The Accordion Family

August 29, 2011
Newman (The Missing Class) examines the proliferation of “accordion families,” in which children continue to live with their parents late into their 20s and 30s. It’s a phenomenon that spans cultures and continents, and Newman’s inquiry takes her around the world to examine how family structures are responding to societal changes. She examines how high unemployment rates, the rise of short-term employment, staggered birth rates, longer life expectancies, and the high cost of living have affected the younger generation’s transition to adulthood. While in Spain and Italy the new family dynamics mark a change from the past, they are more easily accepted than they are in Japan, where expectations for maturity and developmental milestones are more socially fixed. Newman’s interviews with parents and their cohabitating children reveal how the definition of “adulthood” is changing, from the possession of external markers (a marriage, a home) to a psychological state, an understanding of one’s place in the world and one’s responsibilities. While the book fails to provide a prescription to the accordion family, it does provide an alternative when Newman looks north to strong welfare states like Sweden and Denmark, where the government subsidizes housing and provides grants to help young adults transition more easily, a place that the U.S. can look “to see what can be done, and at what cost, to insure the orderly transition of the generations.”

November 1, 2011
A look at the impact of globalization on young people finds intriguing differences in family relationships and living patterns in selected countries around the around. A sociologist who has written widely on poverty and the working poor (The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, 2007, etc.), Newman (dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University) interviewed some 300 families in the United States, Italy, Spain, Japan, Denmark and Sweden to assess this impact. She found that global competition has had a profound effect on young adults in the West and in Japan who find themselves facing extended unemployment, forcing many to live at home with their parents. The resulting formation of multigenerational households, or "accordion families," is a phenomenon that intrigues Newman, and her interviews reveal significant differences in how it is regarded in different societies. In addition to the personal stories, the author provides charts and tables that starkly illustrate the changes. In Japan, parents with adult children in the household tend to blame themselves for their grown offspring's failure to launch, whereas Spanish parents tend to blame the government for abandoning the young generation to economic forces. Italian parents take a much more positive view, welcoming the presence of live-in adult children. In the United States, parents seem willing to house and support adult children if they are working for advanced degrees or at unpaid internships that will further a professional career. The most striking difference, however, is in the Scandinavian countries, where strong welfare systems support the independence of young people with subsidized housing, free education and unemployment insurance. A consequence of delayed adulthood is that the young are not marrying and producing the next generation, a problem especially severe in Japan. Newman sees three possible solutions: increasing immigration, increasing taxes to maintain a safety net for an aging population or cutting back on the safety net. Clear presentation of a growing problem, its causes and consequences and the choices societies make.

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Starred review from June 1, 2012

Newman (dean, Krieger Sch. of Arts & Sciences, Johns Hopkins) explores global, economic, and cultural trends related to the steady rise in the number of boomerang kids and demonstrates that this phenomenon is not unique to the United States. Through interviews conducted with families from Italy, Denmark, Spain, the United States, and Japan, Newman reveals that while the causes of children moving back home are somewhat universal (high rents, few job opportunities, and student loan debt), different cultures have very disparate ways of redressing the issue.

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