Our youngest child recently celebrated a milestone birthday. He turned 21, making it official that we are in our parenting-young-adults era.

But what does that mean in a time when the vast majority of children his age still rely on their parents for financial help? A 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center found that among respondents between the ages 18 to 24, only 16 percent say they are completely financially independent from their parents.

Granted, many in this age bracket are still pursuing higher education. Our son is a junior in college, so we expect to provide financial support until his education is completed. Thankfully, the percentage of financially independent young adults rises as they get older — 44% of those ages 25 to 29 say they are completely financially independent, and that increases to two-thirds of those ages 30 to 34.

But that still leaves a sizable number of adults depending on their parents. It's surprising that a majority of young adults in their mid-to-late 20s say they still rely on parental subsidies.

This is a change from when I graduated college, moved out and became fully independent. But it's also understandable given how college costs have skyrocketed. Public college tuition has roughly doubled in inflation-adjusted terms since the early 1990s, and roughly tripled or more in raw dollars. The sharpest increase happened between 2000 and 2012 as state lawmakers cut higher education funding during recessions.

More students earn college degrees, which they’ve been told is the way to a better economic future, and a majority take on debt to do so. At the same time, their prospects after graduation are worse than they have been in at least a decade.

The unemployment rate for recent college graduates climbed to about 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from an average of 5.3% in the third quarter. The underemployment rate rose to 42.5%, the highest level since 2020, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

This is a big reversal in fortune from the recent past. For much of the past decade, individuals ages 22 to 27 with at least a bachelor's degree had a lower unemployment rate compared to the rest of the workforce. That’s no longer the case, and the recent Pew survey reflects this reality. Today’s young adults are more likely to be living with their parents than young adults in the early 1990s.

Factor in the sharp rise in housing, gas and food costs, alongside student debt and wage stagnation relative to the cost of living (for those lucky enough to get a job), it’s not surprising that Gen Z is taking longer to reach autonomous adulthood. Developmental psychologist Jeffrey Arnett calls the age between 18 and 25 “emerging adulthood.”

When we were this age, many of us had already emerged into adulthood. It’s a mindset shift to adjust to the financial reality facing our young adult children.

This can complicate an evolving parent-child relationship. A financially dependent adult child and a supporting parent can have a warm, loving and respectful relationship, but it is not truly equal. When one party controls resources in a relationship, they hold more power and often hold some expectations about how those resources are being spent.

I think it’s best to acknowledge all this and create a plan that helps move our children toward independence. It’s also vital that we make the connection between the decisions made by our state and national lawmakers and our financial circumstances.

Politicians love to crow about their so-called accomplishments, but if more and more adult children are struggling to support themselves despite working hard and earning a college degree, something is fundamentally broken.

Millennials, the children of Baby Boomers, are documented as potentially the first generation to fall behind their parents financially.

Are the adult children of Gen X far behind?

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