A high rate of college-age Americans are mov­ing back in with Mom and Dad.

According to infor­ma­tion released by the Pew Research Center, about 30 per­cent of 18–30 year-olds will move back in with their par­ents. The cau­sa­tion of this is likely the reces­sion that has been dev­as­tat­ing to young Americans since the end of 2007.

This group of about 20 mil­lion peo­ple has been called the “boomerang kids”; assum­ingly because the nature of a boomerang is that it goes away and then comes back to you.

This is a ter­ri­ble moniker for this group of peo­ple who have fallen on hard times. Anyone who is not an Aborigine, Mick Dundee or a man­u­fac­turer of boomerangs knows that they are just about impos­si­ble to work. There is prob­a­bly a unique skill and tal­ent for prop­erly using a boomerang, whose orig­i­nal pur­pose was for hunt­ing in the Australian out­back, but it’s not com­mon in the neigh­bor­hoods where I grew up.

This sounds ter­ri­ble; 20 mil­lion young peo­ple mov­ing back in with Mom and Dad, but I see this as a type of sen­si­bil­ity that per­haps con­tributed to the eco­nomic col­lapse. Recognizing the likely poor liv­ing con­di­tions they would be able to afford indi­vid­u­ally and decid­ing that rather than set­tling for a job just to pay the bills, this demo­graphic has opted to stay in school, con­tin­u­ing their edu­ca­tion to bet­ter weather the eco­nomic storms in the future. The same goes for delay­ing hav­ing a child or get­ting married.

These may be kids because they are someone’s chil­dren, but despite what the data seems to sug­gest, they’re mak­ing some rather adult decisions.