<p>I don’t know what I’d do if my child graduated from college without any job prospects. My daughter was lucky enough to have a job offer before she graduated from college in June. During our family get-together on the 4th, the conversation turned to the depressed economy and the number of friends who have children who have graduated in the last year or so and still live at home. </p>
<p>Are parents enabling them by providing a nice, free place to stay? Would it be cruel to toss them out and tell them to make it on their own? Would you do something in between? We had a variety of opinions in my family. I’m not sure what I’d do. What are your thoughts?</p>
<p>Back when I was in college the job market was pretty normal, not hot but not bad either. Hardly anyone had jobs lined up before they graduated. Most planned to take a month off or so and then hit the proverbial pavement hard. None of our friends were jobless come fall and none of them lived with their parents once they got full time jobs. We would assume our children would do the same. I’m not worried about it to tell you the truth.</p>
<p>Who says they’re living there free? Some parents charge rent or work out some kind of babysitting, housework kind of deal for adult kids living at home while they look for work. It’s a tough job market out there but I don’t know any kids just sitting on their behinds not looking.</p>
<p>I have an older S and several post-college nieces, not to mention adult friends and family who have spent some amount of time in the last 4 years unemployed. Both of my sister’s kids stayed with her for a few months to save money, my S lived with me after the company he worked for had to close. He took the time to get a new vocational certificate and as soon as he got a new job he began paying rent until he found his own housing.</p>
<p>Putting a kid out on the street to “force” them to get a job is this economy would be no guarantee of them finding anything. I’m sure some kids take advantage but I’d bet most would rather live on their own than at home. I know plenty of them not being offered jobs before graduating, even people in highly sought after medical fields are having a rough time, though it’s getting better.</p>
<p>I’m curious: are the family members who are taking the hard line here willing to let it apply to them? If they find themselves broke/out of work, are they promising to not ask the rest of the family for help?</p>
<p>Honestly, I feel like it’s not a bad idea for the college graduate to live at home for the first few years after graduating. If they have a full time job that’s close enough for easy commute, then it saves them quite a bit of money.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between a person staying out half the night, sleeping half the day, and spending the rest of their time on the couch watching TV, playing video games, or just hanging out with friends and not actively seeking a job versus the person who’s actively seeking a job and by actively I mean spending most of the day every day seeking one and if they’re ‘under-employed’ then seeking a better job or a second job. If they’re not working then their full time job should be finding a job. Dr. Phil always has some shows about these types who take full advantage of their enabling parents.</p>
<p>There are also some who have a sensible plan of working for a couple of years after undergrad before pursuing a grad degree of some kind and are living at home to help save money to pay for that grad school. Some might even have a decent job but have an arrangement with the parents to allow them to live at home for a couple of years to save up for a down payment for a house. I see nothing wrong with this if it’s agreeable to all.</p>
<p>So, there’s a big difference between the kid bumming around with no direction, plan, or responsibility, and the kid with a plan and/or truly actively seeking employment.</p>
<p>My S came home after graduating in May of 10 after his hoped for job fell through. He was jobless for a few months, then got a temp holiday job, then 2 jobs in quick succession…but neither one in his field and neither one earned him enough to move out in our pricey area (NYC suburb).Together we formulated a plan for him to keep working the job, save as much as possible ( we dont charge rent) and apply to grad school for a f/t MBA in 2 years. well, he saved a ton of $, got into the grad program of his choice with an assistanceship and tuition waiver (!!).The saved $ will pay his rent in his college town for the next two years. His assistanceship places him in his field of interest.He’ll come out with an MBA and and MS. The plan has worked and really it wasnt a hardship for any of us (exceept maybe for his lack of privacy with the ladies)…
as a postscript, right before he announced his date of departure for grad school, the employer offered him a promotion which would have been more in line with his area of interest…time from employment to offered promotion was 9 months.</p>
<p>Even in a “hot” economy, there will be kids who graduate without jobs. I don’t think it’s wrong to let them come back home while they look, even to stay while they save up first/last month’s rent. Now, there’s probably a point when it may become enabling, as in the kid really doesn’t look, won’t work except for the “dream” job, is still acting like a kid, but those first months after graduation? Give them a place to crash.</p>
<p>I didn’t go home because there weren’t many jobs in the tiny town of 1800 where my parents lived. I did go move in with my sister. Several years before, she’d gone to stay with a great aunt while she looked for work. The alternative would have been what? Live on a street corner? Good luck finding a job with no address or renting an apartment with no money and no job.</p>
<p>Sseamom, my friend tells me her daughter is living at home for free, with no household responsibilities. She graduated in December. I don’t know about the other situations; I just know they live at home and don’t have a job. I feel for the parents. It could be any of us. That was the point of the conversation, really. We aren’t judging our friends. We simply said it would be a difficult situation and it was hard for us to agree on the “right” thing to do.</p>
<p>I don’t know many people who graduated with a job offer. Maybe one or two out of my circle of friends who just graduated in May. A good number of us (myself included) are going straight to grad school in the fall. I told my parents quite some time ago that if I got accepted to grad school, I wanted to take the summer off and relax, be with friends and focus on getting ready for grad school. They agreed that since I have to do a practicum experience in the summer between my 1st and 2nd year of grad school (and they have a 98% placement percentage after graduation), that this was probably the last “real” summer I would have and that it’s okay for me to just relax. Also, since I have to start training for my assistantship on July 27th, I didn’t have a huge opportunity to get a stable job anyway.</p>
<p>Even if I wasn’t going to grad school, I can’t fathom my parents kicking me out or anything like that. I think they would do everything they could to help me find a job and be successful, but I doubt they would charge rent or “force” me out on the street.</p>
<p>I also know from my limited experience job-hunting (for summer jobs) that it can be extremely discouraging. I had all the right qualifications but either no one was hiring or the jobs had been filled by the college students in my hometown. It gets to a point where we just don’t know what to do anymore.</p>
<p>I am answering this coming from a slightly different angle, in that my S seems to be headed into music, which always is a tough job market, whether recession or not. We suspect if he goes into this as his vocation that we will be helping him for a bit after college, but we signed onto this, it is part of the deal with being the parent of a young musician…so we face that as being almost inevitable…</p>
<p>From parents I have talked to with older children most of them understand how hard a job market it is out there for kids out of college, among other things a lot of the jobs that used to go to entry level kids out of college have been outsourced or given to visa holders (least it has been in the tech field) and most of them won’t be surprised if their kid comes back home for a while. Among other things, the cost of housing where we live is high and starting salaries are not all that generous in many fields, so it might make sense for the kid to save money for a down payment and build their legs up. </p>
<p>What saddened me was hearing the (fortunately) minority of parents who did believe the best route was for the kid to ‘hump it’ and make it on his/her own, they basically felt that that would just be an excuse for the kid to be lazy, not look for a job and so forth and ‘live off’ their parents. It made me kind of wonder, what did they teach/show their kids growing up, if they think they would be lazy goldbricks instead of responsible? Could they be projecting what they were like on their kids? I would hope they raised kids who want to stand on their own two feet, who if they came to live at home were doing so to make a better start for themselves…I can only speak for myself and people I have known, but for most of us, the last thing we would want to do was live at home with our parents like that, and I don’t think kids have changed that much…</p>
<p>With our son, I know him only too well, he already is aware of what we have done for him and feels guilty about it, so I don’t expect him to be the stereotype of the slacker and seeing the kids around him, fellow music students, given what they go through, the work ethic and such, I doubt very much they would allow themselves to do that. </p>
<p>GladGrad dad hit the nail on the head in his post.</p>
Why feel sorry for the parents in this case? They’re the ones allowing the D to live at home with no household responsibilities. That’s totally their choice. It sounds like they’re getting what they want.</p>
Amen! My d didn’t have a job at graduation. She did an internship, and kept looking for work. Ultimately she got a job and the time between the internship and the job was only a few weeks. But she never, ever considered that time a “vacation.” She hated having to rely on us financially. The day she got a job, she sat down and worked on a budget, and asked us what her portion of the family cell phone bill was so she could pay us for it!</p>
<p>And no, due to the nature of her career path, she couldn’t live at home. Her jobs aren’t around here.</p>
<p>Something else to consider: What used to be the “entry level jobs” are now “unpaid internships.” The entry level jobs have almost completely dried up. You can’t get a job without experience, but you can’t get the experience because you can’t get a job!</p>
<p>Our oldest is living at home after college. He is working full time, often putting in 10-15 hours/week of overtime saving his pennies to buy a house. We don’t see him much but that is fine too. He has an offer in on a place and is waiting for the appraisal, etc. He is supposed to close on the house later this month (ran into a couple snags so we will see what happens). We suggested he live at home so he could buy a house. Apartments here are very expensive and he would have not been able to do this. His house payment will be less than an apartment and he has a friend that will rent from him that will cover most of his house payment. It’s a win/win for both of them. I don’t see a problem with this.</p>
<p>Now, if he was eating potato chips watching soap operas all day, that would be a different story.</p>
<p>GladGradDad, I feel for the parents in the other situations (assuming, of course, that their kids aren’t like my friend’s daughter). I think it would be difficult, but necessary, to give expectations as to what is expected of an adult child living at home. There is a fine line, I believe. Who doesn’t want to support a child’s dream? Alas, there is reality. Do you tell a child he/she has so long to get a job-any kind of job-by a certain date? Do your let him/her pursue a job in his/her field, even if it means there is no income for 6 months to a year? I don’t know what I’d do. As I said before, I am grateful that my daughter has a job.</p>
<p>Tossing a child out isn’t the answer. What are they supposed to do? Even if they found a job rather quickly, it would be a couple of weeks before they had a paycheck.</p>
<p>Don’t make it too convenient to live at home without a job. Don’t give them spending money or gas money to go out all the time. Don’t keep the fridge and pantry stocked with all their favs. Expect them to really try to find a job.</p>
<p>Difficult times often cause us to make difficult choices. Our current economic decline, rapidly aging population, and the number of our baby boomer parents who suffer from alzheimers, cancer, or other serious health issues is one of those difficult times. Personally, I’d never toss my children out and I don’t see where it would be helpful to do so. If I’ve done my job raising them they should be able to understand that in our family we tow the line together…that means all hands on deck…not on the sofa watching tv or running around town. I think there is a distinct difference between enabling a lazy child and helping one who is struggling…that’s what parents do.</p>
<p>Older d never really returned home to live after graduation, but we did support her decision to do a post-bac program in her field while she applied to grad school. She had several good grad school opportunities, and for the most pay her grad school was covered by tuition remission and being a TA. We did have to give her money to live on and she does have our oldest family car, so yes we did continue to support her and continue to help her out as a struggling artist. She is extremely young in her field and has had two adjunct positions at two different schools. You cannot believe how little adjunct faculty are paid and of course no benefits are extended. She had student insurance coverage while in grad school and thanks to the new health care act, we were able to pick up her coverage through age 26. She has just aged out and has coverage through a program in NY called Healthy NY for low-income, self-employed-it is not great coverage but it is coverage.
Our younger d lived at home after graduation for several months while doing a series of internships making $100 a week. I paid the commuter cost for her to get to these internships, but she did get an apartment with several friends soon thereafter as she is an aspiring singer/actress and commuting to suburbs post rush-hour was not convenient. Her day job is a nanny and she makes a good amount of money…she is doing summer stock this summer, unpaid naturally. We are able to cover her on our health policy to age 26…it is a tough road, but if our kids needed to live at home, our home is here for them and if it allows them to save money towards a larger goal, I support those efforts. I don’t understand the concept of charging rent… we are a family. Both girls did very well in school, always worked during summers and in-school wherever possible. Yes, they have chosen different paths and difficult fields…but you have to follow those dreams to a certain extent and see where life takes you.</p>