Family life changes when kids return

“The children are moving back!”

Miss Manners fails to understand why this has become a cry of distress among parents whose children are returning to live with them after finishing college.

Aren’t those the very people they used to dote upon? Didn’t they shower them with presents, drive them wherever they wanted to go, celebrate their birthdays like coronations and fight their battles with outside authorities even when the children were in the wrong?

Yes, but that was a long time ago.

So – how did things go bad?

They didn’t, the parents cheerfully assert. They still love their children. They’re still proud of them. It’s just that – what?

Well, they’ve gotten used to having the extra space. They’ve been traveling more or entertaining more. And when the children have been home on college vacations, there has been all that squabbling about cleaning up after themselves, how late they come in, who gets the car, how loud they can play their music, what kind of food they expect and how and when they entertain their friends.

Such arguments make Miss Manners wonder whether what the parents are really saying is that they do not want to live with people who were badly brought up.

The presumption of unrequited love is always pitiful, even in parents, and eventually parents started rejecting it. If family life was over, fine; they were not pining.

These are sad and unpleasant attitudes on both sides. And since this is considered the normal state of affairs, nobody seems to know what manners to use when family life actually is resumed. So there are parents who treat their own children like boarders, charging them rent and grumbling about their behavior. And there are children who treat their parents like roommates, expecting them to mind their own business and taking no responsibility for the household in general.

Those are not the manners that are supposed to govern family life. The parents should have been granting more decision-making and privacy to the children in keeping with their years, but they should not be expected to pretend that they don’t worry. The children should have been expected all along to help do what it takes to keep the household running, but while their financial assistance may now be needed and possible, that is not paying rent.

As for common issues such as noise levels, entertaining privileges, borrowing habits and cleanliness, those must be negotiated with both roommates and renters. In families, Miss Manners is afraid, the parents get to set the limits – not because it is their house, but because grown children should want to ensure their parents’ comfort.