‘Boomerangs’ not quite what they’re made out to be

Those “boomerangs” – young adults who return home to live with their parents – aren’t quite the phenomenon popular culture has made them out to be.

Movies, TV and books suggest that unprecedented numbers of young adults are back home or may have never left. But a book analyzing newly available census data finds something surprising: Young singles have almost always lived at home with their parents, and today’s singles are less likely to do so than in the past.

The boomerang idea is more of a blip on the sociological radar that has attracted undue attention from baby boomers, says Michael Rosenfeld, a social demographer at Stanford University. His new book, The Age of Independence, analyzed census data back to 1880.

Rosenfeld says almost 41 percent of singles ages 20 to 29 in 2005 were living apart from their parents, compared with 11 percent in 1950 and about 19 percent in 1880.

The boomerang idea, he says, “flatters our parental sense that our adult children need us more than they think. They think they’re going to be independent, but we know they’ll come back to the front doorstep and need us again.”

Much of the data became available for analysis only recently; the Census Bureau blocks personal, identifiable data for 72 years. Also, older paper records are now available by computer.

More than 70 percent of singles ages 20-29 lived with a parent in the 1940s, a level that hasn’t been reached again.

Rosenfeld’s book includes data only through 2000, but his analysis of newer data does support a recent small increase in adult children who return home; it shows almost 39 percent of single women and almost 46 percent of single men ages 20-29 lived with a parent in 2005, up from 36 percent of women and almost 42 percent of men in 2000.

“There is an increase of boomerang kids, but it’s small-scale,” says Steven Ruggles, who oversees Census computerization at the University of Minnesota. “If you look in the broader historical perspective, you see it’s trivial.”

Unmarried young people today were raised to be more independent and are marrying much later, sociologists who study young adults say. Those who either move back home or never leave most likely do so for financial reasons.

“Real wages for young people reached their peak in 1973. They were more independent because they could afford it,” says Ruggles, a history professor who is researching the American family from 1850 to 2000.

The early 1970s also were a time when many boomers were coming of age and were independent of their parents, so they have the same expectation for their offspring.

“When everybody used to live with parents, it was not surprising,” Rosenfeld says. “Now, when parents send their kids away to college and, if they come back afterward, it’s a little bit surprising. We notice it more because it’s not supposed to happen that way.”