Your Childhood Bedroom, Just As You Left It

Filed under: Bedroom, Design, etc, News & Trends

Many twenty-somethings are moving back in with their parents, so why are they leaving their childhood rooms in tact?

That boy band poster. The lava lamp. Those pink stereo speakers you just couldn't live without. Most of us would like to forget our adolescent tastes, but Georgette Pierre has constant reminders of hers. Since she moved back in with her parents a year ago, the 25-year-old wakes up each day to walls that bear her childhood decor choices, including pictures of Sean "Diddy" Combs and Tigger, her favorite Winnie the Pooh character.


These items don't jibe with Pierre's adult style sense, but leaving them up -- and her grown-up stuff packed away -- is one way she deals with being home again.

"I actually live out of my suitcases," she says. "The moment that you unpack is the moment that you're getting complacent, so I don't unpack a thing. Also, if [a potential employer] says 'Georgette, we want you here in a week,' all I have to do is throw it in my car and I'm there."

Many recent college graduates are in the same boat as Pierre --living with Mom and Dad while on the hunt for full-time work or trying to save up to move out on their own. In fact, according to a recent CollegeGrad.com survey, 80 percent of 2009 college graduates moved back in with their folks after graduating. Many blame the down economy for this growing trend, but some experts, like psychologist Kit Yarrow, psychology department chair at Golden Gate University, say it started before the recession. They believe it has more to do with kids taking longer to transition to adulthood than a lack of available jobs.

"Generally speaking, kids are maturing a little bit later today," says Yarrow, whose research focuses on the millennial generation. "They are dependent on their parents a year or two -- or sometimes three -- after college."

In a recent cover story, "What Is It About 20-Somethings?", in The New York Times Magazine, one sociologist called the phenomenon "the changing timetable for adulthood." Kids are maturing into adulthood at a later age, and it's creating a new life stage altogether -- "emerging adulthood," as coined by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a professor at Clark University.

Clearly, buying your first Jonathan Adler throw pillow or decorating a room for under $100 at IKEA doesn't make you a grown up, but decorating your first place is a rite of passage. It's part of growing up and developing adult tastes. It's doubtful that stalling this particular developmental milestone -- leaving home -- will stall other milestones. But when you're living without permanent belongings and a home that reflects who you are, life may certainly feel like it's on hold.

Still, Yarrow doesn't regard the absence of this period as cause for concern. Though members of Generation Y may live on their own, get married, and have kids later in life, she says, they'll still manage to grow up.

"They're going to live longer; they're going to work longer," Yarrow says. "I think it's no big deal that they stay a little bit more dependent on their parents for a longer period of time."

Safe House

Post-graduation dependency wasn't part of Pierre's plan. After walking away from Emerson College with an M.A. in Integrated Marketing Communications in May 2009, she struggled for a couple of months as she searched for TV and radio gigs in the Boston area, crashing at friends' apartments until she finally bit the bullet and moved back home.

"The first thing I thought was, I don't want to move home," Pierre says."Then I realized that home is only what I made of it. If I looked at it only as a temporary place for me to get myself together, then that's what it was going to be. So it changed what I thought about being at home."


According to Barbara Risman, sociology professor at the University of Chicago and executive officer for the Council on Contemporary Families, it's not that weird for millennials to view their parents' homes as safe havens. "It's a very comfortable arrangement," Risman says. "The parents, Baby Boomers, with their now adult children, do not have a generation gap."

Yarrow agrees. "Kids are closer to their parents today than previous generations were; they like being with their parents. It's not a sign of failure if they move back home."

Peter Lorenz, 25, experienced this comfort level when he moved in with his mom a couple months after graduating from Northeastern University in April 2008. "I'm very lucky that it was a good situation, a good environment," says Lorenz, who finally landed a full-time job in October 2009. "There weren't rules. At first you think, 'This isn't that bad.' But the allure wears off after a couple weeks. Then you say, 'OK, I'm living at home, and I'm 23, 24 years old.'"

Next Steps

Pierre has tried to use her time back home to be creative and motivate toward the next step. She does temp work as she continues to look for a full-time gig, but she's also started an online radio show and a magazine with two of her girlfriends.

"I can do a lot more things at home than I think I would have done if I was still in Boston," Pierre says. But she still does dream of the day she'll have a place of her own. She even has ideas for the decor.

"I'm really into earth-tone colors," she says. "And exotic colors that really don't match. Anything unique -- anything that when you walk in you're like, 'Yes, this is Georgette. This is the essence of Georgette.'"

 

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments