Family size and circumstances help predict whether grown children will live with their parents or strike out on their own, says Suzanne Bianchi, a demographer with the U.S. Census Bureau.
Generally, Bianchi explains, the number of young adults living at home has risen significantly in recent years. In 1970, 54 percent of men 18 to 24 years old lived with their parents. In 1985, 60 percent did. In 1970, 41 percent of women 18 to 24 years old still were at home. In 1985, 48 percent were. Women get out of the house sooner because they get married sooner, according to Bianchi.
Young adults are more likely to remain with parents financially able to support them, Bianchi found in a study. Basically, the higher the household income, the greater the likelihood that grown children won`t move out. But there are other mitigating circumstances. One is the number of younger brothers and sisters still at home. Grown children are less likely to remain in crowded houses, Bianchi says.
”The early 1970s saw many young adults moving out to start their own homes,” she said. ”Some demographers speculated that these were the first-born children of large, baby-boom families” who left because there was simply not enough room for them at home.
Now, with family size shrinking, living space is less of a problem.
Another consideration is parents` marital status. Children whose natural or adoptive parents never divorced stay home longer than those with either divorced or remarried mothers, Bianchi discovered. But if a family is broken by the death of the father, grown children tend to hang around to care for their mothers.
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