"Son, I'm Home": More parents move in with kids

Ran across this little bit today...read it but whatever you do, don't let your in-laws see this!

More parents move in with kids
In-laws, too, and others

By Greg Toppo and Anthony DeBarrosUSA TODAY

In the 1990s, your family came for dinner. Now they're moving in.

The number of parents, siblings and other relatives who live with adult heads of households grew 42% from 2000 to 2007, according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Leading the way: parents, up 67%, to 3.6 million.

The figures suggest it isn't only elderly parents moving in. The number of parents under 65 in these households increased by 75%, and those 65 and older were up 62%. Both groups outpaced the rise in the number of people in family households overall, which is up 6% since 2000.

"This is just a major trend," says Stephanie Coontz, a family history professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., who directs research at the Council on Contemporary Families.
Coontz suspects that a host of factors — among them higher housing costs and the USA's struggling economy — are prompting families to combine expenses. Also, intergenerational households are more common among the country's growing number of immigrants, she says.

But Coontz also notes that parent-child relationships are closer now than in the past. The downside, she says, is the emergence of the so-called helicopter parent who may hover too closely, but the upside is a tighter bond between generations and, in many cases, closer friendships between grown children and their parents. "I don't know how many of my students have told me, 'This may sound weird, but I talk to my parents more than I talk to my friends.' "

Read the rest here.