Why Gen Zers aren't leaving the nest

Young people are living at home and relying on their parents for money well into their 20s. Their parents aren't happy about it.

At 24, David Nuñez still lives at home with his parents in Tampa, Florida. He chips in his share of the phone bill, the Netflix subscription, and the groceries, but thanks to his parents' generosity, he doesn't pay any rent. Contrary to what some might think, Nuñez isn't an unemployed freeloader — he has a full-time job in marketing. But his $33,000 annual salary barely makes a dent in local rent prices; downtown, a one-bedroom costs more than $2,000 a month. He simply can't afford it.

"I'm fortunate enough to have a family that understands that it's kind of a rough time right now," he told me.

Despite a strong job market, many Gen Zers are still relying on the bank of Mom and Dad to make ends meet. In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center last fall, only 16% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they were completely financially independent, whereas in 1980, 32% of 22-year-olds could say the same. In the past decade, the share of parents who say they have supported an adult child has doubled, to about 60% in 2023 from about 30% in 2013, according to Pew. Some parents have reported spending an average of $1,400 a month helping their adult kids with groceries, tuition, and more.

"You're told throughout your life that you move out at 18 or 19 years old and you're kind of expected to have your own life already," Nuñez said. "But I only know one person in my friendship group who is not living with their parents anymore."

This new norm is leaving parents frazzled. Paying for college tuition is one thing, but many aren't sure how to handle their children remaining comfortably in the nest and relying on them for food, rent, and other expenses well beyond college. Nuñez's mother lived with her aunt before moving to America, so she's happy to let her son live with her. "I would rather you be here and know that you are OK," she told him. But for others, the aid comes with a question: At what point should parents cut the financial umbilical cord?

Despite being better educated than older generations and increasingly likely to be employed full time, Gen Zers have faced significant financial hurdles.

For one, modest wage increases have been overshadowed by substantial student-loan debt. Over the past 20 years, the average student debt has more than doubled, to just over $37,000 per borrower. "More and more young people are seeking higher education," Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, a professor of sociology at Washington State University, said. "They're staying in school longer, and while they're doing that, they are delaying their earning capacity."

The rising cost of housing is another barrier. Zillow estimated this year that people needed 80% more income to comfortably afford to buy a home than they did four years ago. And rent is taking up more and more of the budget: Zillow found that the average rent in America had gone up by 60% since 2015.

Wages, meanwhile, haven't kept up with inflation, meaning people are more strapped for cash. All told, Kirkpatrick Johnson said, many young adults are "entering jobs that do not allow them to be self-sufficient."

In this perfect storm, many are opting to take shelter in their childhood homes. The share of 25- to 34-year-olds living with their parents in the US has climbed by 87% over the past two decades. Other milestones, like getting married and starting a family, are happening later and later.

In his book "The Oxford Handbook of Emerging Adulthood," Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychology professor at Clark University, defined adulthood as taking responsibility, making independent decisions, and becoming financially independent. But increasingly, people aren't meeting that definition until they're closer to 30. He decided that, in the modern economy and culture, the time between 18 and 29 when young adults are still getting their footing needed its own name, calling it "emerging adulthood."

Not everyone is on board with that. In a 2019 Pew Research survey, 64% of Americans said they believed young adults should be financially independent by 22. "Our institutions haven't totally caught up yet," Kirkpatrick Johnson said, adding that, without the kinds of social safety nets that other countries have, like subsidized student loans and publicly funded healthcare, American parents are often left to provide cover.

Some parents are happy to provide a backstop. Jo Clark, 50, always knew she'd keep providing for her two daughters after college. "My mindset was always to support my daughters wherever possible," she told me. Clark's older daughter, 26, lived at home briefly, and now her youngest daughter, who's 24, lives in the extension Clark built on her Surrey, England, home for this very purpose. She didn't expect her daughter to contribute anything to the household costs, but her daughter insisted and now contributes £150 a month. "I wanted them to have the opportunity to be able to save for their future," Clark said. "My aim is that they could save for a deposit for their own house."

Clark says that even if her daughter moves out in the future, the door will always be open for her to come back. "I'm not terribly financially affluent myself," she said, "so this is my way that I can give my children the stepping stone to be able to buy their own place."

Teresa Bailey, a senior wealth strategist at Waddell & Associates, argued that Gen X parents were among the earliest to demonstrate an openness to providing so much financial support. "This generation of parents went through 2008, 2009, 2010 as relatively young adults, and they really experienced financial hardship," she told me. "They are in many ways the product of that mindset and want things to be different for their children."

Ali Lupo, a millennial with a 10-month-old daughter in upstate New York, agreed that part of the trend toward extra support comes down to a shift in parenting styles. "Every generation tries to improve and do better than the last," she said. "My grandparents' generation, you threw the kids out of the house in the summer and passed them a sandwich through the door. My parents' generation were more protective and wanted to do more to help. I think now we are even more like that, sometimes to a fault."

She and her husband plan to contribute to the costs of their daughter's education, health insurance, and wedding — and they don't foresee ever charging her rent. "When you sign up as a parent," Lupo said, "you're a parent for life."

Some parents might be more willing to provide financial support because they want to feel like a good parent. In the Pew survey last fall, 71% of parents of young adults said their children's successes and failures reflected on the job they'd done as parents — a sentiment that was particularly strong among upper-income parents. But the support doesn't always come easy; some parents are sacrificing their own financial security by dipping into their retirement or emergency savings to help their adult children. In a Bankrate survey last year, 31% of parents with adult children said they had made what they considered significant financial sacrifices to help their kids.

"Parents have the least amount of time to financially recover. The young adult has their entire life ahead of them," Bailey said. "There's not always consideration given to that."

Some are concerned that parents are enabling their children to delay milestones by providing so much support. A 2019 report from the Urban Institute found that in a sample of young adults who were 25 to 34 between 1999 and 2005, only about 68% of those who lived with their parents at those ages had achieved independent living a decade later, compared with nearly all those who rented or owned a home.

On the flip side, JP Krahel, the chair of the accounting department at Loyola University Maryland, told me it's better for young people to save up and limit their expenses if possible: "Technically, if you're living out of your car on the side of the street, are you financially independent? Maybe, but you don't have a great trajectory."

It can be a tough act to balance. The Lupos plan to leave some expenses, such as college tuition, to their daughter when she reaches an appropriate age. "For us," Lupo said, "it's about setting her up for success, giving her love and support, and empowering her to make the best choices possible — but not enabling her."

Cody and Erika Archie took a different approach. The Texas couple began charging their daughter $200 a month in rent the month after she graduated from high school in 2022. "It's not so much rent that she couldn't afford it, but it also was enough that it kind of stung when she had to pay it," Cody Archie said. "If you're going to live under our roof as an adult, you can pay for the long showers you take, the food you eat, and help contribute to the household."

Archie said that if their daughter had attended college while living at home, they wouldn't have charged rent and would have helped with her tuition. But she decided to skip college and now works as an insurance sales representative. "When you're working a 40-hour-a-week job, you're an adult," Archie said. "That's when you need to be off your mom and dad's bank account."

He said he and Erika, both of whom are in their mid-40s, believe that coddling adult children does them a disservice and fails to teach them important lessons in financial responsibility. "If you don't kick them out of the nest and force them to get into the world and start fending for themselves, there's really no need for them to," Archie said. "They've got to go on their own, or you have to force them out to help them."

When India Anderson turned 20 and decided to move in with her boyfriend, her mother cut off most financial support. As a full-time student in Orlando, Anderson needed to find a way to pay her bills, so she started a hair-braiding business on campus. Now, at 22, she has graduated and grown her business. She still lives with her boyfriend in Orlando, splitting rent and bills. The only bill her mother still covers is her phone.

"I wasn't raised with the proper financial literacy to be thrust into the real world," she said. "That transition, at least for me, wasn't that smooth." Anderson struggled to save money and dealt with some unexpected expenses she had to put on her credit card. She's also worried about getting kicked off her family's health-insurance plan when she turns 26. At the same time, she valued financial independence. "It's an expensive sacrifice," she said.

Anderson's 20-year-old brother still lives at home with their mother and 9-year-old sister, something Anderson sees as putting a strain on their mother. "He has a job, but he spends his money on computer games and Uber Eats every day," she said. Still, she doesn't wish him the abrupt exit she experienced. "Some independence would do him good," she said, "but at what cost?"

Most parents seem to want what's best for their kids, but navigating what that actually looks like in a shifting economy isn't easy. When Nuñez told his parents he wanted to move in with his girlfriend later this year, they were nervous. "They're less like, 'Get out of my house,'" he said, "and more like, 'We don't want you leaving if you're just going to have to come back.'"

Eve Upton-Clark is a features writer covering culture and society.