This phenomenon has a wide spectrum, and goes by many names: freeters, NEETs, the Boomerang Generation. In America, it’s taken the
older generation, who apparently killed wolves and bears for survival starting on their eighteenth birthdays, by surprise. The New York Times has a
piece about it, focusing interestingly on the economic ramifications of having
your spawn return upstream. (Okay, no more nature analogies.)

Returning home after college might be unusual for some
Americans, but for many Asian Americans it’s normal, even expected. I know
plenty of folks, myself included, who have come back home, even when the
economy wasn’t so glum. The contract AsianAm kids make with their parents seems
to be different than those of other races: go to college, we parents will pay for
almost everything, maybe even get you a car and a condo, and in return you
gotta help us out when we’re in our adult diapers. The clause of “coming back”
isn’t even mentioned because it can be a given.

This contract means that the concept of paying rent is inconceivable to some
Asian parents. I know some AsianAm Millenials have fulltime jobs but still don’t pay for their own cell
phone bills, let alone a designated “rent” to the parentals.

So with this recession does that mean that the social
contracts of non-Asian kids will soon be changing to meet the tough times? Will they look more like ours?