Alabama's Morning News with JT
Erin Real fears we are in the era of endless parenting
It is Ryan here, and I have a question for you, what do you do when you win? Like are you a fist-pumper, a woohoo, a hand clap or a high-fiver? If you want to hone in on those winning moves, check out Chumba Casino. Choose from hundreds of Social Casino-style games for your chance to redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly plus free daily bonuses, so don't wait. Start having the most fun ever at Chumba Casino.com. Sponsored by Chumba Casino, no purchase necessary. I'm joined by Aaron Rial and Aaron, there is a real trend going on where parents, they used to refer to this as the failure to launch or the kids they leave home, it doesn't work out, so they come right on back. Is this the era of endless parenting? Yes, it seems like it, at the first door. And here's the thing, endless parenting, while it seems like a failure to launch, it seems like kids really can't get it together. The reality is, the data says that it's actually not that terrible a thing and that's because if you look at Pew Research, they reached out to over a thousand respondents and they found that 70% with kids 18 to 34 said that their kids spoke with them on the phone at least a couple times a week, 60% of them said they helped their kids and then another hair is pulled so that 45% of kids in their 20s were living in with their parents right now. So that makes it the most common living arrangement for that age group for the first time since the depression. So again, alarming is this evidence that kids are over dependent, that this is a hapless grown baby generation. The evidence, believe it or not, says no. So there are a lot of cultural things and a lot of social trends keep us more. And then also the relationship between parent and child has evolved to a place if not just like prepare them to leave the nest and then go fly. It's now this living, breathing, taking part in the minutiae of every day over coffee in the morning for young adults as opposed to just get out, do your thing. And this has a lot to do with how we're changing as a society. Aaron, I think it also has a lot to do with the economy because as you grow up in a household, you come to expect a certain standard of living, you expect things like cable TV and you expect internet, internet access and all of these things that cost more and more these days. And it's a lot easier if mom and dad are still foot in the bill for the internet, for the TV, for the larger house, maybe they're paying your car insurance or they're paying for your health insurance or paying, you're paying for all these things. Now, you could even be living, quote, on your own in an apartment down the street, but you still have mom and dad paying for an awful lot of things you need to survive. And if they, because it is easier and it is easier, you know, if you, for one person, you know, as a, as a single father, I have to buy dinner for me and one other person. If we double the size of the family, it wouldn't double the grocery bill. It would just increase it by a little bit more. So it is more economical for everyone to sit around the same table. And then you bring them up because the grandkids who move back in, they are, you know, the picture of the kid in the basement playing video game is being a jerk. They're actually helping with the household income. They're helping with household labor. And this is actually especially nice for single parents of which the US has the highest rate of children living with one parent. Turns out it's overall very beneficial for both sides. And also bear in mind, it was only after World War II that federal programs like the GI Bill basically gave young people an incentive to leave because you could now go buy a house. So that led couples marrying earlier and then sticking, striking it out on their own as opposed to sticking around. So the idea, like you don't want a failure to launch a situation, but having a very nice relationship with your children and your parents is there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Also, we're living longer. So the idea that, you know, you used to toil in the field together and live life together. Now you're just toiling over coffee in the morning and then it's, it's not necessarily a bad thing. And then we are also delaying these benchmarks of maturity, whether it be like child berry nerd or marriage or all these things are happening later in life. And again, researchers have poured over the data to be like, is this bad? Is this good? Turns out there's nothing bad intrinsically about it. It's just different. And it's a cultural thing too in Mexico, it's very common for families, generations of families to live in the same house. It's just, it's just a normal thing that mom and dad, their parents are living there. Their kids are living there and you have a large family living under one roof. It's more of an American thing where everybody thinks we, we need each individual family unit to be in our own individual house. Right. And there's no evidence that says that that's like, that's intrinsically better or worse. It's just that it's different and you look to European cultures, they, they never move out until, you know, or often they have, you know, they're living close by or in the same village. And again, I go back to historically, historically, before World War II, this was the norm in America. You know, the idea, the idea that this is bad and the panic around it, it rests on the assumption that growing up requires you to leave your family behind. But that hasn't always been the case in the US. And again, until the 20th century, the point of marriage was largely to pool household resources and labor and family owned businesses were common. It's just a changing society. And like you said, finances are a big part of that. Aaron Rial, thank you so much for joining me. With the Lucky Land Sluts, you can get lucky just about anywhere. This is your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the weather's fine, but we're just going to circle up here a while and get lucky. No, no, nothing like that. It's just these cash prizes add up quick. So I suggest you sit back, keep your tray table upright and start getting lucky. Play for free at LuckyLand Sluts.com. Are you feeling lucky? No purchase necessary, void we're prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details.