The year is 1971. A mother and father sit at the breakfast table having this conversation.

"Tony will be fine. He's 19 and ready to start a life. His apartment rent is $150 a month. He'll make at least $2.25 an hour working at the warehouse," says Dad."And Sara and her husband are buying a house together right after finishing college. They both have exciting careers ahead of them," says Mom.Dad looks at Mom across the table, thinking this is the first time in 20 years that it will be just the two of them living in the house."So what do we do now?" he asks.Now it's 2016. Another mom and dad come down for breakfast."Tony's 34 years old now and we still have to tell him to make his own bed," says Dad."And we can't ask Sara to pay rent. I mean she'll be 25 next week, but her job doesn't pay her much money," says Mom."They have to stay here," says Dad. "They can't live on their own."This newspaper recently reported, "Many of America's young adults appear to be in no hurry to move out of their old bedrooms, and "For the first time on record, living with parents is now the most common arrangement for people ages 18-34." The article also points out that we have reached the highest rate ever in older millennials, those who are 25-34 years old, who are still living at home.The reasons for this phenomenon are many and some make sense. Many young adults today are struggling to earn self-sufficient money in a difficult economy. They simply cannot afford the cost of living on their own. The less educated or the untrained find jobs paying only minimum wages while the college degreed often begin low-salaried careers saddled with loans to pay back that can total $100,000 or more.Some never leave home while other kids come back to the nest. Friends of mine tell me that one day soon they expect to see the lights of a car in their driveway in the middle of the night. It will be their son and he will be carrying a suitcase. His wife will have told him to leave and she wants a divorce.Burdened by attorney fees and child support payments, he will have no other choice but to ask to sleep in his old bedroom. He will tell his parents he'll stay just a few weeks, but they know he'll be there for months or even years.I know other parents my age who have reluctantly taken back their 20- and 30-somethings who have squandered away their money and can no longer support themselves.In the 1970s, when you finished high school, it was time to leave the nest and get your own place to live. The next steps were to marry and start a family.Nearly half a century later, getting married and having a family are no longer priorities."Men and women today are concentrating on school, careers and work, and less focused on forming new families and having children," says Richard Fry, senior economist at the Pew Research Center.Before we send out our sympathies to older parents who are still cooking meals for their adult kids, here's another interesting twist to this family dynamic.Birds encourage their young to fly away from the nest, but there are people parents who clip the wings of their children so they are incapable of leaving home. These adult children often take on the roles of caregivers.They are still attached their mothers' umbilical cords, so to speak, and they are ill-equipped to survive on their own.I guess I'm old school with this topic. I am learning to allow my young children to do many things for themselves so they can develop their independence and even experience the struggles and failures that come along when no one comes running to their sides to fix what's broken.Laugh and cry. Succeed and fail. That's all they will need to take from my wife and me.I guess a few bucks in their pockets might help, too.Rich Strack can be reached at

katehep11@gmail.com.