Times of transition are hard on relationships. When college students return home for an extended winter break, it can be a particularly difficult time for relations between parents and emerging adults.
What has changed?
For returning college students, everything has changed. They have become used to more privacy—and privacy from supervision. They have become used to setting their own schedule, and college schedules tend to differ from parents’ work schedules. They have become used to being responsible for getting their work done without being pestered or checked on.
In addition to being responsible for themselves, most college students have also become used to being responsible only for themselves. They do their own laundry, make their beds, and tidy up after themselves. But they probably eat in a cafeteria and aren’t expected to care for others—to set tables, empty dishwashers, clean bathrooms, or vacuum living rooms. No pets to play with, but no dogs to walk or poop to scoop.
For parents, very little has changed. Their home is still the same. Their college student is probably returning to their childhood bedroom. If it is their only or youngest child, parents may have grown used to more privacy and more freedom to flex their schedule around their own needs rather than those of their child.
What’s remained the same?
For parents, almost everything has stayed the same. So, they probably have expectations that their returning children will pitch in, check in, and fit their schedule into the family routine.
For returning college students, although they have changed, almost everything at home has stayed the same. And that can be annoying! They have grown, changed, and become responsible adults. Yet parents’ expectations are still those they had for the child who left home.
What happens when the expectation of one party changes and the others’ do not?
Arguments.
A common framework: legitimacy of parental authority
One way of thinking about conflict between children and their parents is in terms of legitimacy of authority.
Beliefs about the legitimacy of authority refer to what areas we think are OK for others to make rules about and what we think is not OK for them to regulate. For example, most children will agree that it’s fine (even appropriate) for parents to tell them not to hurt the dog (a moral issue). Similarly, not setting fires in the house is also considered a legitimate rule (a prudential—safety issue). On the other hand, issues of personal taste (what kind of music you like) or social relationships (who your friends are) are typically classified as personal issues and seen as at the discretion of the individual involved and not subject to outside rules.
Many issues are considered “multi-dimensional,” meaning one person might think of them as prudential but another as personal.
When people try to set rules about areas the person who is supposed to follow the rules thinks is outside of legitimate authority, several things happen.
- They are more likely to disobey the rule.
- They are more likely to avoid disclosing their disobedience or lying about it.
- They are more likely to argue with the person who set the rule.
One of the things that happens as children become adolescents and then adults is that they consider more and more issues to be in the personal domain and fewer and fewer areas as subject to legitimate parental authority. For example, things like when they get up or go to bed, what they do with their free time, and when they go out might all have been subject to rules when they lived at home. While away from college, they are not. They have become personal. Now that the student has returned home, their perspective on what is a legitimate area for parents to set rules about has changed. Their parents’ perspective has not.
What happens? Arguments.
Courtesy, consideration, and adjustment
One thing that can help both parents and returning college students to adjust to their new normal is to focus on principles they agree on.
Adults living together usually consider it to be reasonable to accommodate one another’s schedules, to chip in to help the home function smoothly, and to respect each other’s privacy. Our research has shown that almost all college students agree that it is reasonable for parents to set rules in these areas. Not because “they’re the parents and they say so,” but because adults who respect each other and live together should work together to make the household work smoothly. Because it’s the parents’ house, almost all college students think setting rules that make it easier for the family to live together comfortably is legitimate.
Using the idea of mutual courtesy rather than parents trying to assert authority can make readjusting to holidays at home easier. For example, when my eldest son moved home temporarily, he pushed back at the idea of checking in when he got home late from a date. He considered it a personal issue and not subject to regulation by me.
On the other hand, he was living at home. When I got up in the morning and he wasn’t there, or if I woke up in the middle of the night and his car wasn’t in the driveway, I worried—not about his social life, but about whether he’d had an accident. Just like, I explained to him, I’d expect him to be worried if he woke up and I wasn’t there. I didn’t need to know where he was, what he was doing, or with whom—that was personal and his business. What I wanted to know was whether he was still alive—a prudential issue.
So that’s what he texted me at 3 a.m. any time he was staying out late: “Alive.” And that was all I needed to know.