All Grown Up, But Still at Home with Mom & Dad: How Young Hispanics Are Reinventing Adulthood.

By Insight Tr3s

Recently Insight Tr3s took a closer look at Hispanic young adults still living with their parents. As Tr3s revealed in its 2012 research study, Hispanic Adult Millennials Living the Next Normal: Age of Uncertainty, 45% of Hispanics 18 to 34 reside with their parents – and when you look at bicultural Hispanics 18 to 29, that figure rises to nearly 60%. The Great Recession is the root cause of their extended stays at home. It’s tough to save enough money to move out, and even those with the means to leave have anxieties about “something happening” that loom large enough to keep them in their childhood bedrooms. As a result, they are sacrificing privacy for the comforts of familial closeness — and not making plans to leave anytime soon.

So, what does it mean to be an adult when you’re well past your 18th birthday but still at home with Mom and Dad? Tr3s’s research found that young Hispanics living at home today are reinventing adulthood. Less than a third of young Hispanics living with their parents agree that “moving out and paying your own bills makes you an adult.” (In comparison, nearly 70% of non-Hispanic young adults living on their own and over half of Hispanic young adults living on their own did agree with that statement.)

Since they have not yet moved out and reached that traditional marker of adulthood, Hispanic young adults living with their parents have different ideas about what makes a person an adult. For 21% contributing to household bills/rent connotes adulthood, 13% say doing household work, and 10% say attaining a higher education.

But even so, Hispanic adults living at home see themselves overall as “emerging adults.” The majority (52%) say they’re more an adult than a child, a minority (7%) say they’re more a child, and a substantial percentage (41%) believe they’re a bit of both.

In general, Hispanic young adults believe that adulthood is hard – and it caught them unprepared! For many, this came as a surprise and they said there should be some kind of alert in place to let them know of the difficulties ahead.

With the knowledge that so many Hispanic young adults have not yet left the nest, Tr3s is responding with a programming strategy that takes into account the co-viewing connection so common in these multi-generational households.

At its upfront tonight, Tr3s will present a slate of new shows with appeal to Latino young adults and their parents – among them, “Familia de Circo,” a reality series that gives viewers a front-row seat to the antics and clashing egos of five Mexican brothers running a circus; “Divas del Azúcar,” a reality series by the producers of “Cake Boss” (High Noon Entertainment) about the entertaining travails of a Cuban mother and daughters who own a colorful Miami cake shop; and “Fortuna,” a novela about a casino mogul leading a double-life in the corrupt world of gaming.

Source: Tr3s 2012 “Hispanic Adult Millennials Living the Next Normal: Age of Uncertainty”