Anthropology

Both of my children plan on getting their own places in the new year. There is talk of moving in with their significant others, although that may be down the road. Next year too, my niece who is like my third child finishes dental school and will move to the city to do her residency. She also plans to share an apartment with her significant other, who is a New Yorker born and raised. I suppose, with rents in the city so high, sharing a one bedroom is more cost effective that renting a two or three bedroom apartment with roommates. I think this explains the growing trend of twenty somethings moving in with the people they are seriously dating. They may not be quite ready for the whole nine yards, but they are comfortable with the residential commitment.

I do wonder, in a strictly anthropological way, how these joint living arrangements among young adults who are romantically involved will affect the decision of whether and when to marry. When I was in my twenties, most dating couples in the city had our own apartments, and we moved back and forth between them, but rents were more affordable then. As I recall, I paid $325 a month for my one bedroom in a very desirable part of town, right next to the university. Today, young people are gentrifying neighborhoods at monthly rents of two thousand dollars or more. So I get it. I also get that living with your significant other must feel fairly liberating after being roomies with your parents and having to let them know when you aren't coming home till the next day so your mother doesn't freak out because she at least knows you're alive.

But, you know, in my mind, my kids still look like this: