Get thee to sea

First off, check this out.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/census-more-americans-18-34-now-live-parents-spouse


(CNSNews.com) - Four decades ago, in the mid-1970s, young American adults--in the 18-to-34 age bracket--were far more likely to be married and living with a spouse than living in their parents’ home.
But that is no longer the case, according to a new study by the U.S. Census Bureau.
“There are now more young people living with their parents than in any other arrangement,” says the Census Bureau study.
“What is more,” says the study, “almost 9 in 10 young people who were living in their parents’ home a year ago are still living there today, making it the most stable living arrangement.”
The Number 1 living arrangement today for Americans in the 18-to-34 age bracket, according to the Census Bureau, is to reside without a spouse in their parents’ home.


      Lots of folks attribute that to many different issues- and many of them are likely correct. The economy, education (and lack thereof), evolution of the job market and competition for jobs with low-and-high skillset work being a globalized market for workers thanks to shitty enforcement and utterly retarded labor laws. I'm sure the answer is a laundry list of why Chad and Brittany are still living with Mommy or Daddy and their new stepmom/stepdad. 

...and that's part of the equation, too. Intact nuclear families are the most stable and successful, from start to finish. The numbers are absolutely ironclad, and also shrinking as they have been for 40 years or so. 


           Part of me feels that a lot of this is the chickens coming home to roost. I have plenty of friends from blue-collar backgrounds who are VERY successful tradesmen, generally making more money than anyone without a graduate degree in a STEM field could ever hope to make... that is, if they've avoided addiction, alcoholism (to a lesser extent) or being a teenage parent, which has been killing or hobbling a LOT of people where I grew up. 
  If a parent isn't strong enough to stop their child to go in the hole for a master's degree in Transgender Asian Dance Studies, I figure they either don't much like their kids, are a baby boomer and perhaps overly sanguine about the job market for bright young minds without marketable skills, or lack in credibility themselves. Either way, not my circus, not my monkeys. A child will try and stay in your home forever now, like a cat, but doesn't have the decency to die a few years after you get tired of caring for it. 


 I was late getting out. I moved back into my parents' house after grad school, while I was getting my shit together after transitioning from being a normal respectable citizen to being a commercial fisherman. I got out after a short time. I'll forever appreciate my parents' forbearance, and I was and am ashamed that I stayed there for almost a year.

 Life happens, and life changes happen. One of my brothers suffered a spinal injury years ago, and his life went in the toilet after. Lost everything, had to start all over, but without his health. He's my mom's full-time caregiver now although at first it was mostly the other way around. That sort of living situation makes sense in an awful, pragmatic way. 


 Now, my nephew is 18, and plans to go to college, but doesn't plan on going in the hole more than necessary. So he's working on one of my employer's tugboats here, almost a year after finishing high school, and mostly saving his money. He's leaning towards a career in medicine, but he's saving his money and working hard... for 2 weeks out of the month at a VERY healthy salary as an Ordinary Seaman on a tug. He bought a luxury European sedan last week, a car that I can't afford today, precisely because he could pay cash for it, as he has no kids, no mortgage and no student loans yet, and it should last him well past college. He'll likely not again be able to afford or justify spending that kind of money for another 20 years, if ever.  I'm jealous.
 I didn't even own a car at his age. I hadn't discovered tugboating, either, though. He's 18, lives with his parents when he's home, and is a solid citizen and hard worker. He's got that blend of humor, empathy and intelligence that you want in a family doctor. I hope he doesn't go career out here unless he decides it's a passion worth pursuing, but while his peers are working at Starbucks, movie theatres or smoking weed full-time and dicking off, he's hard at work, and should his own career choices prove unsatisfying, he'll have a back-up career path that can support a family. 
 Somehow I don't think that he'll be raiding the change jar on the counter at ma's house to go down to the Coinstar machine at the grocery store to buy a dime bag.  But then again, his parents drilled into him the need to work and be self-sufficient, to choose training in something that pays,  a true anodyne against what seems to be happening to all these lost Millennials.