Layla Ahmed is, by any measure, a responsible adult. She works at a nonprofit in Nashville helping refugees. Makes 50k a year. Saves money. Pays her bills on time.
But there’s another measure of adulthood that has so far eluded her. Ahmed, 23, moved back in with her parents after graduating college in 2022.
“There is a perception that those who live with their parents into their 20s are either bums or people who are not hard-working,” she told the Today, Explained podcast.
Being neither of those things, Ahmed and her situation actually point to a growing trend in America right now: More adults, especially younger adults, are either moving back in with family or never leaving at all.
According to the Pew Research Center, a quarter of all adults ages 25 to 34 now live in a multigenerational living situation (which it defines as a household with two or more adult generations).
It’s a number that’s been creeping upward since the early ‘70s but has swung up precipitously in the last 15 years. The decennial US Census measures multigenerational living slightly differently (three or more generations living together), but the trend still checks out. From 2010 to 2020, there was a nearly 18 percent increase in the number of multigenerational households.
That’s part of it. The part where people bought into it. But I can’t help thinking how much this single one-bedroom model resembles pigs or chicken in battery cages. Someone above said “Keeping the proletariat occupied with their day to day needs is one of the core goals of the capitalist system.” It’s by corporate design. If you’re living alone it’s harder to obtain those day-to-day needs and you’re easier to control.
I see the opposite from your analogy.
In a battery cage the cage is JUST large enough to contain the animal. No room to move at all, possibly not even turn around. A 1BR apart is the opposite. Its hard boundaries other cannot intrude upon you giving you space that is your own. You’re not shoulder to shoulder with other people/family members always having your space violated. You’re free to leave your 1BR apartment and venture into the work at will, always having a place of privacy and solitude to return to at the end of the day that is no one but yours. If you put your book on the coffee table, no one else will touch it, take it, or harm it. It will be right there whenever you return for it. There is great comfort in that.