Home for the holidays ... and every other day

A new report by Pew Research tells of the growing number of "boomerang kids" who will only have to walk down the hall tomorrow to get a good Thanksgiving dinner.

The journey home for Thanksgiving won't be quite so far this year for many young adults. Instead of traveling across country or across town, many grown sons and daughters will be coming to dinner from their old bedroom down the hall, which now doubles as their recession-era refuge.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center finds that 13% of parents with grown children say one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year. Social scientists call them "boomerangers" -- young adults who move in with parents after living away from home. This recession has produced a bumper crop.

Census Bureau data confirm that proportionately fewer young singles are living solo now than before the recession. Overall, the proportion of adults ages 18 to 29 who live alone declined from 7.9% in 2007 to 7.3% in 2009. Similar drops in the proportion of young people who live by themselves occurred during or immediately after the recessions of 1982 and 2001.

Given that their parents' home equity money tree has now stopped producing, many millenials are now either going to grow up very fast or develop an alternative, less-productive view of the world that, in some cases, will shape the rest of their lives.

There have been so many stories about teenagers getting whatever it was that they wanted up until a year or two ago that you have to wonder if a more descriptive name for their generation might develop over time.