College Loans - The Challenges Of Living With Adult Children - Boomerang Kids

Thanks to the recession, we have a new expression in the lexicon: baby gloomers boomers whose adult kids have moved back home with them. Unable to find work and often saddled with college loans , 20-somethings have been turning empty nests into cluttered ones, forcing their boomer parents who once saw the brass ring of retirement as within their grasp to rethink their plans to quit working.

According to the Pew Research Center, more than , the highest level since the 1950s. While in some cases, the arrangement has drawn families closer, for others this way of living sometimes hits a few rough patches.

Take Susan Denley and Bill Nottingham of Los Alamitos, Calif. (who work for my former employer the Los Angeles Times but who are not personal friends of mine). They refer to the fleeting 14 months that their two adult children lived outside the family home as "the glorious months." Their 28-year-old son and 24-year-old daughter have since returned home, and while both would like to live on their own, they show no immediate signs of leaving. The son has a mini mountain of college loans to repay and is pursuing a master s degree while holding down a job; the daughter is a hairstylist saving up for a condo of her own as she builds up her clientele.

Denley says she misses the proverbial chance for "running around in my underwear" as well as the use of her garage: Her daughter commandeered it to store her belongings and didn't want to throw anything away since she's focused on buying her own place soon.

The new living arrangements pose unique challenges: First and foremost, the kids are now adults who act like, well, adults. Denley, 61, recalls the morning that she was padding around her kitchen in her bedroom slippers when a young woman emerged from her son's bedroom. It was a spit-out-a-mouthful-of-coffee moment, she said.

"Discuss the expectation of parents and kids in terms of how you behave at home and what responsibilities they have," said Katherine Newman, dean of the school of arts and sciences at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Accordian Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents and the Private Toll of Global Competition. "It's better to talk these things over rather than be silent and grinding your teeth behind closed doors." Groceries, cooking, laundry and tidiness can all be areas of conflict, so lay down some ground rules.