Jahn: Beware the insidious Occupiers

Eileen White Jahn of Rockville Centre chairs the business administration department at St. Joseph's College in Patchogue.

The Occupation began in September. The timing was right: After various summer vacations/jobs/flings, harsh reality had set in for the young, underemployed and discontented. They had no prospects of full employment and no means of living independently, so they toted their gear and grimly settled themselves in.

Bound by the injustice of the economic climate, they sat around banging drums, strumming guitars, surfing the Net, sipping Starbucks and commiserating over the state of the world. All while the detritus of their existence piled up around them.

This scene is not Wall Street. This is my living room.

Early this fall, my four 20-something college graduates came to join their father, two teenage sisters and me in a movement to Occupy My House. They're true Boomerang Kids: I tossed them out into the real world and they came hurtling back.

One morning, mid-September, I got up to make lunches for the high school kids. By 6:43 a.m. there were eight people in my already cramped kitchen. Eggs fried, bacon splattered, the refrigerator slammed, toast jumped, kettles whistled and two coffee makers perked away merrily. I was not merry.

While my young were eating us out of house and home, I seriously contemplated the advantages of eating one's own young. I reluctantly concluded that we were the wrong species.

I am the portrait of the country's changing demographics. It seems like I always have been. I was born in the second half of the baby boom, joining a family that would expand to eight. I was a Yuppie in the early '80s, living in Manhattan and working the corporate life.

I had my own baby boom from 1984 to 1996, contributing six members to the so-called Echo Boom. I then fought the urge to became a Helicopter Parent, hovering worriedly over my brood. As a Sandwich Generation Parent, I can expect to care for an elderly parent while still raising my own children. Actually, the way things are going, I'm going to become an elderly parent while still raising my own children.

No wonder I'm so confused all the time. Demographically speaking, I am simultaneously raising: Echo Boomers, Gen Ys, Millennials, Boomerangs, and (my favorite) KIPPers -- Kids In their Parents' Pockets. And let's not forget to mention the irony of the Me Generation raising the iGeneration. It is definitely not a grammatical thing.

And now I am the poster parent for the new statistics released by the Census Bureau that show the climbing number of young adults living at home. The report is called "America's Family and Living Arrangements: 2011." The poster will be titled "America's Family is Occupying my Living Room: 2011."

As usual, I exaggerate. It's really not as bad as I report. The piles of debris don't really compare with the ones cleared out of Zuccotti Park recently, and the young adults in my home are actually somewhat useful. In fact, they're a veritable font of advice when it comes to how I should be raising their teenage siblings ("You are way too easy on them!").

And I'm proud to report that two of my adult children have recently moved out. Since living in the basement of his parents' house was just too humiliating, one son decided he would pay real rent to live in the basement of his married friends' house. And one daughter decided she would save me from becoming a Sandwich Generation Parent.

She moved in with my mother.