American parents adapting to living with their young adult children

Washington

BY HER mid-40s, Diana Rodriguez had envisioned a life free of kids. She'd had hers early; two sons were grown and married, and her daughter was in college."I was kind of looking forward to having an empty nest, because when you have your children so young, you never had a chance to explore life and not have those responsibilities," said Rodriguez, 54.

Instead, her sons' marriages broke up and they moved back in - one for two years, the other for eight months - to the Alexandria, Virginia, house she shares with her husband, who is not their father. "He didn't say no, but it was a situation where it wasn't the master plan," she said.

Maybe not, but Rodriguez's sons are part of an increasingly dominant cohort of adult children who live with their parents. A study released last week by the Pew Research Center found that 32 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds no…