PenPenWrites

I had coffee yesterday with one of the caregivers who had taken care of my husband when he was ill.

• When I asked N, who migrated here some 20 years ago from Ethiopia, how full her work schedule was, she told me one client had cut back her hours from three 12-hour shifts to three 10-hour shifts; another had reduced her work time from five mornings a week to three. “They don’t have the money,” she said.
• Last September when we went for a walk, N’s sons were studying computer science at the state university. Yesterday, she said they were transferring to community college. They would live at home and she wouldn’t have to pay for food plans or dorm rooms.

Is this what corporate executives mean when they increasingly refer to consumers as being “choiceful?” Or, as a NYT story defined what the executives meant by their term: “Consumers are either spending less at retailers or purchasing a smaller overall volume of products.”

We parents of grown children–especially of sons in their 20s and early 30s–may be experiencing a similar choice, or at least similar trendy phrasing. As news media have been reporting, there is a marked increase in the use of the term “Stay at Home” son. That is, a young man, often in his 20s or 30s, who lives at home with his parents while taking on domestic duties like cooking, cleaning, and running errands, in exchange for rent-free living or minimal costs. Similarly,”trad son” and “hub son” are bandied about. They’re used to describe a similar living arrangement and to talk about the reasons behind the trend, if it is a trend. .

• Vanity Fair tells us: “An unapologetic generation of young men are not only happy to be living at home, they’re documenting their lives as “hub-sons” on social media.
• [NewsNation] reports: The term is a play on words from the “traditional wife.” ….Instead of the traditional wife who stays at home doing the housework, that role has been reversed to a new generation of men.

What’s behind young adult men becoming comfortable as Stay at Homers? Here’s one media’s outlook:

• *Finances – Times are tough, money is tight, rent is expensive, and just when you find a good job, all the prices seem to go up. It’s getting harder and harder to win at life.
• *Relationship – Dating has always been an awkward challenge, but add to the mix how polarizing social media has made people, the high demands and expectations of a relationship, the odds that your potential partner is in the same financial state or worse, and the list can go on and on.
• *Mental Health – Add all of these together, and it’s easy for people to just give up on the pursuit of a better life. Longing for the simpler time that home gave.

From my caregiver’s decisions for her sons’ education to well-educated young men already in the career job world, choicefulness seems to be the word. For those of us whose sons have moved back home, it may feel good to have an extra pair of helpful hands around the house, but it’s not a good word for the economy our kids are inheriting.

credit: Arshille Gorky, “THe Artist and His Mother.”