Young men living at home in the Golden Era?

[FedoraFan112390]

Having looked at the 1940 census, I've noticed something, on all sides of my family tree:
My great great uncles, on both sides, were living at home (in their parents house) in 1940, despite being in their late '20s. They were all earning money, but still, they were living at home. And none of these guys were bums from what I understand, they were all respectable men, but nearly 30 and living at home.

Was this common in the Golden Era? Is the trend of a person moving out on their own before say, age 25, a recent phenomenon? Or was it simply the Depression that kept men living with their parents into their late 20s?

 

[rjb1]

I don't if two similar cases prove the point, but two of my uncles did the same thing into the 1950's. One left home when he went into Army in his mid-20's and the other stayed on at least until his early '30's. They both were "respectable" persons who had jobs, but stayed on there (at my grandmother's) , anyway.
One of the older unmarried sisters (my aunt) stayed home also for a long time.
No one in the family had any negative feelings about it.

 

[stevew443]

I had one uncle who never left home even though he was earning a good living and could have made it on his own very easily. The reason he stayed home was a very controlling mother. His sister never left the home either.

 

[Guttersnipe]

In The Era, multigenerational homes were more common in the United States than they are today. It was quite common for gainfully employed single men and women -- or even newlywed couples-- to live with parents. Such arrangements were not looked down upon. The concept of the "starter home" was an invention of the consumeristic post-war period; lots of young couples would live with their in laws until growing families required more room or they could afford to buy a place of their own.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Pretty common especially among certain ethnic groups and in cities. I had an uncle who never married and never left the farm he was born on. He kept on working there, and eventually bought the place from his father, who bought another farm about 5 miles away.

Young people would move out when they got married, or when they had to seek a job or (more rarely) for higher education. Some liked to stay put, others could not leave soon enough. Some parents wanted them to stay, others kicked them out as soon as they could if not sooner.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Go back before the 1950s and most single people lived in boarding houses, rooming houses or hotels. There just weren't the apartments, and modern conveniences we take for granted.

 

[Shangas]

It was pretty common in the old days for families to live more together.

My father didn't move out of home until his mid-twenties. My brother didn't move out until he was almost 30. I'm almost 30 and I haven't moved out, either.

I have cousins in their thirties who are married. And they STILL live with their parents. I have one cousin who's married and has a son. And he still lives with his parents. Three generations all in one house.

But the others have raised good points.

It was the Depression. Buying homes weren't going to be easy. If people did move out, it was usually to a boarding house or a residential hotel or something like that. Or if they DID have a place of their own, they often shared the rent with a friend or something like that. That was what my dad did when he moved out. It's what my brother did when he first moved out. My grandparents did the same.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My grandfather, one of eight kids, lived with his family until he got married at twenty-nine.

Even after a couple got married, it was still very common for them to live with one of the families -- usually the bride's -- until they could get their feet well enough on the ground to rent an apartment.

Go back and look up a series called "How America Lives," published in the Ladies Home Journal during the early forties. It's an absolutely candid look at how people of all ethnicities, races, and walks of life got along during the Era, and it's very much at odds with what a lot of demagogues today will tell you about that period.

 

[Fading Fast]

My Dad lived with his Mom until he got married in his mid '30s (in the 1950s) and, from what I could tell, that was very common in his generation as most of his friends had done the same. And while my Dad didn't, since he got married later in life and had saved a little by that point, many of his friends also lived at home for a few years even after they got married until they saved up enough to move out.

You can attribute it to the Boys in Marketing (I'm sure Lizzie has some great examples to back this up) or a cultural shift driven in part by rising living standards post WWII, but it wasn't until the later half the 60s and then the '70s that single young men and women started living by themselves en mass and as a normal progression after school. My pure guess is that the sexual revolution of the '60s also pushed this trend forward as young people now had another (very compelling) reason to want to live alone.

 

[LizzieMaine]

By the '70s it was largely a working-class thing for young married people to stay with parents after marriage -- you can see a good demonstration of this dynamic in the TV series "All In The Family." Class consciousness in that period led a lot of middle-class parents into pushing their kids to leave home earlier than they would have in a past generation -- "the right kind of people" simply didn't have multiple generations living in the same house, because what would the neighbors think? No nouveau-bourgeois arriviste in the postwar era wanted their prole roots to show.

My mother got married at 20, but her husband was in the service at the time, and she lived with her parents until he'd finished his hitch. This was another very common arrangement during the days of compulsory military service.

 

[HudsonHawk]

My Dad left home at 17 when he joined the Army, but when he came back at 23, he lived with his parents until he married Mom a few years later. He had a good blue collar job, and had enough money to buy a '62 Bonneville (Mom said years later that the car was the only reason she went out with him the first time). This was in the early 60s. It seemed pretty common, even in those days for single men to live with their parents, especially those just returning from service.

 

[Stearmen]

During the 1960s and later, it was expected that a young man from a working class family would get out of the families house as soon as possible after graduation! That meant a job, a collage scholarship, or the direct fast track out, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines or Coast Guard! No one I know stuck around home for more then a Summer.

 

[Guttersnipe]

My mother got married at 20, but her husband was in the service at the time, and she lived with her parents until he'd finished his hitch. This was another very common arrangement during the days of compulsory military service.

Indeed it was! My Grandma and Dad actually moved in with my Grandfather's parents when my Grandpa was drafted under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. When my Dad was born, my Grandpa and Grandma had rented their own apartment, but before that, they'd lived with my Great Grandparents while he completed a surgical residency at SF General and later built a private medical practice. After my Grandpa was discharged in 1946, all three of them continued to live with my Great Grandparents for a year or so....

....I'm not sure characterizing a successful heart surgeon and former major/battalion commander in the U.S. Army Medical Corps as "slacker" for living with his parents would be accurate.

 

[Benzadmiral]

I was more than eager to leave home -- but if I'd had a room of my own with a door to close for privacy, I might have felt differently. But you're right, Stearmen, by the '60s and '70s it was expected that young men, and young women too, would be out on their own after college, if not sooner.

(My parents were older than most, having been born in 1909 and 1916, so they didn't think anything strange about such an arrangement. They also didn't see why I was determined to learn how to drive, so that I could date. They apparently thought I'd meet a nice girl in my neighborhood. Hard thing to do in the French Quarter ca. 1970-76.)

 

[Fading Fast]

I was more than eager to leave home -- but if I'd had a room of my own with a door to close for privacy, I might have felt differently. But you're right, Stearmen, by the '60s and '70s it was expected that young men, and young women too, would be out on their own after college, if not sooner.

(My parents were older than most, having been born in 1909 and 1916, so they didn't think anything strange about such an arrangement. They also didn't see why I was determined to learn how to drive, so that I could date. They apparently thought I'd meet a nice girl in my neighborhood. Hard thing to do in the French Quarter ca. 1970-76.)

You indirectly hit on another Golden Era value that seems to have faded greatly. It used to be very important to meet someone to date from your community, neighborhood, church or through your family's friends. The idea of going on-line (or that era's equivalent: the newspaper's personal adds) and meeting a complete stranger was "not done," "frowned upon," etc. Today it seems that knowing "where someone is from" is not an important aspect to dating. I'm not commenting on if this is good or bad (I can see both aspect to it), but just that it is a change from the Golden Era.

 

[Benzadmiral]

You indirectly hit on another Golden Era value that seems to have faded greatly. It used to be very important to meet someone to date from your community, neighborhood, church or through your family's friends. The idea of going on-line (or that era's equivalent: the newspaper's personal adds) and meeting a complete stranger was "not done," "frowned upon," etc. Today it seems that knowing "where someone is from" is not an important aspect to dating. I'm not commenting on if this is good or bad (I can see both aspect to it), but just that it is a change from the Golden Era.

I thought about that as I hit "Send"! On the other hand, meeting a girl/guy from the neighborhood, or even from your country, was not the only way to go. For example, my mother's father was from Sweden, and her mother from Ruthenia (part of the Czech Republic today???), and they met in Canada, where my mother was born; and she eventually met my father in New Orleans. (But that chain of events might have been unusual.)

Certainly one's friends nowadays don't make any effort, or even want, to "set you up." That faded in the '70s, I think.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's real value in a couple sharing a common frame of reference, common experiences, and a common worldview. Marriages across class or cultural lines often lack these ingredients, and the result is often tension -- not just between the couple, but between the in-laws, and it doesn't always disappear over time. Inevitably, one side -- usually the side "marrying up" -- is made to feel that the onus of "adapting" is entirely on them. I know this from personal experience that I have no intention of ever repeating.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

You indirectly hit on another Golden Era value that seems to have faded greatly. It used to be very important to meet someone to date from your community, neighborhood, church or through your family's friends. The idea of going on-line (or that era's equivalent: the newspaper's personal adds) and meeting a complete stranger was "not done," "frowned upon," etc. Today it seems that knowing "where someone is from" is not an important aspect to dating. I'm not commenting on if this is good or bad (I can see both aspect to it), but just that it is a change from the Golden Era.

Heck, people don't even date anymore, they just "hook up."

 

[Guttersnipe]

You indirectly hit on another Golden Era value that seems to have faded greatly. It used to be very important to meet someone to date from your community, neighborhood, church or through your family's friends. The idea of going on-line (or that era's equivalent: the newspaper's personal adds) and meeting a complete stranger was "not done," "frowned upon," etc. Today it seems that knowing "where someone is from" is not an important aspect to dating. I'm not commenting on if this is good or bad (I can see both aspect to it), but just that it is a change from the Golden Era.

I suspect it may have been more common than we think. In The Era, "lonely hearts" clubs existed, which usually sold subscription based memberships to receive publications filled with personals adds. Some newspapers also had a "lonely hearts" category in their classifieds section too. The arrest and sensational murder trial of the "lonely hearts killers" in 1949 made national headlines. Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez -- a pair of con artists who'd actually met through a personal -- used these kind of adds to prey on vulnerable women, many of whom the murdered!

 

[Benzadmiral]

I suspect it may have been more common than we think. In The Era, "lonely hearts" clubs existed, which usually sold subscription based memberships to receive publications filled with personals adds. Some newspapers also had a "lonely hearts" category in their classifieds section too. The arrest and sensational murder trial of the "lonely hearts killers" in 1949 made national headlines. Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez -- a pair of con artists who'd actually met through a personal -- used these kind of adds to prey on vulnerable women, many of whom the murdered!

Right, and Nathanael West's novel Miss Lonelyhearts focused on that sort of newspaper column (in LA, I think -- I've never read the novel). Wouldn't that sort of newspaper feature have been more prevalent in bigger cities like LA and New York, and not so likely to be found in a small town paper?