Homeward Bound

You hear it from parents everywhere: “Young people today seem to have a hard time growing up. When I was that age, I already. . .” Fill in the blank. Had a mortgage. Had two kids. Owned my own company.

But the economy certainly isn’t doing young adults any favors. One in 10 adults aged 18 – 34 who have moved in with their parents say the recession made them do it, according to the Pew Research Center. Thirteen percent of adults with grown children say one of their children has moved back home in the last year.

That makes life interesting when your office is at home, says “Karen,” who works from her home office every day and asked not to be identified. When her son graduated from college, he moved back for a few months while he looked for a job. Although he’d been self-sufficient through college, “as soon as he moved back home, bam, his expectations were back to high school,” she says. “If I was in the house, he assumed I was at his disposal–for chatting, if nothing more substantive.” She solved it by using a trick teenagers know well—earbuds. “If I couldn’t hear him, I didn’t feel compelled to respond.”