The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of Moving Back Home After College

For Sandy, one of the biggest drawbacks was giving up the intimacy and privacy to which she’d grown accustomed while Emma was away. “While we love having our child around, my husband and I miss all the time we had for just us,” Sandy says. “We spent a few years rediscovering ourselves as a couple, finding new ways to spend our time and we really enjoyed that.” In fact, a long-term study conducted by The London School of Economics and Political Science found that boomerang children – adult children who move back home – caused a significant decline in parents’ quality of life and well-being in Europe. The study noted that parents were forced to find a new equilibrium after their child left for college, but when that child moved back home after college, the equilibrium is lost. Though this wasn’t exactly the case for Sandy, it was still an adjustment.

But the same goes for graduates. When you’ve been away from home and are used to living on your own, it can be difficult to lose some of that independence and go back to checking in with mom and dad. “The graduate is used to making many more of their own life decisions, from their homework and daily schedule to their food and transportation,” Emma says. “This may clash with unspoken expectations of the parents, who are likely not adjusted to their child’s new autonomy.”

Readjusting to the presence of another person under her roof, however, wasn’t Sandy’s biggest concern. She also worried about friction in the parent-child dynamic and the potential of stalling her daughter’s growth and progression. “It complicates the evolution of the parent-child relationship,” she says. “This is a time for the child to be taking that next step into adulthood and the parents need to shift gears again, giving the child total responsibility for their own life. Having the child living at home complicates that shift.”

Emma points out that when a graduate moves back home after college, the framework for that living situation is often based on the pre-college cohabitation experience when mom and dad were busy parents and the child was exactly that — a child. After college, that model no longer works, but sometimes it can be easy to slip back into old behaviors, which can quickly create tension. “Both parties have certain expectations based on an old dynamic that doesn’t apply anymore,” Emma says. “And that often leads to misunderstandings and arguments.”

When living in a dorm or an apartment with friends, it’s easy to have a social life. You’re constantly running into someone you know in the hall, there’s always someone to hang out with and people come and go at all hours of the day. This won’t be the case back at mom and dad’s house. Most of your friends likely won’t be nearby anymore and even if they are, things still won’t be how they were during your college days. Life will be even quieter if you went to college in a big city and are moving back to small town or suburb.

Moving back home can make a graduate feel like they’re regressing. These emotions can sometimes deepen into depression, particularly for adult children who have lost the sense of community they felt while in school and feel like they’re no longer progressing alongside their peers. Symptoms of depression can include a lack of interest in things that should be exciting and the urge to sleep excessively or stay in bed. Parents may mistake these behaviors for laziness or a lack of ambition. But even if the emotions don’t get that severe, many grads do find it hard to stay motivated and focused when back in their childhood surroundings.

One of the biggest reasons kids move back home after college is because they’re broke, in debt and/or because decent work is hard to find. Even if they pay rent and help with bills, it’s rarely at market price. After all, what would be the point of moving back home if you’re going to pay what an actual landlord would demand? That can put pressure on the parents, who may have just gotten over the hurdle of paying for their children’s education and who are creeping ever closer to retirement. When their children return to the nest, parents may be forced not only to scale back on their short-term spending, but to neglect their retirement funds all together.

Most college grads move back home to save money. But it’s actually really easy to overspend – and not save – when you don’t have to pay for big expenses like rent and utilities. Having recurring expenses like these tends to force people to track spending and keep an eye on their budget but that’s usually not the case for new grads living at home, which means movie tickets, concerts, coffee, shopping trips, transportation, etc. add up fast.

When students become graduates, they generally leave college and enter true adulthood with a diploma and little else. That rarely qualifies them to quickly find housing and work that’s lucrative enough to allow them to do much more than just survive. This is particularly true if they’re one of the millions of Americans who leave college saddled with student debt.

By reclaiming their old bedroom for a few months — even if their parents ask them to contribute something financially — they can stave off the financial pressures of the real world and amass savings faster than someone paying full cost of living expenses on their own. When it’s time to finally strike out on their own, they can do so with a financial cushion that almost certainly wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t spent a few months living with mom and dad.

For Emma, college expanded her horizons, instilled in her a sense of self-reliance and opened up a whole new world of possibilities — but at the end of the day, there’s no place like home. Safety, security and familiarity can be a powerful thing for a young adult looking for a base to regroup, reassess and plan for the future. “Grown and graduated or not, there’s often something reassuring about returning home,” she says. “It provides a sense of security while you’re planning your next steps, be that job-hunting, applying to graduate schools or preparing to move for your new job.”

For Sandy, the single biggest benefit of having her daughter back home was that her daughter was back home. “It’s wonderful to have her around again!” she says. Having the empty nest feel a little less empty — particularly with the addition of a youthful, ambitious presence — can be invigorating and rejuvenating for parents. “Having her home gives us lots of time to simply be together but it also broadens our horizons,” Sandy explains. “She has different interests, so I find myself doing things that I would not normally do. She also adds a fresh perspective to conversations.

There’s also the little yet not-so-little benefit of simply having an extra set of young, strong hands around the house. Extra hands at home can mean additional help with chores, someone to pick up the younger kids after school or someone to fix the little things around the house. “To be completely honest, it’s nice to have another person helping with cooking and cleaning and other logistics of running a household,” says Sandy.

Living at home can serve as a practice run for the demands of independent adult life. No longer in high school, the recent grad can use this time to learn about and practice the basics of financial planning, building and maintaining healthy credit, establishing financial accounts, shopping for loans and investing. This dry run can let them explore and navigate these complex matters with a safety net. Once they’re out on their own, the pressure is on and the stakes are much higher.

For some grads, a few months of living at home can provide a boost in self-esteem and also take weight off the shoulders of worried parents. When grads prove to themselves and their parents that they can work, save money, take care of themselves, exhibit discipline, set goals and be responsible, both can find relief in knowing that the young adult is truly ready for adulthood and that the parents — finally — can relax a little.