The Not So Empty Nest: A How-to Guide for Parents and Adult Children Living Together

Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, returns with a guide to successful—even joyful—multigenerational living for parents and adult children under the same roof.

When Julie Lythcott-Haims’s twenty-year-old son moved back into the family home, they couldn’t help feeling that they had failed as a parent. They were the parenting expert who advised on raising self-sufficient kids. What had they missed? ​

They discovered their family wasn’t unique—according to a 2023 Bloomberg poll, 45 percent of Americans aged eighteen to twenty-nine now live with their parents. Some families are helping children with neurodivergence, learning differences, and mental health challenges that lengthen the independence timeline. And many families are grappling with astronomical housing costs that make living on one’s own a struggle for young people. Still, they worried that their family had failed. As they settled into cohabiting, however, they came to realize that living with their adult child offered a rare opportunity for their family to connect.

Wanting to help others in their situation, Lythcott-Haims got to work on The Not So Empty Nest, a practical guide to multigenerational living, aimed toward parents and adult children in a time when large numbers of them are returning to, or staying in, their family homes in their twenties and sometimes beyond. In addition, they speak to families who may also be caring for elders, as was the case for Lythcott-Haims, whose mother was a household member.

With wisdom grounded in case studies, psychology, and, most of all, their own experience, The Not So Empty Nest grapples with the most common issues parents and adult children face when they are living under the same roof: upkeep of the shared home, norms for communication, skill-building, money, power struggles, identity and beliefs, and how to reset a difficult dynamic.

Frank, conversational, and accessible, The Not So Empty Nest is a practical guide to living cooperatively in a world where parents and adult children lead increasingly intertwined lives.

Accompanied by black-and-white illustrations throughout.