It is customary in the Philippines to stay with the parents for some time after getting married. The usual reason is financial since the newlyweds can save money instead of renting a place of their own. But there are some other reasons like an only child cannot leave his/her aging parents or the parents are the best persons to take care of the upcoming baby. When I first heard about the custom in America, it makes me wonder why my husband's cousins left their home when they reached 18 years of age. Considering the my husband's uncle is a very kind and generous man whom I had met several times before. The explanation is the American culture that the 18-year old is already an adult so he should learn how to be independent. It was a culture shock to me because my siblings, particularly my older brothers were still depending on my brother for their finances amid having a family of their own already. There are advantages and disadvantages for a grown child to be staying with the parents and I guess it really depends on the culture.
Sometimes it's culture sometimes it's just what is happening to the family that parents and children stay together. I'm an only child and Mom has a pace maker and already one slight heart attack already, so I stay with her. I'm unmarried yet, so I take care of the apt., cook, make sure she is okay etc. Luckily my cousins are like siblings who help me for I've no car and Mom can't ride the bus any longer. So you see it's because my only living parent needs the help and care that we are together and beats living alone too.
That hasn't always been the tradition in the United States, @Corie Henson. If the U.S. economy continues to move downward, that trend may reverse itself as families may need to band together again in order to stay alive. In the past, particularly in the agricultural areas of America, it was pretty much the norm to have several generations of family members living in the same house. In many cases, large tracts of land were split off so that grown children could live in their own home but still on the same land they grew up on, often contributing to the same family business, whether it be cattle ranching, crop farming, mill operations, or something else. To a lesser extent, I believe, even in the cities adult children would often work in the family business and live with or near their parents. That began changing after World War II, I think. As children went to war and had new experiences, many of them didn't wish to settle back on the family farm, particularly since the country was becoming less agricultural and more industrial, so there were good paying jobs in the city. Even where I lived, in the UP of Michigan, not long before my time nearly everyone farmed for a living, or had independent logging businesses. In the northern part of the UP, there were copper mines. By the time I came along, we still had the farm. My dad farmed several forty-acre plots, did some logging on the side, as well as shoeing horses, but he could no longer earn a good living on the farm, so he worked a forty-hour per week job at a ship building plant in Menominee, Michigan. When I graduated from school, there were no opportunities to farm for a living in Michigan. I could have found work in the UP but jobs were so much more plentiful and better paying in Southern California. As it turned out, I was the only one of five brothers who left the UP of Michigan for long. One of my brothers lived in Kentucky for a few years, but he returned to the UP as soon as he could find work there. But I can think of only a couple of people who are farming full time now. With the encouragement of the federal government, the family farms gave way to the large factory farms, and that had a profound effect on American culture and tradition.