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Why Kicking Your Kids Out At 18 Is Actually Insane
A few days ago I did something you’re not supposed to do on social media: I changed my mind about something. In particular, I had a change of heart on an issue that’s very contentious for millions of people. I wrote that, while I used to be in the camp that said you should kick your kids out of the house at 18, in order to force them to live independently and make their own way in the world, I don’t feel that way anymore. As I’ve grown older, and had kids of my own, I’ve come to see things differently.
My preference now is for all of my children to live with us until they’re married. And even after they’re married, if they want to live on our property, or close by, my wife and I would be very much in favor of that. My goal now is to establish basically a family compound where everyone can live, if they want to. I’m not going to force my children to do so, once their adults. But it’s my strong preference, because I actually like my kids. I enjoy being around them. I think keeping a family together is important. I want to be close by to help them when they have kids of their own one day.
The benefits to this arrangement are numerous. I’ve taught my kids responsibility, and they contribute around the house. They aren’t ungrateful useless moochers. Of course it’s bad to allow your older kids and adult kids to shirk responsibility and sit around your house all day without working or contributing. But provided that you aren’t doing that, provided that everyone in the household is pitch in and working hard in one capacity or another, what’s the problem? Why exactly should I kick them out? Why should I drive them from my family home? Is that the goal of parenthood — to raise your kids, send them a thousand miles away, so that you only see them on holidays?
A lot of parents in the modern age seem to think that you reap the rewards of parenting by kicking them out of the house and reclaiming your “independence” or whatever. So the reward is just going back to your pre-parenting state? No, the reward should be a family that you love and get to enjoy until you die. The reward should be raising children who one day also become companions, and eventually caretakers. The reward is not, or shouldn’t be, 30 years in a silent empty house and then dying under fluorescent lights in a nursing home.
There was a pretty massive response when I posted about this on X and Facebook.
There were the usual personal attacks — one guy called me a “feckless, grifting, degenerate, idiot clown” for changing my opinion, which he described as a “flip-flop.” There were also several people who made the case that I was being selfish and hypocritical because I don’t live on my parents’ property, and because I should want my children to “spread their wings” and “explore the world” and “experience different cultures” and so on.
And on the other side of the coin, plenty of people agreed with my take — many of you said that you want to create a “family compound” for your own children. But in general, I noticed that no one seemed to be able to explain how exactly this arrangement became so uncommon. Why did it become so unusual to say that, no, we *shouldn’t* launch 18-year-olds as far from their hometowns as possible, so that they can learn about genderqueer theory at a university that costs $100,000 a year to attend?
Well, one reason is propaganda. The main character in “Sex and the City” lived in a New York City apartment that, in real life, costs around $10 million.
It became so iconic that, to this day, tourists show up outside, and the owner has to shoo them away:
Sex and the City Apartment Owner Confronts Tourists: ‘It’s Not Carrie’s, It’s Mine!’ pic.twitter.com/V0G9f4B1sx
— New York Post (@nypost) March 19, 2025
Source: @nypost/X.com
Most people can never afford an apartment like that in their entire lives. It’s extremely expensive, even by the standards of New York. But in “Sex and the City,” it’s “rent controlled” or something along those lines. For young women watching the show, it looks like a place they might realistically be able to live in. “Friends” had a similar idea with Monica’s apartment, which would cost something like $10,000 a month to rent in real life.
But in the show, once again, it’s “rent controlled.” So millions of young people saw scenes like this, and believed it was a reasonable approximation of life in New York — the massive apartment and the big windows for someone making a chef’s salary.
Many other shows at the time had a similar message. The idea that your 20s are when you’re supposed to have “fun” is the drumbeat that young people have followed in our culture for a long time. Just wait until you’re 30 to get married, to have kids, and so on. Does anyone, at this point, not realize this is anti-human propaganda? Do you think this makes people happy? Leads to human flourishing? What percentage of young women living like that are on anti-depressants? How are they doing when their 20s come and go, and it’s now their 30s or their 40s and they’re living alone in an empty apartment? Why should we push our kids in that direction? What’s the point?
It’d be cliche to blame it all on the Boomers. But the reality is, cliche or not, they strongly believe this. One reason boomers think along these lines is that they turned 18 in a radically different country. The median baby boomer was born in 1955. The average cost for them to go to school in the 1970s was 500 to 600 dollars a year.
Even if you account for inflation, the cost of attending a major public university has more than doubled. The same is true for housing. In 1970, the median home price was around $23,000. And if you adjust for inflation, that $23,000 home in 1970 should only cost about $180,000 today. Instead, today’s median home is well over $400,000.
So while our economy is better by most metrics, it’s also a lot harder for young people to own a home than it used to be. That’s because, though our economy is generating a lot more money, it’s also much more competitive for people who are starting their careers. Young people today are competing against robots, AI, and tens of millions of new foreign migrants in the job market. We also have one of the least affordable housing markets in history right now, with low inventory, high prices, and a lot of people who don’t want to sell, because they got locked into a very low interest rate during COVID. A college degree — even a degree in computer science or a hard science like physics — doesn’t come close to guaranteeing a job anymore. All this to say, the arguments in favor of “telling your kids to spread their wings” are much less persuasive now, than they were in the 1950s.
In response to my post on X, Mike Cernovich made a similar point. He wrote that, when he was an early 20-something, he was able to live in Santa Monica without spending much money. He could afford it by waiting tables and finding a roommate. Today, if you want a one-bedroom in Santa Monica, you’re looking at spending around $3,500, or $1,750 a month with a roommate. Throw in utilities and Internet and tax, and you’re looking at $2,000 a month for one-half of a one bedroom in Santa Monica. So if you make $50,000 a year as a waiter — which is on the high end — then after tax and rent, you will have precisely zero dollars left over at the end of the month. You can’t save a dime. You won’t build any wealth. You can’t save for your retirement, much less your kid’s education or living expenses.
None of this happened by accident. The government began backing loans and grants for college education, while also slashing taxes to fund many colleges — so students took on a much bigger burden for paying their tuition. And colleges knew that they could simply raise tuition, year after year, and students could get a loan to cover it. Meanwhile, zoning became more restrictive, institutional buyers purchased hundreds of thousands of homes, and the borders were opened — flooding the housing market with many more buyers. All of this happened with the consent of the Boomers, many of whom are now aghast at the possibility that their children might want to live near home past the age of 18.
So when you tell your 18 year old to leave the house, where are they going to go? Sure, there are places where they can live cheaply. Do you want your kid in Gary, Indiana? Flint, Michigan? Are there good high-paying jobs in those neighborhoods? Are they safe? In America today, even bad neighborhoods like South Central Los Angeles are expensive.
Here’s a 1500-square-foot home that’s going for $500,000.
Source: Zillow.com
Source: Zillow.com
It’s surrounded by a fence. There are bars on the front door. Again, to afford it, you need six figures in cash. You’re putting your life — and your family’s life — in danger in a neighborhood like this. But it’s still extremely expensive. It’s far more than most people can afford. But that’s what they’re being asked to do.
At the same time, there are many people who understand the benefits of giving your kids a longer runway to start their adult lives — and they don’t kick their own out at 18. If anything, it’s the global norm. Many other cultures, and many other countries, encourage adult children to remain close to home until marriage, and even afterwards in some cases. Something like 80% of South Koreans in their 20s live with their parents. 73% of Greek adults under 35 live at home. More than 70% of young Italians live with their parents. Portugal and Spain are around 50%.
But for white Americans, the situation is completely different. Only around 30% of white Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 live with their parents (and those figures include Hispanics, which skew the results much higher).
According to Pew:
White young adults are less likely than their Asian, Hispanic and Black counterparts to live in a parent’s home …. And metropolitan areas with a higher-than-average share of White adults among the young adult population tend to have a lower-than-average share of young adults living in a parent’s home.
And indeed, as you can see from this map, a lot of people living with their parents are concentrated on the coasts.
Source: Pew Research Center
In Southern California, where most of the population is Hispanic, it’s very common for people to live with their parents well into adulthood. The same is true in New York, where around 40% of the population was born in a foreign country. On the other hand, in pretty much the entire middle of the country, and the Pacific Northwest — which are mostly white areas — it’s a different story.
Again, this is from Pew:
With a couple of exceptions, the 10 metros with the lowest shares of young adults living in a parent’s home have a higher-than-average share of White young adults. For example, 4% of young adults in Bozeman, Montana, live in a parent’s home, and 77% of all young adults there are White. … In the metros with above-average shares of White young adults, the median metro has 14% of young adults living in a parent’s home.
Given everything else we know about how white Americans are under attack in this country, this doesn’t seem like an accident. Pretty much every other culture is focusing on family development and building generational wealth, while white Americans are encouraged to live on their own, often with roommates. White Americans, predominately, are the ones who are “going forth” and taking on enormous debt in the process.
And you might say — well, white Americans have a different culture. We wouldn’t have conquered the Americas if we stayed at home. Hence the famous, “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” But in reality, for most of this country’s history, white American culture generally involved staying very close with your family.
We did a deep dive into how families functioned before the Boomers. This is what we found.
If you go back to the nineteenth century, it was common for children in rural New England to sing the rhyme “Big house, little house, back house, barn,” as an ode to the kind of family compounds that many of them grew up in. An author named Thomas Hubka wrote a book about these “connected farmstead”-style homes, which look like this:
Hubka writes that,
By the middle of the 19th century, young married couples in many established farming areas could not obtain a farm and often lived with their parents. … In a common pattern, the parents would retain control of the older big house with its older kitchen, and the younger family would use the new kitchen.” He states that the “ideal family unit for most farm families in the 19th century was a nuclear family (with the anticipated addition of parents in old age). … It was common for households to gain related and nonrelated members including aged parents, orphaned young, widowed relatives, and neighbors.
But this living arrangement has now fallen out of favor.
Hubka continues:
Today the connected house-to-barn arrangement is still the region’s dominant farm architecture. Yet few farms are still active and their total numbers are fast retreating. In several towns I know well, more than two-thirds of the historic connected farmsteads have either lost their connecting middle buildings, or have completely vanished.
It’s a transformation that, in various ways, has taken place all over the country — for many different reasons. It’s true that, as of 2020, data does indicate that, among U.S. adults with at least one living parent or adult child, 75% live within 30 miles of that parent or adult child. At the same time, only around 35% of U.S. adults (with at least one living parent or adult child) had all of their living parents and adult children living within 30 miles of their household. That’s according to researchers from the University of Michigan. In other words, while families aren’t completely separated, it’s now overwhelmingly common for adults to live far away from at least one of their parents or children.
And that wasn’t always the case — far from it. Take a look at this Census data, beginning in 1850. That was a significant year, because it was the first time that the Census tracked the total number of people in a household (as opposed to simply tracking the head of the household). The top graph shows the total number of households, which increased from just 3.5 million in 1850 to well over 90 million by 1990. And the bottom graph is almost the complete opposite.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau Data
It shows the average number of persons per household in the United States, beginning in 1850. (They actually include a data estimate from 1790 as well, but otherwise, it starts in 1850). In 1850, there were an average of 5.39 persons per household. By 1900, that number had dropped to 4.55. By 1950, the number was down to 3.38. And by 2010, it was down to 2.58.
What this means is that, in the middle of the 19th century (and beforehand), it was common for adults to remain in the household they grew up in, rather than move away and start their own household. That was how most people — many of them on farms — lived their lives. But in every single Census, beginning in 1850, the average number of persons-per-household has dropped. It’s become less and less common for households to contain entire families, including adult children. And the decline intensified around the turn of the century, from 1880 to 1900. And then it picked up again, as you’d expect, in the 1950s and 1960s.
It’s no secret what happened here. First there was the Industrial Revolution, which meant that many young people left the family farm to secure more lucrative jobs at textile mills, steel plants, slaughterhouses, and so on. The farms didn’t need as many people, due to the invention of new machinery. And crop prices were often unstable, so there was an economic reason to move out. Add in plenty of foreign migration, as well as the freed slaves, and you have the recipe for one of the most significant demographic transformations in the history of the United States. In 1870, only around a quarter of the U.S. population lived in urban areas. By 1900, that number had increased to nearly 40%. And these numbers resulted, in many cases, from the departure of young people from their hometowns. By the 1950s and 60s, you had many other factors — the GI bill, the rise of the suburbs, the interstate highway system, air travel, and so on — which made it even easier for families to grow apart.
But it’s important to emphasize that, in the 1800s and 1900s, adult children who left home weren’t going off to college to join a fraternity or hang out with roommates. They were getting jobs and getting married, for the most part. In 1900, men got married at 25 and women at 21, on average. In 1960, the average man got married at 22. The average woman was married at 20.
Now, as of 2026, the numbers look completely different. The average age of marriage for men is around 31, and 28 for women.
U.S. Census Bureau Data
You can see the general trend from 1890 to 2017 in this chart from the Census bureau, which shows the median age when men and women are getting married.
So what’s happened is that young adults initially moved away from home in order to raise families on their own property, in their own cities. That was the case for decades, after the Industrial Revolution began. But now, young people are moving away from homes for a very different reason. They’re leaving to experience a kind of “extended adolescence,” where they delay marriage in favor of hanging out, attending an expensive college, experiencing city life, and so on.
None of this is normal or good.
As the historian Stephanie Coontz has pointed out, this is a very new phenomenon, in the context of American history:
The 1950s was a historical fluke… For the first time, young people could afford to move away from home, marry early, and buy a house on a single income. That brief period created an unrealistic expectation that this was the ‘traditional’ American way, when in fact, multigenerational living and delayed independence had been the historical norm for centuries.
In other words, my perspective — that I’d prefer my kids live near me — was the norm throughout most of this country’s history and the history of human civilization generally. There was a period, beginning in the late 19th century and accelerating in the 1950s, where that norm was suspended. But that was a unique period, when the economy was booming, and everyone was expected to get married very soon after leaving home.
To be clear, maybe you do have a very strong argument, in your particular situation, for encouraging your children to leave your community and your household. But whatever that argument is, you have to recognize that it’s completely different from the argument that people could make in the 1950s, or the 1880s, or any other point in American history. What you’re supposed to think now is that, if your kids settle down far away from you, then they’ve achieved independence and “succeeded” in life. At the same time, the children of the elites aren’t settling down far away from their mansions and compounds. The Kardashians, the Hemsworth Brothers, the Kennedys, The Bush family, the Rockefellers — they all bought massive properties so they could remain in close proximity to their families.
And there’s a reason for that. Barring some sort of economic necessity or some very unusual circumstance, it’s good to live around people you care about, and who you have something in common with. It’s a very good and healthy practice to build out a support structure, so that you aren’t living entirely around strangers who don’t know you or care about you. The goal of every major industry in this country — from Hollywood to the universities — has been to separate you from those people, at a young age. They’ll tell you that it’s the way things have always been. But that’s not true. It was never true. And that’s why, in my own life, I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
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