Growing Number of Young Professionals Return to Their Roots : Many Discover You <i> Can</i> Go Home Again
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, they did their own thing and fled far from home to college and careers. Now, the baby boomers who found independence through distance are discovering that there is no substitute for family.
They are moving back to be near their aging parents and their roots.
“There’s a lot to old Thomas Wolfe’s line, ‘You can never go home again,’ in the sense that you’re a changed person,” said Stephen Sharpe, 28, a former journalist. When his father died suddenly last summer, he moved back to his hometown of Athens, Tex., to take over the family furniture business.
Would Have Returned Anyway
“If this (death) hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here now,” Sharpe admitted. “But I think I would have been here within the next year, because I had reached a point in my life where I felt independent and knew that I could go back home as my own entity.”
Sharpe enjoys being “where my mother can count on me” but admits that the small town of 10,000 he left 10 years ago has taken some getting used to.
“My social life is slow here,” he said. “I was living in San Antonio, and there was a lot to offer a young, single person. But, under the circumstances, this was definitely something I couldn’t pass up.”
What he and others find tough to pass up is the richness that comes from family bonding.
Phenomenon of Generation
“People seem to be in search of their roots, and it’s a phenomenon of this generation more so than the last,” says Dr. Anita Auerbach, a McLean, Va., clinical psychologist who specializes in family therapy.
“In this generation, people became mobile quickly and easily but are discovering they are missing something. And they are coming home to get it. There is no question that this is a trend.”
A spring, 1985, survey conducted by Family Circle magazine showed that the three-generation family unit is thriving across the United States. Nearly half of the 1,500 adults surveyed live within 50 miles of the town where they were born and about two-thirds live within a two-hour drive.
Many professionals climbing the success ladder dream of landing in Manhattan, but one pair of Midwestern transplants living there could not wait to get back to the heartland. When Sue Wilson, 29, became pregnant with her first child, she and her lawyer husband returned to Lincoln, Neb.
“Having grown up in the Midwest and knowing what front yards and backyards were like, we knew this was something we wanted our children to have,” Wilson said. “And we were anxious for our children to know their grandparents and their aunts and uncles.”
Wilson, whose husband left a large New York firm to join one in Lincoln, said they have no regrets.
“It was the best thing in the world to leave home,” she said. “A lot of people grow up in Lincoln and stay in Lincoln. We were worried about moving back and falling back into the same old rut. But we’ve made new friends and see our parents about once a week, which is enough.”
Equality With Parents
Moving home after sowing a few oats often equalizes relationships between parents and offspring: mom and dad, formerly the authority figures, now become chums.
“Through high school and college, your primary relationships are with your friends. Your family is there, but you don’t really focus on them,” said Seattle attorney Mark Larson, 28.
A former probation officer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., he chose to attend law school in Tacoma, Wash., to be near his parents, residents of Seattle. Larson, his wife and 1-year-old son are now in the process of buying a home there.
“My parents are absolutely our best friends,” he said. “They are real role models for us. It’s great to have that resource around.
“It’s easier to be good friends with parents when you have established a certain amount of independence. All of a sudden, you’re not their charge. You get to be more like equals. It would be very hard to leave this city now.”
Larson says the decision to move to his parents’ community was purely his own, not based on their tuggings. Many others are motivated by guilt.
“As the baby boomers get older, it is natural that the feeling of obligation to their parents will intensify,” explains Andrew Cherlin, associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University. “I, too, often have some of those feelings.”
The 37-year-old sociologist is an only child and lives 300 miles away from his parents.
“As my parents age, I would like to be around to help them when they need it,” he said. “I’d like to see them more often and have them see their grandchildren more often. Despite those feelings, I’m not about to move home. I have a career in Baltimore and am married to a woman with a career in Baltimore.
“So, like many people of my generation, I’m caught between my feelings of concern for my parents, for my children and my own career.”
However, the yuppie principle that dictates following wherever the career opportunity leads is no longer gospel, according to Auerbach.
“Young adults are finding the sense of wealth and success achieved elsewhere still lacks something when you don’t have the familial ties and the sense of connectedness,” she said.
