Does anyone have adult children that still live at home? I have a 22 year old that still finds the nest a place to be. When I talk to some of my friends I find this is more common place then it used to be. I could not leave home fast enough when I graduated high school, now kids stay put till they are well into their thirties. My parents are becoming quite elderly and i am worried at some point they might have to come with me. I can't imagine my life with my kids and parents all together. It would be like the holiday that never ends.
Not to justify sponging off the parents indefinitely, but it is considerably more difficult for someone to make his or her own way in the world today than it was when many of us graduated from high school or college. Due to a number of reasons, some of which might be a better fit in the conspiracies forum, good-paying, full-time jobs are much harder to come by now. I left college the first time because I was earning more from the job that I had gotten to pay my way through college than my older brother was earning with a Master's degree from Michigan State University. But at that time, even without a college degree, it wasn't hard for someone who had a few brain cells to rub together, and some ambition, to work his or her way up to a position that paid quite well. Most of my life, I seldom applied for a job that I didn't already know that I was going to get. Rather than me going out looking for a better job, I was recruited by people who were offering me a better deal. I'm not saying that to brag because I know that this was true for a lot of people. Today, I think it's much harder, whatever a person's age or education, to find a good, stable, well-paying job, and even when they have what might have been a good job twenty years ago, taxes, mandated health costs, and other expenses can eat up whatever someone might be able to earn. We may find ourselves back where we were during the Great Depress, which I missed, when extended families were forced to live together in order to survive.
I hate to admit it but I'm the adult child that still lives at home. I always took it for granted that I'd stay at home until I got married, but Mr Right never came along, so I just stayed where I was and got on with life as best I knew how. I didn't think I'd feel safe living on my own and was never pushed into leaving. Although I've always been very reliant on my parents, there came a time when I started to feel that I needed to be there for them too in case something went wrong. When my Dad got pneumonia in 2013 and then again in 2014 I'm not sure how my Mom would have coped on her own. My Dad died in September 2014, leaving just me and my Mom behind and I'm finding it really difficult to cope. At 52 I'm having to take care of things I was never prepared for and I realise that there will come a time when I'll be living on my own after all. I'm an only child so I don't even having any close family to turn to. I wish that my parents had prepared me for the future better, but there's no changing that now.
@Michelle Stevens , I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. It may not have been the life you wanted for yourself but, you know, whichever decisions we make, there seem always to be regrets, because we don't really know where the path we didn't choose may have led.
@Ken Anderson , It's certainly not the life I wish I'd led though I don't think I really knew better at the time. I've always been far too dependent on my Dad, and that makes things difficult for me now. But my big regret is that I never married or had children. I feel like there's been no real meaning to my life and whatever I do with the rest of my life, there will be nobody to carry on the family line when I'm gone.
I moved from home when I was seventeen, eventually finding my way from Michigan to California, and only saw my father a few times during the last twenty years of his life, and never really got to know my step-sister or half brothers and sisters, so there are regrets there too.
I'm sorry things worked out that way for you. We all make mistakes in our lives and have regrets. But the last few months have been very difficult and I guess I'm just letting myself feel more sorry for myself than is healthy. I'm trying to reconcile myself to the past, but I'm finding the future very difficult to contemplate.
A lot of people today are in the situation that they are either taking care of their children or taking care of their aging parents. I have been helping my daughter take care of her boys for the last 14yrs. I would like to have some time to myself to learn who I am and do just for me. I helped my mother take care of my sister and brothers when I was a kid and never really had a childhood, always cooking and cleaning and then I got married and it started all over. We do what we have to do when the need comes up. I don't want to be alone just not the care giver all the time. As more and more families need to live together because of finances, changes will have to be made to acknowledge that childredn are adults and need to take responsiblity for themselves even thought they live with their parents.
My 23 year old son still lives with me at home and my wife. I'll admit, it's really good to have another person to talk to, it's more fun with a "family". Although it is odd that he still hasn't moved out, he's got a full time job, and a girlfriend, I would've thought we would have an apartment by now...
The first part of your story is identical to mine Michelle, I never left home either. I was packed up and looking for something to move to when my Dad died rather unexpectedly of a virus. My Mum was already suffering the onset of rheumatoid arthritis and found the simplest day to day tasks too painful to manage so I stuck around to help out. I never found Mr Right either but I have to admit I wasn't looking very hard. I was never really the 'domestic goddess' type and the thought of life in suburbia with a grumpy husband and 2.3 kids was not my idea of a blissful future. Well, I got stuck in suburbia anyway, but with only my Mum to look after ... for the next 40 years! Fate plays strange tricks on us doesn't it? I still lived pretty much the life I wanted, I wasn't the partying type. Nor was I all that adventurous, but did get to travel overseas when I could arrange for Mum to be cared for. After being 'bossed' by her for the first 20 years the situation slowly turned until I became the 'mother' and she the 'child'. It was kind of ironic that I didn't want kids but ended up with an 80+ year old one. I have no regrets over my decisions. They were mine to make so I can't be one of those who lay the blame onto others for 'ruining their lives' etc. It wasn't her fault that she needed me and I decided that life as it was then, staying home, was probably better in the long term, for building a future nest egg for life after her than had I left her then and gone it alone. (I won't pretend to be saintly about the decision, there was something in for me too.) It has worked out that way and I was able to retire at 48 with enough to live on. By that time Mum was a full time job so a redundancy offer was a lucky break. But had I known way back when Dad died that she would live until she was almost 92 I may have decided differently ... and just left home when I had the chance!
I'm fortunate, or unfortunate depending on when you talk to me, that my son turned into this delightful young man who has an independent streak a mile long. His first day at kindergarten, he jumped out of the car with a quick "bye mom" and never looked back. The same with college. Now at 25, he's a grad student working with a fellowship (so he makes enough to support himself) and I can't imagine that he would ever move back home, unless something terrible happened. I'm proud that we raised him to be independent and self-reliant, but boy, do I miss having him around. I sometimes wish he was a boomerang kid and would come home for a while.
I wish I could say I had no regrets, but I've got plenty of them. I think it would have been easier for me if I'd had brothers and sisters, but I've always felt an important part of life is for the family line to continue, and mine ends with me. A big part of my problem was that a lot of my decisions were based on fear. I'd lost a lot of self-confidence at the age of 8 due to a bad choice of friend (long story) and didn't have many friends when I left school. My years at university were a waste too as I studied something totally unsuited to who I was and I ended up going into a business with my Mom which had me working a lot of weekends, leaving little time for socialising. I know that the wrong choices were mine, but at the time I really didn't know any better.
We shouldn't regret the decisions we made thinking they were right at the time Michelle, we may regret that we didn't know better but that's all. No real way around that, we can react only to what we know about. We have to write them off as unavoidable mistakes rather than regrets. Only child here too but can't say it bothered me, I think I was born to be a loner really. I don't do socializing well, my idea of a good time is having 12 miles of beach entirely to myself. And I did have that for while, and boy do I miss it! (I didn't own it, it was just in a place that people only 'found' at holiday times, but even then I never saw more than 20 or so people on it, it was blissful.) I had no one else to rely on either, except good intentioned cousins who lived too far away to help. So I moved Mum and I closer to them and that didn't ease the load much but enough to give me the odd break. And it provided someone to have a whinge about it with. It helped not to feel so vulnerable too so I can sympathize with you in that respect. Being alone is only nice when you want to be. Is there any point in thinking of moving to somewhere you'd feel more comfortable/secure? Retirement villages were off my radar until I needed a support structure I could call on in emergency. It's so much better than I expected that I laugh now to think how I dreaded it. I'm living independently in a unit, but within a development of units, houses and aged care facilities that can be utilized if and as needed. Here they are for over 50 or 55s can't remember which now, so your Mum would qualify for that and perhaps as carer so would you. No idea how things are run there though, it was just a thought.
@Val Carey , My Mom spoke about that possibility but I'm not too keen on the idea of living among older people with no young people around. We're hoping that in the near future we'll be able to buy a unit in a secure complex, but I want it to be a place where there are children too, though I'm not sure how easily I'll learn to relate to them now. A part of me is looking for a surrogate family so that I won't ever have to be totally alone. We also need to find a place with our own small garden as one of my major interests is growing bonsai trees. Although I belong to a bonsai club, I need to find some young person who I can pass my interest on to, so that I know my trees will be taken care of when I can no longer do it. The few cousins I have in this country live far away and I don't really have much in common with them, so they wouldn't be much help when it comes to things like that. I've been aware that this was becoming a problem for some time, but it's become a lot harder and more real since my Dad died. Although I've always spent a lot of time doing things on my own, I don't really want to be alone. It's only lack of self-confidence that's made me this way.
Michelle you can't rely on the hope that moving into an area with young families will ensure a connection with them. I've recently moved from an area like that and was still totally isolated. Kids all played with each other and looked on older neighbours as strange people to giggle about or feel sorry for but by and large avoid. Like is attracted to like and finding young busy families who will 'gel' with you and your Mum is at long odds, really long. From my experience I'd suggest that the retired community is far more likely to welcome and bond with you than younger working families are. They have their own older relatives to worry about usually, they don't need others. I don't know about your experiences but in mine I've known too many families who dump their own older relatives, even their own parents, as being too much trouble to bother with. I've had a lot of contact with aging and elderly people most of my life, and the ratio of lonely, emotionally broken older women is astounding. So many have children that ignore them it would make you cry. They weren't from our situation, these were women (mainly) with normal loving families who simply got beyond their family's coping abilities. Their mortgages, children's schooling and living costs, and their own full work loads and lack of spare time took all they had and there was nothing left over for even emotional support of their older members. Some appeared to have thought it better to just fabricate a family dispute as an excuse to 'dump' them, although many just used airy excuses to never bother visiting or helping. I was told by a carer that the son of one old lady in the local hostel had left written instructions that he was NOT to be informed of anything to do with his mother other than when she died!. Just because we don't have siblings or kids doesn't mean we are the only ones to be that awful lonesome boat Michelle To dream that those busy families will have any of that precious time left to spare for a 'stranger' neighbour is pure wishful thinking. You may get lucky, but you would have to be very lucky indeed. Blood is thicker than water and if even that isn't enough to ensure security for aging women, or plenty of abandoned old men too, then reliance on finding a kind hearted family with youngsters who want to 'adopt' you is a million to one shot. I'm sorry to sound a little 'down' about this but please keep what you desire separate from what is really likely to happen when making these decisions. Reality is what we have to live in, but dreams and wishful thinking are only about what we'd really like to live in. Companionship and security seems to be your major concerns, the companionship of younger people is secondary. The retirement villa scenario would offer you the security and companionship aspects in spades. The children's company you may be able to access through any 'Dial a Gran' type organisations which seem to value older people with time to read or teach hobbies to children to relieve teachers from those duties. I'm only presuming something like that is up and running over there? I hope I haven't sounded depressing but no point in building a pretty picture just to bolster your dreams. It is a serious decision to make and needs serious thought and serious advice. Believe me I've been on a track very like yours and even made the 'dream' mistake of moving to where I wanted to be instead of where I was best suited to be. Then I had to swallow the pride and the dreams and move to where I should have gone in the first place. It was a costly mistake. Very. I did enjoy those couple of years before my world crashed but really, I could have done the same things from the retirement villa that I did from the house of 'my dreams'. It's hard to plan for an unknown future but you have to prioritize the practicalities over the wishes. I had only myself to worry about by then but you have your mother's well being and security to consider too. She would certainly benefit from a villa, perhaps you may even split up. Mum was in the aged hostel for the last 3 years of her life as I was no longer physically capable of caring for her. (Back problems and could no longer lift her, it happens. Something else to consider. You can't look after her if you aren't looking after yourself well too.) I do feel for you and your predicament, it is sooo familiar. I can only wish you happiness however you decide.