Because, according to the experts, parents should take charge the minute the kids walk in the front door with a suitcase. Set a time limit on living at home and charge rent.
Make the time limit two years if you want. Put the rent in a savings account for them to use for a house or a wedding, if you want. But realize that people do not value what they do not pay for.
Even if the rent is only a token amount and barely enough to cover the extra water they use showering, it helps.
It helps with the bills, but it also helps parents not feel like such doormats.
Setting rules is just as difficult, but it needs to be done early, too. But that might be harder to do than getting our indignant children to pay rent.
We aren't like our parents, who declared, "If you live in my house, you will live by my rules."
We are hipper. More lenient. And we like our children and enjoy them in ways in which our parents did not, largely because our social and political views are in sync.
We remember too clearly how some of our parents made life at home after college a misery by infantilizing us, and we don't want to repeat that scene.
But it is fair to ask them to let us know if they aren't coming home for dinner - or to sleep. It is fair to divide and share the chores. It is fair to ask them to do their own laundry, their own dishes. To pay their own cell phone bills and car insurance.
It is not unreasonable to ask them to pick up the tab for the groceries once in a while or to pay for some part of the cleaning service.
According to some reports, more than half of the college graduates this year expect to move home. How long they stay and how well it goes depends on how both sides handle these negotiations.
In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I have not done any of these things because I hate conflict.
But I am not the worst parent in the house.
When my daughter suggested, in a huff, that she was going to move out, my husband said he would pay her to stay.
