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He has a lot going for him. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in speech and language sciences both from St. Ambrose University. He is pursuing a master’s degree. He has a fulfilling job that makes a difference for people in need. He works out seven days a week. He cooks. He has a girlfriend. 

He is my 23-year-old brother, Matt Finn. And he lives in our parents’ basement.

After graduating, Matt had to decide where he would live while pursuing his master’s degree in speech and language pathology and working his clinical rotation, an externship that must be completed within the last year of his master’s program. An externship is similar to an internship, but it’s more of a full time job shadow of a professional in your career path. This externship involves four months of 40-hour weeks at a hospital or children’s care facility. And he isn’t getting paid. In fact, he is paying the school $30,000 just to participate in his master’s  program. 

When deciding on the location of his externship, two factors were important to Matt:

1. He wanted to be close to his girlfriend, Jena Downs.

2. He wanted to live cheaply.

Jena was also studying at St. Ambrose to get her doctorate in physical therapy. Like Matt, she knew she would have to complete an externship. Also, like Matt, she knew her job wouldn’t pay anything. 

Matt and Jena knew what was coming early. They knew they wouldn’t have money to rent a place, but they wanted to live together. So, moving back to one of their homes was the only option. 

At first, Matt was conflicted with the idea of living with his parents again. He had heard the stereotypes about people in their 20s moving back into their parents’ basements and doing nothing but playing video games and sitting around all day. Realistically, he knew he was not like that. Between him and Jena, they had so much work ahead of them to get through their academic programs that they didn’t have time to worry about what others thought. 

“I realized that I didn’t care if I had to move back in with my parents,” Matt said. “I did my best with what I had at the time, and one thing I didn’t have was money.”

They ended up choosing our family’s house to live in and applied to places nearby that would fit the externship criteria until they both landed a position. 

Three months later, both my brother and his girlfriend moved into our family’s house. For me, it felt as if we were back in grade school again with having the whole family together.

“At first it was a weird change,” Matt said. “It made me feel like I was a kid again. I wasn’t used to being parented.” 

Matt hadn’t lived under our parents’ roof for five years. He had lived in the college dorms for three years and then an apartment for two. The move home came with pluses and minuses. Even though he had fewer financial responsibilities, it seemed as though he had more overall responsibility. He now had to make his bed and clean his room every morning. He also had to clean the bathroom, mow, cook dinners and shovel snow.

“… At the same time, I am able to have so much financial freedom,” Matt said. “I don’t have to pay for laundry or groceries or anything. Compared to my expenses before living here, this situation is so much cheaper.” 

The living space switch also had an impact on his social life. Just weeks ago, he was living with four other guys his age. Each weekend, they would go to bars or go to a house party and play games with friends. He now lives in a city where he knows no one besides his girlfriend and his family. In the little free time that he does have, he and I will usually play some video games together, or we will all have a big family dinner. And yet, he’s happy with the situation.

“If I could live somewhere else for free, I wouldn’t,” Matt said. “It has been nice to be a family again. I plan on moving to Texas after my master’s degree, and this gives me time with the people I love before I leave.”

A survey conducted by Indeed found that 36% of college seniors said they plan on moving back home after graduation. Another study by the U.S. Census Bureau stated that the percentage of 18 to 34-year-olds who are living in their parent’s home has gone up from 26% to 34% in the past 10 years. 

Despite these trends, stigmas of lazy, dependent man-babies persist and occasionally make their way into pop culture. Michael B. Jordan, star of “Black Panther,” recently moved back in with his parents. According to The Guardian, people on social media attacked the star after finding this out and called him terms like boomerang, a degrading word for people living with their parents after high school.

This stigma is mostly an American point of view. Many people in Asian countries, including India, consider living with your parents as an adult the “norm” until a person decides to get married or have children. According to The Guardian, almost 50% of Europeans aged 18–29 years old live at home. In America, much of our education system is driven by the pursuit of personal and financial independence. 

Another reason why this stigma exists in America is that it is believed that those living under their parents’ roof are less motivated to be employed — in other words, lazy. But this stereotype doesn’t entirely hold up. According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, 75% of adults living at their parents’ house contribute financially in some way. 

This “living in your parents’ basement” stereotype is not only reserved for working adults. Historically, a similar stigma has been passed on to students living in their parents’ house during college. In recent years, this negativity toward commuter college students has gone down due to the increase in college tuition costs, as well as room and board costs. According to CollegeData.com, the annual cost of room and board nationally is between $9,500 and $10,830.

“This stigma (against staying home while going to college) was stronger 10 to 15 years ago and was a way to categorize those students as lazy, incapable and unwilling,” said Sarah Anderson, assistant director of the Career Center at Grand View University. “The recent impact of financial loans and credit issues has lessened the stigma and changed it into more of a strategy to help those high percentage of students not doing well with their debt after college.”

The stigma may also be decreasing due to the mental health issues that living on a college campus can cause. According to the American College Health Association, 62% of undergrads living on campus reported a feeling of “overwhelming anxiety” at some point during the semester. This anxiety can continue beyond graduation for those who live independently after college. 

There can be great stress and anxiety on a recent graduate who has to deal with the financial struggle of living on their own. This is especially true for the many graduates who are not immediately able to get a job in their career field. When a graduate lives at home, it gives them financial support until they find their place in the workforce.

“Living at home right after college can help you financially as well as with transportation if it is close to a current job,” Anderson said. 

It can also help with flexibility.

“The first job after college is still usually a trial run, or a temporary job, while you look for your dream job,”Anderson said. “It doesn’t make sense to get into an apartment contract that would lock them in, limiting their job search potential.” 

If it weren’t for the opportunity to live at home, my brother probably wouldn’t have been able to finish his externship and finish his master’s degree. He is already close to $60,000 in debt. Adding on another $30,000 to that, plus rent, with no paycheck would have made his educational journey nearly impossible. 

“I have no time to make money since I have to be totally focused on learning from this clinical rotation,” Matt said. “Without my parent’s help, I would have had to figure out a different career path. I would have been screwed.”