The complications of moving back home as a person of color

Happy Thursday, and welcome to another edition of “This is America,” a newsletter that delves into the intersections of race and identity. I’m Joshua Bote, a trending news reporter.

I have a complicated relationship with being at home as an adult. My parents kept traditional Filipino values close to their heart long after we moved to the U.S. when I was 5. I have three older sisters, all of whom lived at home for at least a year before moving in with their significant others.

Growing older, I felt bogged down by my parents' pressure to prioritize my family first — I yearned for independence and ended up moving out when I was 18. Now we live on opposite coasts: my parents and my sisters in California, and I in D.C.

During the pandemic, I feel like I'm one of the few of my Gen Z peers who did not move home for a significant stretch of time. A recent Pew study found that young people are moving back in with their parents at levels comparable to the Great Depression.

For young people of color, especially immigrants and children of immigrants, living at home as an adult comes with a set of expectations, often steeped in cultural norms different from those in the U.S. That was the narrative I sought out with this newsletter – to tell of generational battles and compromise. What I found is that it's not a nice, neat narrative. Everyone faces a different struggle.

But first: Race and justice news we're watching

Important stories of the past week, from Paste BN and other news sources.

• Paste BN has published a stunning, six-part series describing the policies of the past and present that have made Black, Asian, Hispanic and Indigenous Americans overwhelmingly vulnerable to COVID-19 deaths.
• Amy Cooper, the white woman who became notorious earlier this year for calling the police on Christian Cooper — a Black man bird-watching at Central Park — called police a second time to falsely accuse him of assault, prosecutors say.
• The legendary Black trans journalist Monica Roberts, who chronicled the deaths of trans people before many major publications did, died at 58 last week.
• Hispanic Heritage Month wraps up today. Paste BN's Jessica Flores and Claire Thornton examine the term "Latinx" and talk about what it means for members of Gen Z on the 5 Things podcast.

Moving home: Shame or source of pride?

A common perception in America is that anyone who lives in — or moves back to — their parents’ home might be deemed a failure. Plenty of articles, advice columns and op-eds show that the issue persisted even before the pandemic struck.

For Marisel Salazar, a 31-year-old Cuban-Panamanian New York-based food writer, it was both an honor and an obligation.

“To be an adult and live with your parent is truly different: You are contributing to the home and (are) a source of companionship," Salazar said.

She said she moved to her mother’s Northern Virginia home during the pandemic to put her mother, who has been facing some health challenges, at ease. 

Multi-generational households are generally more common among people of color, according to a 2018 Pew report, with Asian, Black and Hispanic Americans living in households with more than two adult generations at a rate nearly double that of their white counterparts.

“Young adults in many countries, especially Asians, tend not to leave parental homes until they get married,” University of Georgia sociology professor Karlo Man-Kit told me. "Moving back home and living with parents is praised and meets the expectations of their culture.”

Balancing obligations

The pandemic has exacerbated a job crisis disproportionately affecting people of color, driving more young people to move home.

An economic crisis and jobs shortage study found : 72% of Latino households, 60% of Black households, and 55% of Native American households reported serious financial problems, compared to 36% of white households and 37% of Asian households, according to the survey conducted by NPR, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Historic layoffs have also taken the biggest toll on women and the young.

Aprill Smith was laid off twice in the span of six months. A 41-year-old Black woman with a Master’s degree, she moved back in with her parents in central Alabama. 

Smith said she ended up taking another job paying $15 an hour — considerably less than the position she was laid off from — to ensure that her mother and father, both retired from jobs as a domestic worker and a blue-collar laborer and on fixed disability income, could pay their bills.

She told me that her relationship with her mother, even as she's grown older, hasn't evolved into friendship the way that it has for white families. That has led to tension as she strives to be her own person even while she's at home.

They make it work. “We have to deal with the conflict and issues if we want to be able to pay our bills and keep a roof over our heads,” Smith said. 

Ultimately, what every person I interviewed said about living at home during the pandemic said was they missed their sense of independence – of wanting to be their own person away from their parents.  

For so many, the obligations, the coexisting, the helping – it's the new normal, at least for the foreseeable future.

Forging a path ahead

Even if you're not forced to move home to your parents, there's still a tether connecting you to your family.

Huma Hashmi, a 21-year-old Pakistani woman who lives in North Carolina, said she took on double-duty while she's at home — both as a student at the University of North Carolina and as the eldest child in her family helping out around the house with cooking and caring for her grandfather. 

She said she's grateful to be home and not living alone in her dorm room, adding that her parents didn't pressure her to move home. That said, she added: “It’s really hard not to feel guilty whatever you’re doing.”

In retrospect, I have some regrets leaving home so prematurely — a feeling that has only intensified as the pandemic continues without an end in sight and I miss my family, obligations and all. I'm thankful to be employed and independent from my mama and papa. But I can't shake the feeling that there's so much I owe them.

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Next week: Lifestyle reporter Rasha Ali writes about the representation of Black and Muslim women in entertainment in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement.

This is America is a weekly take on current events from a rotating panel of Paste BN journalists with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints. If you’re seeing this newsletter online or someone forwarded it to you, you can sign up here. If you have feedback for us, we'd love for you to drop it here.