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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One factor might be that many of us were raised by Silent Generation/Boomer parents, many of whom had kids because that was what you did. They didn't like the experience, and their kids were only too happy to leave.

I think more recent generations chose to have kids, and have stronger relationships with them. I think more young people view living at home as an option, as they get along well with their parents.[/quote]

I think this is a major factor, though like other PPs, I think there's a difference between a true failure to launch (meaning they cannot or will not be financially independent or even develop independent relationships or social lives outside their parents) and kids who stay close to parents and may even live with them for stretches while working or going to grad school.

My parents HATED being parents and staying at home with them would've been torture. The thing is, they actually basically encouraged it without realizing they were doing it. My dad is hyper-critical and disapproving and no matter what any of us did, he'd sneer at it and look down his nose. Meanwhile my mom is a rescuer with a martyr complex -- she lives for her children needing her to swoop in and rescue them. This means that we all have pretty low self esteem, our parents basically expect us to fail at things, and then my mom is always like "don't worry, we'll help you get back on your feet" (while my dad grumbles that his kids aren't independent enough and are unsuccessful). It's a classic underminer dynamic that I think leads to a lot of failure to launch cases, including the dynamic with the withholding/disapproving dad and the mom who wants to baby her adolescent and adult kids.

I was very, very fortunate because I wound up going to a counselor during college and then another during law school and both pretty rapidly identified how dysfunctional this dynamic was. Once I saw it, I realized how it was like this one-two punch that was crippling my older siblings -- undermining any confidence they might have that they could make it on their own, and then offering the extremely tempting option of moving home and working for my dad. I recognized I wanted no part in it, and essentially went low contact with my family and forced myself to go out and figure it out. I didn't share successes or failures with my parents, because I knew they'd try to make me feel bad about them either way, and that's how I managed to avoid what happened with my siblings. I'm now the only financially independent adult child in my family, and my dad likes to take credit for that, of course.  My parents cannot see how they screwed up their kids, they are blind to it.[/quote]

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