older people who have been working for decades longer and have that much more work experience?
Right, I'm not disputing that. I just think that pointing to the raw numbers might paint a misleading picture in the sense that the disparities aren't necessarily an ageist injustice, but rather that the gap increase might be better explained by factors like increasing amounts of student debt, bad minimum wage raise policies, etc - many of which are factors that are actionable at a government level.
Wages for equivalent experience have held steady or declined for many Americans over the past 40 years. Women are making more (but more are part of the workforce, plus efforts to ensure equal pay). Top earners are doing better. But the average has seen stagnant wages while major costs (such as homes) have been going up faster.
So a 25 year old, today, doing the same job as their 25 year old parent/grand parent in 1980 is worse off at the same point in their career. This doesn't bode well when people like my parents and grandparents were relatively easily and affordably able to acquire homes and actually start building wealth, while the current generation of young workers are unable to build wealth.
It's not about a comparison between the youth and the now older workforce (which would be a moronic comparison). It's about comparing the youth to what the older workforce had 40 years ago. Or even 30.
this! i have always thought so too. especially since quality of life has risen so much since..population has doubled globally in my lifetime and i have seen the world change...internet, smart phones, eradication or reduction of poverty, disease, illnesses, better health, more equality, all things hedonistic. the world is a better place. much much better place. i am grateful for every single day and i hope it becomes better.
the previous generation did so much with so little. with current attitudes, i dont know how life would become better in the next hundred years. is the defeatism due to not ever having to 'truly' struggle? if people had given up after ww2(or after any of the world's catastrophes), where would we be now?
The millennial generation has made terrible decision egged on by the previous. No one needed all those degrees to begin with. Most are useless to the larger economy. That along with the choice to stay single longer has doomed this generation.
The millennials also made the terrible decision to enter the workforce during the worst economic crisis in a generation. And then to continue working for stagnant wages while costs of housing and healthcare skyrocket.
Millennials are forced by law to buy over priced healthcare that subsidizes the dying boomer generations. They are forced to pay into social security,but they will likely never see any of the returns.
This. All I heard growing up was "go to post-secondary." Zero concern for what the actual degree would be. Any degree would do.
Now, I'm a big believer in education and post-secondary. 100%. The top earners across the board are more educated than the lower half.
BUT: It depends on the degree. So many of my friends are still paying for degrees that went nowhere, and I'm in my mid-30s.
I've got 4 kids and my message to them is to keep their options open, figure out what kind of work they want to do for the rest of their lives, and get the right education for that. If they want to be an engineer, fantastic. University it is. But so many degrees lead to poor job prospects or low wages that do not in any way justify the cost. It's crazy town.
If the type of work you want to do doesn't pay especially well, that's fine. There's more to life than money. But don't go into debt over it.
I will say that I got a useful degree ( computer science ) from a university I could afford and have already paid off my debt.
I mostly agree, I don't know what people were thinking what was going to happen when they majored in underwater basket weaving.
I don't pretend know why people chose to go so deeply into debt. I do know a lot of smart people I respect made this decision, so it is more complicated than simply saying "screw the millennial."
However: There is now a mess that is damaging our society. When there is a fire going on, one does not stand around pointing fingers trying to figure out who started the fire. We put the fire out and figure the rest out afterwards. Millenial student debt is stifling their ability to build wealth, participate in the economy, and damaging their quality of life to the point they choose not to have children. I think this is a problem worth solving.
The fact that kids go for art in a state school that isn't renowned for their art program says yes.
There's nothing wrong with going for underwater basket weaving if you know and have a plan to do just that. The average college student just associates that student loans == "worry about it later!" && Student loan == "I'll get a 50-60k job out of college no problem!"
I'm sorry, but I disagree in so many ways. Do you know how a school becomes renowned? Even then, there are countless people who have thrived without pedigree, without renown, and taken a path less cut-and-dried. I dread a world where such a narrow path is prescribed and must be adhered to. Reminds me of the puritans.
The entire purpose of an arts education is exploration of humanity. Thank god people still naively pursue that endeavour.
To me it sounds like the problem actually lies in the systems of student loans, not people's spirit for venturing into the unknown of whether or not it will financially benefit them.
I would argue a traditional education in the humanities with the internet era is a moot point. You can do that without going into debt slavery via college loans. Instead of learning from a professor, watch some guy on youtube. Practice a lot. Make stuff. Join the literally endless communities that do the stuff you're doing.
The reason kids go to college is to get a good paying job. I hate to say it but if you're a kid who does not have affluent parents or don't live in an area where there actually are legitimate jobs in that field, it's 100% on you for doing that. I mean the opinion that those jobs don't exists isn't a stereotype for a reason. Students can get those jobs, but there most definitely aren't where they went to college typically. If you live in LA, Chicago, NYC; sure those could very well be viable career paths. In the middle of Idaho? Maybe you should reconsider who in Idaho is going to hire an artist outside of the small town that is their capital.
Sometimes reality needs to bite people who are incapable of making goals long term.
> I would argue a traditional education in the humanities with the internet era is a moot point. You can do that without going into debt slavery via college loans. Instead of learning from a professor, watch some guy on youtube. Practice a lot. Make stuff. Join the literally endless communities that do the stuff you're doing.
I would argue this is proof that you don't understand the nature of an education in the humanities. (For the record, I say this as an English major dropout who's working as a software developer)
> The reason kids go to college is to get a good paying job. I hate to say it but if you're a kid who does not have affluent parents or don't live in an area where there actually are legitimate jobs in that field, it's 100% on you for doing that. I mean the opinion that those jobs don't exists isn't a stereotype for a reason. Students can get those jobs, but there most definitely aren't where they went to college typically. If you live in LA, Chicago, NYC; sure those could very well be viable career paths. In the middle of Idaho? Maybe you should reconsider who in Idaho is going to hire an artist outside of the small town that is their capital.
I went because I wanted to learn something and dig a little deeper into life that wasn't available or remotely present in my rural working-class community, or from my non-affluent parents. I didn't finish so I don't have the pedigree, but I did live and learn a great deal, and it's paid dividends. I'm, oddly, precisely your example, but of a mode that you say doesn't exist.
It's also dishonest to propose that the only pursuit of humanities is to try and eek life out as an artist alone. I mean, I'm sure you value historians.
I have to admit I'm confused by the arbitrary limitations you're imposing on the way one must live out their life. A degree in a given field is not a declaration of intent, it's a mark of study. You can do whatever you want. Some roads have prerequisites for taking them, others don't. And sometimes still, there are roads that are yet uncut.
Maybe what you're really talking about is how easy or hard a given path might be and then associating that with some kind of right or wrong. Efficient path navigation is not the purpose of humanities study or works. It's about discovering what we do not discover through science. Not even science is the end, just another method of discovery. The tangents are the purpose, and reflecting on those in any number of ways is the meaning... leaving the path navigation efficiency algorithms to slime mould.
I'd say people in other places have it way easier. They don't fear bankruptcy when considering whether or not to get a health checkup. They don't pay the majority of their wage to have a decent livingspace. They pay less for food and overall have less cost of living. Poor people in the third world can eat decent meals (and they don't even need to cook it themselves) for almost nothing compared to the US. What do our poor have access to? I guess dollar menus at fast food chains.
So no, I don't think it's fair to say people in the US have it easy. You have it easy, and maybe the people around you do. But that means nothing to all the other people whose pain and suffering are invalidated by people like you just because they happened to be born on a piece of land that happens to be classified as "first world."
Look at tax/insurance burden in all these developed and aging countries. Most of that money is going towards paying off the older generations, their ailments and their debt, and it's still not enough, debt just keeps growing.
Then look at the tax/insurance burden of developing countries. Sure, these people earn nominally less, but they often live relatively better lives. They're living lives closer to what our boomer parents lived.
Real estate prices are a distraction. These are high because interest rates are low. It's probably not a good idea to buy real estate even if you can afford it.
You're definitely right, but it doesn't change that, at least from the inside, the parent comment seems to be accurately describing the cognitive dynamic. I'm married and in my 30s. We aren't planning to have kids, we have no assets, my wife still has student debt (epidemiology is a bad field if you plan to work in the public sector), and with my "good" insurance, I can't afford dental work that I need related to growing up in poverty.
Despite this, we have super comfortable lives, as you say. We've jumped from trailer park, meth country poverty to truly living like we're in the middle class, something I think is way harder to do in other countries. But kids? No. That looks like a ticket right back to where we started.
No we won't. The only people not having kids is the educated class. There are plenty of poor minorities with many kids. Japan does not allow widespread immigration like the us does.
Chiming in to say: This is me to a T!
I cannot afford children (or, more accurately: I cannot give children the life I want to give them). Houses are far too expensive to even dream about, and uncertainty in continued employment incentivizes me to just save all the money I can while living as cheaply as humanly possible.
It's not the best life, but at least I have some cash to fall back on when my at-will employment is terminated for no cause and I can't find a job for a couple years. Or maybe my carpal tunnel syndrome will drive me out of the (extremely competitive) job market.
Either way, I'm not going to spend more money than I need to so I can have at least some semblance of "stability". And I sure as hell am not raising another generation of wage slaves. This terrible way of life ends with me.
The degree to which housing restrictions create costs that fall disproportionately on the young is also important: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21154
Using a spatial equilibrium model and data from 220 metropolitan areas we find that these constraints lowered aggregate US growth by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009.
Most of the "income inequality" discourse in the U.S. is really a gloss on what should be housing discourse.
I have been taking care of my elderly mother, who would be vaguely defined as "not well" in the Southern sense of things, since my twenties. I did go into it with my eyes open, knowing the kinds of tradeoffs I was making. I could live alone, but this was a choice I made to help her.
However, I was unprepared in the extreme for the ambient hostility toward men who live with their mothers, no matter the reason. I do not attempt to date or anything near it (I have additional factors that would make dating ... unlikely ... already, and living with your mom is just gravy on top), nor do I "hit on" women, but there was a (to me) startling rate of women who, upon finding out my situation, make it abundantly clear that they would not date me, despite me not asking. I refer to this as "pre-jection."
I wonder if this sort of thing will continue, now that it is happening to a significantly larger segment of the population.
Most people suck. The silver lining is that you have a great bar for measuring them up against, to find the few that don't, should you decide to get back into the dating game. I'd work that fact in towards the end of a first meetup, since it would save both time and money.
I would say that you got unlucky so far, everybody struggles with something at some point in time, the kind of people worth keeping near know and respect that.
After multiple decades without so much as a kiss, I think "luck" as a factor can be moved to the bottom of the list of explanations.
Like I said, I went into it with my eyes open. I didn't expect anyone to give me a cookie or anything. It's just that the generalized hostility was unexpected.
I agree with you. In my experience, there is an infinitesimally small number of people interested in what I would consider healthy, kind, honest, fair relationships.
(Or at least, an infinitesimally small number that are not already in a long term healthy relationship. It may be that we've just missed the opportunity to meet the high quality people in our earlier years.)
I've had my share of relationships, and still date from time to time, but usually I find the experience disappointing.
> After multiple decades without so much as a kiss,
The answers you seek you will not find in Hacker News, I will not link to anything I do hope you encounter the solutions to your problems, as I did once myself after struggling with dating, some time ago.
I am a man living with my mother. My mother is relatively healthy, she can work, but she cannot afford to live on her own (even before the pandemic), so she lives with me and I pay the rent, and it has been this way for me since my twenties too. I am always extremely hesitant to tell anyone I am living with my mother, and yeah, it puts a freeze on dating to the point that I don't even attempt to date anymore either.
At least being men our dating prospects can actually improve the older we get, and for me I'll be pretty well off financially when I do live on my own, but that's small comfort in the present...
Just as an example: one gal asked about my living situation, with regards to roommates. I was forthright about it, gave a little "what can you do?" shrug. I was a little startled as her vocal tone immediately changed to a mocking one as she delivered a "Awww, widdle at_a_remove wivves with his Mooo-mmy!" and then sneered. (Note that this person would describe herself as kind, liberal, thoughtful, and so on)
Similarly, if less vituperatively, some simply announce "I could never date a guy who lives with his mother!" immediately after, although I had not offered a date.
It is sometimes a struggle to be pleasant in these situations. I sometimes do want to ask if they would like to be abandoned by their children if they were older and fell upon hard times, but I restrain myself.
Egalitarianism fur alles. If they've made it such an impolite comment, then clearly you've both disqualified each other, so you can be snarky about it too.
It's a quality litmus test for partner material. I steered clear of anyone who took issue with me having to provide a material amount of care for a parent (and that parent living with me) before they passed. Someone who belittles you for being a compassionate human being has no place in your present, nor your future (imho).
As @stronglikedan says in a comment in this thread, "most people suck." It's a bit broad, but it ain't wrong.
If I were in a stronger position with regards to dating, I could certainly see that. However, I have descended past "beggars can't be choosers" into the benthic depths of "even if I didn't have this working against me ..."
Right now it is merely a sad observation from the permanently sidelined.
I have found relationships in the most unexpected of places and circumstances, and I wish you the same. There are good, decent folks out there waiting to be found.
I'm wondering if you're missing the opportunity here. You mention your "what can you do?" shrug.
From what I understand of your situation, you should be proud of what you're doing. You aren't living with your mother because you can't stand to leave the nest, you are taking care of your aging mother because she can't take care of herself (small assumption on my part).
If you were able to succinctly describe this in a way you are proud of, which shows that you are mature, responsible, and caring, I wonder if you'd get a better response.
I think the stereotype (as the article somewhat alludes to), is that young adults are living with their parents due to negative circumstances (economic, psychological, etc). It may be ignoring another underlying metric which is that as parents have children later in life, the parents are less able to care for themselves as the child reaches the age when most would be leaving the home.
I of course have tried a variety of ways of phrasing it, as I certainly do not enjoy that sort of reaction. The most positive of responses would be a condescending acknowledgement that it was "sweet," a word I have come to loathe, at least with the intonation with which it is typically spoken as a response.
In any case, there is no opportunity; I am not dating material for numerous other reasons and have accepted that.
Bizarre. I'd like to think the majority of people don't fall into "baby talk" - that's just incredibly immature. To be honest, they sound like terrible people and probably aren't people that you'd want to date.
I'm not sure of your age but I'm sure it'll be less of an issue as you grow older, and the dating pool around you also starts dealing with aging parents, and they understand the difficulties.
The "I could never date..." girl could have been an opening to challenge her a bit. If you want to date more you just have to come up with some good zingers to counter their "shit-test".
I also live with family. There are many cultures where living with your family is the norm until, or even after marriage.
Maybe I’m an outlier, or just got lucky, but the first woman I started dating after a failed 5 year relationship ended up being conditionally ok with it - the conditions being that living in my family’s home wasn’t my “end game”, and that I was able to take care of myself. This was coming from an extremely independent woman who lived on her own, in a country outside of where she was born since coming to the US for college. Since then, she’s come to understand that living with, and helping to take care of family shows a degree of maturity and responsibility that transcends merely taking care of n=1 (yourself).
If anyone is in a similar situation, don’t be afraid to enter the dating pool just because you live with family, don’t be ashamed of it, and respect the ignorance of those who haven’t had the burden of having to support loved ones on their shoulders.
*edit (typo)
Also, by “end game”, she meant that I was planning on moving out at some point, which I am.
Is this stigma due to the tenet of "extreme independence and freedom" from the West?
In most Asian countries, taking care of your parents is a filial obligation/responsibility deeply engrained in culture: an expectation for being a good child.
It is starting to change now due to Western influence and affluence though...but it is still traditionally the norm to take care of your parents.
For those Westerners dating Asians born in Asia, it's important to be aware of this difference in independence.
For Mainland China children, it is expected (ie. mandatory) that their parents will move in with them sometime after marriage. The inlaw is not thought of as a person, but as the parents' pension plan. So if you marry into a family like that, it's important you know the story beforehand.
(There's an old Chinese riddle about "Who would you save if your mother and wife fell in the river?" The only acceptable answer is "mother.")
For Filipinos, basically the same thing, except there was no "one child" policy as in China. However, their family is much more important than some outsider like you, so again, it's something you want to discuss and think about before getting involved.
For what it’s worth, from my experience, it’s a bad sign when a woman still lives with their parents (mom). The negative stigma should go both ways.
When a woman lives with their parents it can be a sign of a few things, such as self entitlement, failure to launch, and parents that still have control over her. These will make for a rough relationship with a woman in this situation. These could be taken as generalizations, but like I said, the negative stigma needs to go both ways.
It's unfair that this is stigmatised, I think it's a good and noble thing to look after elderly parents.
It's not so common in the west, but it's very common in other cultures, I think we get that part wrong in western society.
I couldn't bear the fact that my mother was in a nursing home. If she ever needs care I wont be sending her to something like that, I'll do what you're doing.
>However, I was unprepared in the extreme for the ambient hostility toward men who live with their mothers, no matter the reason.
My mother taught me young, "Watch how a guy treats his mother because that's how he'll treat his future wife." I've observed it to be true, as a grown woman. There is hope for those like you because there must be others who know this pearl of wisdom.
I am not meaning to brag at all, but I am a woman considered highly attractive by a lot and I get asked out quite frequently by attractive men.
The only reason I mention that is because I recently started dating a man (not exclusively yet) who has just moved in with his Mom to save money and buy a home. I live with my Mom, who has Parkinson's, to help her.
I do not judge him remotely and find him incredibly attractive regardless. The only person who is ashamed is him! The logistics are the only issue, but we make enough that I don't mind renting out AirBnBs etc...
He is being financially responsible, and I am taking care of the woman who sacrificed her life for me to achieve my dreams and is now unwell.
Be proud, and screw those women with double standards who fail to look a little deeper. It's sexism. A lot of women unfortunately hold this stigma, but there are women like us out there who don't. Keep looking.
It's not the skills the get you hired (it's not like companies are seeking history majors), but rather the degree is a signal for competence and conformity, that does.
What is your point? This seems pointlessly blame-y. Those who just graduated from high school and entered college have been told by figuratively-literally everyone that that is what they should do. Then they do it, and it turns out it is a terrible idea for a variety of reasons and there is an ill-timed pandemic that cuts off the few reasonable opportunities that they might have otherwise had.
But sure, let's blame those foolish, foolish young adults for their crazy choices.
When I was in college, just starting out, I knew that making money after college is important and that certain fields that may be interesting, such as literature and psychology, don't provide a clear path to making a living. This didn't seem a secret, but many of my colleague students explicitly waved off such concerns. They "didn't care about money". So I chose computer science and many of them went with anthropology and whatnot. The results were predictable and it was indeed their own fault to not care. Now that there's talk of cancelling student debt, it infuriates me that they might get off paying the justly earned debt doing fun things in college while I was coding memory management, and pulling my hair out, into the night.
"I suffered, so they should too". That's all I have to say about your fury.
As for the other part:
I was told, explicitly, that thinking about college as a jobs-training experience was the wrong approach. Learning how to think, how to write, how to organize ideas, that was valuable in and of itself. And maybe at some time, it was true. With a degree in the '70s, you could get in to a lot of sensible middle-class jobs, even in art-history and psychology.It turned out not to be true [edit: when I was in college, not in the '70s], but I was ill equipped to understand that.
I also suspect that you have only the most superficial understanding of your cohort's motivations, yet seem absolutely confident in your analysis. I wonder if a course in psychology or philosophy would have benefited you some.
You dismiss me, but I spent four years alongside people who repeatedly and consistently followed the "money is not important to me" mantra. They were adults, old enough to understand consequences. But money was not important to them. We were in ones of the most expensive colleges in the nation, mind you.
Now money matters to them, and they would rather someone else covers their debts, someone who actually generates productive output.
And these people are almost exclusively from the economically upper quartile of the population. They want Bob the plumber to pay for their anthro degree. Lol.
Now how about you take some sociology classes to understand this situation?
Increases in housing and healthcare costs have been absolutely dwarfing wage growth in most major metros, for decades now.
This "it's your fault for majoring in gender studies" meme is a red herring. There was a time in the U.S. where one parent could support a family and purchase a house while the other stayed at home with the kids. With nothing more than a high school diploma.
You can live that kind of life now, but it's not the default. You'd have only one car. You wouldn't have the latest anything, whether car, computer, or sneakers. You might not even have cable. But yes, I think you can do it. In fact, my cousin-in-law has done so. (He may have an AA degree - not sure.)
So poverty/quality of life is a measure/function of comparison with the highest quality of life available to the wealthiest demographic. Would that be a right way to phrase it?
That is why poor in India is diff from poor in California. Even though to the poor in India, the Californian poverty seems like the stuff of kings. Etc.
That isn't the way I would phrase it, but it has some truth to it.
In the 1950s, in the US, you could live on one income of a high-school graduate. Today, you still can... but you have to live a 1950s lifestyle.
But if you look at what the wealthiest (or even the upper middle class) have, no, you can't do that. If that becomes your measure of "how you're supposed to live", then no, you can't live on one income.
There are dozens of sub 100k homes where I live and plenty of nice apartments sub $800. And that's a midwest state known for having some of the highest real estate taxes in the country.
Assuming the relationship is not abusive, this is a good deal for young people. It means not having to piss away thousands of dollars a year on rent, which exceeds inflation, and instead saving and or investing the saved money. There are plenty of stories on reddit and here of people living with their parents and doing just fine. The notion that young people must move out is part of the consumerist culture.
Multigenerational housing is really a very sensible option: your parents probably have a house large enough for them and several other people, they have items like kitchenware and furniture for those people, plus various tools that have been picked up over the years to deal with problems you don't yet realize you'll one day encounter. It makes little sense to duplicate all this every generation while the previous iteration sits idle. It might hurt consumer spending if young adults can spend the first few years of their career saving instead of buying out the wazoo, but it is certainly a more efficient use of resources.
Parents can provide both knowledge and material support for various tasks related to home making and child rearing. It's nice to have someone who's done it before right there to answer any question and give you a hand rather than reinventing the wheel every generation. Splitting up chores more ways leaves everyone less exhausted, and allows for more specialization. You may not like your parents' style, but it's better than doing everything yourself.
The benefits go both ways. As your parents age, they become more feeble. Live in children can take care of their parents without spending a fortune on professional care services. Further many risks of old age like falls are greatly mitigated the more frequent there is human contact. Money that would have been spent on young laborers can instead be put towards retirement savings, again perhaps a macroeconomic loss but great for the individual.
Multi-generational housing is common in many societies. That it is uncommon in modern western culture is really an anomaly: the industrial revolution and subsequent scientific advances meant a sudden boom in the population and rapid changes in lifestyle, you couldn't simply have everyone stay on the farm their whole life, most people had to move to a city and start a new household. Now that populations are stabilizing, it makes sense that we would revert to the system we had before.
It would be sensible to simply remove barriers to all kinds of housing construction, which would offer a boost in real resources to virtually everybody: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21154.
Instead we have a land-use system that privileges people who bought 20 or 30 or more years ago, at the expense of anyone who did not. U.S. housing policy is in the main poorly thought out.
I wasn't aware of an issue which this article ignores, but a few comments point out, which may become more of an issue in the coming generations.
As parents have children at a later stage of life, they may be less able to care for themselves as the child prepares to leave the home . The effect may be that the child stays in the home to care for the parent.
139 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 187 ms ] threadSome argue there is a "Two-Income Trap" where having two incomes did make certain things more affordable for the middle class like housing but eventually it simply drove up the price of housing & other goods. So now a dual income is simply normal and only having a single income is a disadvantage. Therefore it's not super surprising to see single young adults moving back home.
In certain super high CoL areas like the Bay Area we do see a bit of a trend towards 3+ communal living (post college) in the form of group homes. While this decreases the burden of real estate prices, in most cases residents are not building up equity in the home since they rent. In some cases they may be saving enough to offset the lack of equity but that's probably not very common.
It’s largely an outgrowth of extreme prosperity and urbanization.
Conversely, you don't need to be married to be in a relationship with two incomes.
That's true. But a full-time homemaker usually generates economic value that saves money in a long litany of ways. Staying home with kids saves on childcare. Being able to cook meals saves on eating out. Laundry and cleaning saves money on housekeeping costs. Not to mention all of this labor is accumulated tax-free (i.e. if you work to pay for some expense, you have to pay tax on the income first.)
> Conversely, you don't need to be married to be in a relationship with two incomes.
You absolutely don't. But the statistics are unambigious. Unmarried couples are substantially more likely to split than married ones. The dissolution of a household tends to be an expensive affair that permanently impedes wealth accumulation.
Not to mention that because of this, unmarried couples are substantially less likely to join their finances. Therefore they tend to get significantly worse deals than couples with joined finances. For example two-incomes who jointly sign a mortgage can get a much better APR, than when the mortgage is in one person's name.
Forget what the government does its generally easier to build wealth with two people than one. Theres more flexibility to prevent failure.
Also I'd question that statistic - the older you are the more likely you are married and more likely you are further in your career.
Plus, there's the whole " allowed to be next to your loved one in the hospital" thing that's overlooked until it's needed.
So, no 40 acres, but there are benefits beyond two incomes.
WRT mortgages, given some of the other threads in this discussion pointing out that something like 70% of millennial homeowners were married, it certainly seems relevant.
EDIT: It looks like it really depends on the income levels of both parties. Two well paid professionals will probably see a penalty filing jointly, whereas a single professional income will likely see a benefit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_penalty
The mortgage deduction affects anyone with a "large" mortgage, but at current housing prices "large" is becoming the norm.
Our income at the time, combined, was ~160k.
>Few couples base their marriage decisions on the tax consequences that may result.
I'm willing to bet the number of 20-somethings that have "tax considerations" deciding their marital status can be measured in basis points. Furthermore, nothing I see there is a "new penalty", while the numbers have varied over time, those rules look to be exactly the same as they were 20 years ago.
Second, you are nuts if you think this has ANY significant impact on people getting married.
Third, you can file married filed separately.. so while I'm not up on all the details of that, you can probably avoid the simple impacts it might have.
Anyway, that is an extremely crazy weak argument.
The usual argument that says that the government disincentivized marriage is through social safety nets like welfare, particularly ones that pay more for single parents without a spouse in the house, as well as mechanisms like child support payments.
The usual argument that says society has disincentivized marriage is basically through access to sex. There used to be a culture of enforced monogamy, where there was enormous social pressure to be married before having sex, and especially before living with one another. Now, that stigma is largely gone, so the incentive to get married has diminished substantially.
Again, not making a value judgement, just answering the question.
All these things whether good or bad makes it less likely people settle for pairing together like they typically would have.
Under the Obama administration marriage benefits were extended to same-sex couples EXPANDING the government's push for more people to be married.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161110003040/https://www.justi...
Land use restrictions, housing regulations, and zoning laws substantially increase housing costs. Affordable family formation is the major driver of marriage rates. Housing costs are the primary component of affordable family formation.
Oregon and Washington outperform many southeastern states, in fact they surpass every southeastern state, according to the US census. And while N-E and CA do have a lower marriage rate, it isn't that much lower.
But, generally, I'm not sure that incentivizing people to legally bond themselves to another is necessarily an unquestionably positive thing.
People with real issues, whether mental or criminal or sick etcetc both don't marry and have significantly smaller income. People with issues divorce more often and have smaller income too.
We dont know that.
Unmarried lower income people are more likely to have criminal record, more likely to have mental health issues, more likely to be the ones having hard time to keep jobs, more likely to have drugs related issues. Among women, those who got pregnant before marriage and much harder time to get any money and also are less interesting romance target for guys.
People nowdays see marriage as something you do once you are set by your standars and that strongly biases who marry.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/in-the-balance/2018/...
The fact that a college educated person earns less than what you claim is a mentally unwell, non job having drug addict is sad but no all to unobvious. Why would you think a teaching degree or psych degree major would earn more over their lifetime than a plumber or construction worker.
The fact is single women benefit the most financially from marriage since single uneducated and college educated women have a much higher than average poverty rate.
Plus, the enforcement is hard. And even harder since domestic violence rates among cops are higher then those of general population.
> I’m saying the expectation going into a marriage should be that one partner is dominant so there are no power struggles much like a hierarchy in a company.
Aaaand this is literally what leads to abuse. See, the perfect compliance is not possible nor actually human. The one dominator is bound to do dumb or egoistic decisions here and there. Or decisions that ignore needs of partner due to ignorance. With partner being submissive and not providing feedback, dominating person is bound to become worst and worst.
Plus, actual humans have real need for own agency. And when that agency manifests, again, the one who feels entitled to rule it all becomes abusive.
I agree in that married couple are normally muti-income households which makes them wealthy
I disagree that it should be the role of government to incentivize or decentivize marriage
We can resolve this by allowing people to form their own "households" for tax purposes and it should not matter if they are related, married, sleeping with each other, etc.
If they live in the same house, they should be treated as a household and be taxes according to that (or individually if they desire)
I would like to see an end to all government regulations on interpersonal relationships.
The stats tell the story. Young people are the largest part of the workforce[0], but we work for lower wages and have a TINY amount of the wealth in comparison to older generations[1].
The number of my friends who are hamstrung by massive student loan debt is sickening. The US is bleeding my generation dry.
0: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/11/millennials...
1: https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-versus-boomers-w...
Not to detract from the point about student debt, which is absolutely on point, but isn't it expected than younger people would always hold less wealth and have lower salaries on average than older people who have been working for decades longer and have that much more work experience?
So a 25 year old, today, doing the same job as their 25 year old parent/grand parent in 1980 is worse off at the same point in their career. This doesn't bode well when people like my parents and grandparents were relatively easily and affordably able to acquire homes and actually start building wealth, while the current generation of young workers are unable to build wealth.
It's not about a comparison between the youth and the now older workforce (which would be a moronic comparison). It's about comparing the youth to what the older workforce had 40 years ago. Or even 30.
the previous generation did so much with so little. with current attitudes, i dont know how life would become better in the next hundred years. is the defeatism due to not ever having to 'truly' struggle? if people had given up after ww2(or after any of the world's catastrophes), where would we be now?
This. All I heard growing up was "go to post-secondary." Zero concern for what the actual degree would be. Any degree would do.
Now, I'm a big believer in education and post-secondary. 100%. The top earners across the board are more educated than the lower half.
BUT: It depends on the degree. So many of my friends are still paying for degrees that went nowhere, and I'm in my mid-30s.
I've got 4 kids and my message to them is to keep their options open, figure out what kind of work they want to do for the rest of their lives, and get the right education for that. If they want to be an engineer, fantastic. University it is. But so many degrees lead to poor job prospects or low wages that do not in any way justify the cost. It's crazy town.
If the type of work you want to do doesn't pay especially well, that's fine. There's more to life than money. But don't go into debt over it.
I mostly agree, I don't know what people were thinking what was going to happen when they majored in underwater basket weaving.
I don't pretend know why people chose to go so deeply into debt. I do know a lot of smart people I respect made this decision, so it is more complicated than simply saying "screw the millennial."
However: There is now a mess that is damaging our society. When there is a fire going on, one does not stand around pointing fingers trying to figure out who started the fire. We put the fire out and figure the rest out afterwards. Millenial student debt is stifling their ability to build wealth, participate in the economy, and damaging their quality of life to the point they choose not to have children. I think this is a problem worth solving.
Do such smart people really still think this of subjects that don't have a pre-drawn straight line to a comparable paycheque to their own?
There's nothing wrong with going for underwater basket weaving if you know and have a plan to do just that. The average college student just associates that student loans == "worry about it later!" && Student loan == "I'll get a 50-60k job out of college no problem!"
I'm sorry, but I disagree in so many ways. Do you know how a school becomes renowned? Even then, there are countless people who have thrived without pedigree, without renown, and taken a path less cut-and-dried. I dread a world where such a narrow path is prescribed and must be adhered to. Reminds me of the puritans.
The entire purpose of an arts education is exploration of humanity. Thank god people still naively pursue that endeavour.
To me it sounds like the problem actually lies in the systems of student loans, not people's spirit for venturing into the unknown of whether or not it will financially benefit them.
The reason kids go to college is to get a good paying job. I hate to say it but if you're a kid who does not have affluent parents or don't live in an area where there actually are legitimate jobs in that field, it's 100% on you for doing that. I mean the opinion that those jobs don't exists isn't a stereotype for a reason. Students can get those jobs, but there most definitely aren't where they went to college typically. If you live in LA, Chicago, NYC; sure those could very well be viable career paths. In the middle of Idaho? Maybe you should reconsider who in Idaho is going to hire an artist outside of the small town that is their capital.
Sometimes reality needs to bite people who are incapable of making goals long term.
I would argue this is proof that you don't understand the nature of an education in the humanities. (For the record, I say this as an English major dropout who's working as a software developer)
> The reason kids go to college is to get a good paying job. I hate to say it but if you're a kid who does not have affluent parents or don't live in an area where there actually are legitimate jobs in that field, it's 100% on you for doing that. I mean the opinion that those jobs don't exists isn't a stereotype for a reason. Students can get those jobs, but there most definitely aren't where they went to college typically. If you live in LA, Chicago, NYC; sure those could very well be viable career paths. In the middle of Idaho? Maybe you should reconsider who in Idaho is going to hire an artist outside of the small town that is their capital.
I went because I wanted to learn something and dig a little deeper into life that wasn't available or remotely present in my rural working-class community, or from my non-affluent parents. I didn't finish so I don't have the pedigree, but I did live and learn a great deal, and it's paid dividends. I'm, oddly, precisely your example, but of a mode that you say doesn't exist.
It's also dishonest to propose that the only pursuit of humanities is to try and eek life out as an artist alone. I mean, I'm sure you value historians.
I have to admit I'm confused by the arbitrary limitations you're imposing on the way one must live out their life. A degree in a given field is not a declaration of intent, it's a mark of study. You can do whatever you want. Some roads have prerequisites for taking them, others don't. And sometimes still, there are roads that are yet uncut.
Maybe what you're really talking about is how easy or hard a given path might be and then associating that with some kind of right or wrong. Efficient path navigation is not the purpose of humanities study or works. It's about discovering what we do not discover through science. Not even science is the end, just another method of discovery. The tangents are the purpose, and reflecting on those in any number of ways is the meaning... leaving the path navigation efficiency algorithms to slime mould.
Compared to the rest of the world, people in the US have it easy.
Heck, in many places in the western world, people can't even afford to buy an apartment , which many in the US own or will own houses.
So no, I don't think it's fair to say people in the US have it easy. You have it easy, and maybe the people around you do. But that means nothing to all the other people whose pain and suffering are invalidated by people like you just because they happened to be born on a piece of land that happens to be classified as "first world."
Then look at the tax/insurance burden of developing countries. Sure, these people earn nominally less, but they often live relatively better lives. They're living lives closer to what our boomer parents lived.
Real estate prices are a distraction. These are high because interest rates are low. It's probably not a good idea to buy real estate even if you can afford it.
US citizens have it on easy mode.
Despite this, we have super comfortable lives, as you say. We've jumped from trailer park, meth country poverty to truly living like we're in the middle class, something I think is way harder to do in other countries. But kids? No. That looks like a ticket right back to where we started.
It's not the best life, but at least I have some cash to fall back on when my at-will employment is terminated for no cause and I can't find a job for a couple years. Or maybe my carpal tunnel syndrome will drive me out of the (extremely competitive) job market.
Either way, I'm not going to spend more money than I need to so I can have at least some semblance of "stability". And I sure as hell am not raising another generation of wage slaves. This terrible way of life ends with me.
Using a spatial equilibrium model and data from 220 metropolitan areas we find that these constraints lowered aggregate US growth by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009.
Most of the "income inequality" discourse in the U.S. is really a gloss on what should be housing discourse.
This is 100% true, especially compared to the home ownership rate of past generations at younger ages, 25-35.
The home ownership rate among people 25-34 and 35-44 now is significantly lower than a few decades ago.
[1]: https://www.zillow.com/research/homeownership-rate-us-housin... (from 2016 so could be a bit different, but still relevant) [2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/30/homeownership-eludes-million...
However, I was unprepared in the extreme for the ambient hostility toward men who live with their mothers, no matter the reason. I do not attempt to date or anything near it (I have additional factors that would make dating ... unlikely ... already, and living with your mom is just gravy on top), nor do I "hit on" women, but there was a (to me) startling rate of women who, upon finding out my situation, make it abundantly clear that they would not date me, despite me not asking. I refer to this as "pre-jection."
I wonder if this sort of thing will continue, now that it is happening to a significantly larger segment of the population.
Most people suck. The silver lining is that you have a great bar for measuring them up against, to find the few that don't, should you decide to get back into the dating game. I'd work that fact in towards the end of a first meetup, since it would save both time and money.
Like I said, I went into it with my eyes open. I didn't expect anyone to give me a cookie or anything. It's just that the generalized hostility was unexpected.
(Or at least, an infinitesimally small number that are not already in a long term healthy relationship. It may be that we've just missed the opportunity to meet the high quality people in our earlier years.)
I've had my share of relationships, and still date from time to time, but usually I find the experience disappointing.
The answers you seek you will not find in Hacker News, I will not link to anything I do hope you encounter the solutions to your problems, as I did once myself after struggling with dating, some time ago.
At least being men our dating prospects can actually improve the older we get, and for me I'll be pretty well off financially when I do live on my own, but that's small comfort in the present...
That sounds awful. How exactly do they go about this?
Similarly, if less vituperatively, some simply announce "I could never date a guy who lives with his mother!" immediately after, although I had not offered a date.
It is sometimes a struggle to be pleasant in these situations. I sometimes do want to ask if they would like to be abandoned by their children if they were older and fell upon hard times, but I restrain myself.
As @stronglikedan says in a comment in this thread, "most people suck." It's a bit broad, but it ain't wrong.
Right now it is merely a sad observation from the permanently sidelined.
From what I understand of your situation, you should be proud of what you're doing. You aren't living with your mother because you can't stand to leave the nest, you are taking care of your aging mother because she can't take care of herself (small assumption on my part).
If you were able to succinctly describe this in a way you are proud of, which shows that you are mature, responsible, and caring, I wonder if you'd get a better response.
I think the stereotype (as the article somewhat alludes to), is that young adults are living with their parents due to negative circumstances (economic, psychological, etc). It may be ignoring another underlying metric which is that as parents have children later in life, the parents are less able to care for themselves as the child reaches the age when most would be leaving the home.
In any case, there is no opportunity; I am not dating material for numerous other reasons and have accepted that.
I'm not sure of your age but I'm sure it'll be less of an issue as you grow older, and the dating pool around you also starts dealing with aging parents, and they understand the difficulties.
At this point, I'd rather be alone the rest of my life than live a fake life passing tests.
Maybe I’m an outlier, or just got lucky, but the first woman I started dating after a failed 5 year relationship ended up being conditionally ok with it - the conditions being that living in my family’s home wasn’t my “end game”, and that I was able to take care of myself. This was coming from an extremely independent woman who lived on her own, in a country outside of where she was born since coming to the US for college. Since then, she’s come to understand that living with, and helping to take care of family shows a degree of maturity and responsibility that transcends merely taking care of n=1 (yourself).
If anyone is in a similar situation, don’t be afraid to enter the dating pool just because you live with family, don’t be ashamed of it, and respect the ignorance of those who haven’t had the burden of having to support loved ones on their shoulders.
*edit (typo)
Also, by “end game”, she meant that I was planning on moving out at some point, which I am.
In most Asian countries, taking care of your parents is a filial obligation/responsibility deeply engrained in culture: an expectation for being a good child.
It is starting to change now due to Western influence and affluence though...but it is still traditionally the norm to take care of your parents.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4389642/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6403016/
For Mainland China children, it is expected (ie. mandatory) that their parents will move in with them sometime after marriage. The inlaw is not thought of as a person, but as the parents' pension plan. So if you marry into a family like that, it's important you know the story beforehand.
(There's an old Chinese riddle about "Who would you save if your mother and wife fell in the river?" The only acceptable answer is "mother.")
For Filipinos, basically the same thing, except there was no "one child" policy as in China. However, their family is much more important than some outsider like you, so again, it's something you want to discuss and think about before getting involved.
When a woman lives with their parents it can be a sign of a few things, such as self entitlement, failure to launch, and parents that still have control over her. These will make for a rough relationship with a woman in this situation. These could be taken as generalizations, but like I said, the negative stigma needs to go both ways.
It's unfair that this is stigmatised, I think it's a good and noble thing to look after elderly parents.
It's not so common in the west, but it's very common in other cultures, I think we get that part wrong in western society.
I couldn't bear the fact that my mother was in a nursing home. If she ever needs care I wont be sending her to something like that, I'll do what you're doing.
My mother taught me young, "Watch how a guy treats his mother because that's how he'll treat his future wife." I've observed it to be true, as a grown woman. There is hope for those like you because there must be others who know this pearl of wisdom.
The only reason I mention that is because I recently started dating a man (not exclusively yet) who has just moved in with his Mom to save money and buy a home. I live with my Mom, who has Parkinson's, to help her.
I do not judge him remotely and find him incredibly attractive regardless. The only person who is ashamed is him! The logistics are the only issue, but we make enough that I don't mind renting out AirBnBs etc...
He is being financially responsible, and I am taking care of the woman who sacrificed her life for me to achieve my dreams and is now unwell.
Be proud, and screw those women with double standards who fail to look a little deeper. It's sexism. A lot of women unfortunately hold this stigma, but there are women like us out there who don't. Keep looking.
As a result, they move back in with mom and dad at age 22, now thousands of dollars in debt.
But sure, let's blame those foolish, foolish young adults for their crazy choices.
As for the other part: I was told, explicitly, that thinking about college as a jobs-training experience was the wrong approach. Learning how to think, how to write, how to organize ideas, that was valuable in and of itself. And maybe at some time, it was true. With a degree in the '70s, you could get in to a lot of sensible middle-class jobs, even in art-history and psychology.It turned out not to be true [edit: when I was in college, not in the '70s], but I was ill equipped to understand that.
I also suspect that you have only the most superficial understanding of your cohort's motivations, yet seem absolutely confident in your analysis. I wonder if a course in psychology or philosophy would have benefited you some.
This "it's your fault for majoring in gender studies" meme is a red herring. There was a time in the U.S. where one parent could support a family and purchase a house while the other stayed at home with the kids. With nothing more than a high school diploma.
most people major in more 'actionable' subjects such as business, nursing, phycology, etc.
That is why poor in India is diff from poor in California. Even though to the poor in India, the Californian poverty seems like the stuff of kings. Etc.
In the 1950s, in the US, you could live on one income of a high-school graduate. Today, you still can... but you have to live a 1950s lifestyle.
But if you look at what the wealthiest (or even the upper middle class) have, no, you can't do that. If that becomes your measure of "how you're supposed to live", then no, you can't live on one income.
Parents can provide both knowledge and material support for various tasks related to home making and child rearing. It's nice to have someone who's done it before right there to answer any question and give you a hand rather than reinventing the wheel every generation. Splitting up chores more ways leaves everyone less exhausted, and allows for more specialization. You may not like your parents' style, but it's better than doing everything yourself.
The benefits go both ways. As your parents age, they become more feeble. Live in children can take care of their parents without spending a fortune on professional care services. Further many risks of old age like falls are greatly mitigated the more frequent there is human contact. Money that would have been spent on young laborers can instead be put towards retirement savings, again perhaps a macroeconomic loss but great for the individual.
Multi-generational housing is common in many societies. That it is uncommon in modern western culture is really an anomaly: the industrial revolution and subsequent scientific advances meant a sudden boom in the population and rapid changes in lifestyle, you couldn't simply have everyone stay on the farm their whole life, most people had to move to a city and start a new household. Now that populations are stabilizing, it makes sense that we would revert to the system we had before.
Instead we have a land-use system that privileges people who bought 20 or 30 or more years ago, at the expense of anyone who did not. U.S. housing policy is in the main poorly thought out.
As parents have children at a later stage of life, they may be less able to care for themselves as the child prepares to leave the home . The effect may be that the child stays in the home to care for the parent.
This changes the dynamic considerably.