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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1729619" data-attributes="member: 6533">These are excellent points, Lichtenhart, and most studies will point out the advantages of your perspective, particularly from an economic stand point.Italians are famed even in America for having very high rates of home ownership and the sort of practice you discuss above, when imported to America with Italian families, is often given a great deal of credit when trying to explain the meteoric rise of Italian immigrants into the American middle class.I, obviously, agree with this point of view, though I live with the American one.  One of the great joys I took in meeting some Italian friends of mine the other day is that there was none of the anxiety I sometimes feel when explaining where I live and how I got there.That said, I will try to give you some hard reasons, Lichtenhart, for why the prejuidice against adults living with their parents is so ingrained. There are advantages to the American emphasis on seperating from one's parents:first, American parents, as a group, aren't as good as Italian parents.  Americans have a much higher rate of divorce, family ties and life are typically less robust, there are far greater cross-generational differences in education and opinion, and children are less valued.Second, puting greater pressure on getting out into the world, even if it means living at a much lower level and having greatly reduced capacity to save money allows young Americans greater mobility in the search for jobs and helps to reinforce, in many areas, a pattern of marriage/romantic/family life at younger ages than is typical in many other cultures and at lower material costs.I live in west Texas, and a Turkish friend of mine was appalled at the young ages people marry in this area, typically right after college.  He explained that in his culture you can't get married unless you can buy your bride a house.  Here almost all young people rent and cohabitate or marry without any consideration of such capital arrangements.Third, American culture is very fractious.  As Joshua pointed out earlier, human beings are generally divisive, but I don't so much refer to settled divisions of race, class, and ethnicity as I do to constructed differences of lifestyle, interests, and opinion.  In Italy, for instance, it would be largely unheard of for a congregation to split its resources and membership over relatively minor theological differences, yet this is a given of American religious life.  As a result, neighborhoods are not something you are born into or live in so much as choose based on the advertised lifestyle of the neighborhood and how that chimes with your self-construction and economic possibilities.  You don't live in the neighborhood you grew up in or have an attachment to, you live in the neighborhood for young urban hipster or the neighborhood for up and coming corporate employees or the nieghborhood that you can afford that has the sort of crime and social life you're willing to tolerate or enjoy.As a result, moving into one's own home is very frequently seen as the first step into the self-decision and actualization that characterizes adulthood.Fourth, much of the current prejuidice stems from the fact that this insitution is actively threatened.  The last two American generations, X and Y, had/have a much higher rate of adult individuals living with their parents than the two generations prior.  Theories about why this shift is occuring are many and range from:-high divorce rates create a new need for hearth and home to-changes in the labor marketregardless of why it is happening, the general tendency in the face of this shift will be for the issue to gain much more attention with much to most of it being negative as the culture tries to prevent the general trend from backsliding.Particularly since a very high rate of trans-generational home residency would create a nasty little situation for the current construction of the real estate market, not so many renters people sitting on houses for longer, and probably have some unpleasant consequences for the labor market as well.</blockquote>

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