Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 27-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Here’s the way I see it. This pre-adult, emerging-adult thing. Where the kids stay at home until they’re about 30, not to say they will actually go and not return after 30. I guess we have to wait and see how that pans out. Maybe they will regard the parents as a resource for the life of the parents. Seems more likely, as this new pattern becomes acceptable.
In constructing the new family unit, it appears that the child does not partner with someone their own age with whom they venture forth in terms of accommodation, finances and domestic duties. The child, both sexes, now takes a wife and a husband in the form of its parents. The adult child’s wife (its mother) does the cooking, cleaning and general coddling. The adult child’s husband (its father) pays the bills.
In Italy, where the sons stay with mama until they marry, they are called “big babies,” and it is socially acceptable to hang out with your mom and let her cook and clean and do your laundry without making a contribution to the household expenses because the big baby would like to buy really nice things for himself with the money he earns at his high-paying job.
The big baby in the doc was seen window shopping for sunglasses (very handsome guy, late 20s) and he said he liked having someone around who cared about him, that it was nice for him to live with his mother. No father in the doc (perhaps he was too ashamed to appear).
A magazine editor, also a young guy (who left home at 18 or 19), spoke about how this situation contributes to Italy’s problems.
“Italy is going down, down, down.”
He said that young people aren’t motivated to do anything, that if you phone a household at 9 a.m. where the mother and father have the adult children living with them, no one will answer the phone because the mother and father have gone to work and it was 100 percent for sure that the adult children would be asleep.
People who were planning to retire are now re-mortgaging their homes and staying at work longer to continue supporting their children into their 30s.
When kids reach 19, parents may have spent about $200,000 raising them. They can expect to pay at least another $60,000 from 20 to 30. We don’t yet know what happens beyond that. Maybe the children simply won’t allow their parents to retire. The children won’t be able to cope on their own. They won’t know how. What if they prefer to remain in the emerging adult stage? I mean, why cut the apron strings at 50 if you don’t have to?
One “kid” had taken stagecraft, got a degree in that, but then decided to switch to filmmaking, and so he stayed with his parents while he made connections that he hoped would turn out to be a career, but he wasn’t sure what he “really wanted to do yet” so he was going to stay “at home” until he decided what he really, really, really wanted to do. He was 27. His father decided it was time for the kid to leave, and he gave him three months to get it all together. The “kid” (a 27-year-old used to be a man, had been a man for 10 years, but now, a 27-year-old is a child) said he wasn’t scared or too concerned. He was going to “go with the flow.” When the three months was up, he was laughing, heading off to couch surf with friends. Rent was too much and he didn’t want to pay rent, so off he went into the world to use other people. What a noble plan for a man fast-approaching middle-age.
The kids don’t want to stoop to do work that is deemed unpleasant, and the parents don’t want their kids to stoop. The parents prefer to support them. The kids expect to have a certain type of life, and they’d prefer to have it without exerting much effort. They are entitled to have what they want, and the parents are complicit in preventing the kids from having to experience a different reality.
A universal shrug as a generation shoves anything difficult in front of their parents. Got bills? Give them to dad. Out of Cap’n Crunch? Add it to the shopping list. Mom will get it. Can’t figure out what to do? Getting advice from people, their mothers and fathers, who have such poor judgment doesn’t seem too promising.
Don’t do anything. Stay home with us and we will pay your way.
Doesn’t that mean that the child is being robbed of their actual life while the older generation is guided by what? Guilt?
