Boomerang Kids: How to Live With Adult Children Who Return Home

A guide to the harmonious coexistence of parents and their adult children suggests strategies for setting limits, sharing territory, respecting autonomy, managing anger, and enjoying an adult-to-adult relationship

When previously independent adult children return home to live with their parents, as an estimated 22 million do currently, there are inevitable problems of co-existence. Techniques and strategies to avoid predictable pitfalls in the former parent-child roles are presented in this guide by two psychotherapists who specialize in family relationships. They write of the experiences of such adults across the United States for whom "the phenomenon of delayed independence represents a true change in American family life." In the case histories presented there is a wide range of reasons why adult chidren return home: divorce, drugs, and emotional and financial problems are among them. The authors suggest practical ways of sharing territory and enjoying the benefits of a new mutuality, but the emphasis is on ways to help young adults achieve success in making it on their own.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The authors, psychotherapists in private practice, assert that there has been a phenomenal surge in delayed independence among the nation's adult children, with marriage and the military no longer effective rites of passage to self-identity and the stimulation of accomplishing developmental tasks tempered by the rewards for regressive behavior. Their book is meant to bridge the recent generation gap between Sixties young adults, willingly forced into early independence, and their children who now face rapid economic displacement, the demands of a designer life-style, and today's drug, alcohol, and emotional problems. A timely, easily accessible parenting guide to preserving goodwill. William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.