While adult children moving in with their parents used to serve as a quirky enough to be a movie premise (like in Jeff, Who Lives at Home or that one starring Matthew McConaughey), it's pretty common these days: about 25 percent of Americans between 18 and 30 are living with parents. Kathy Warbelow and Frank Bass write at Bloomberg that with high unemployment and a tough job market, the amount of young adults experiencing arrested development has grown dramatically; for the 18-to-30 crowd, the numbers are up 3.9 percent since 2010 to 20.7 million. The number of 26-year-olds living with their folks has grown almost 46 percent since 2007. As Warbelow and Bass point out, Republicans have been targeting this group, by looking to appeal to young people who may have supported Obama in 2008, but now have bleak job prospects. Paul Ryan mentioned "fading Obama posters" in his Republican National Convention speech.

But perhaps living with the 'rents is not as taboo or unfortunate as it had been: the career services director at the University of Texas College of Liberal Arts told Bloomberg that “parents are more accepting; some welcome it.” Plus, Warbelow and Bass cite a Pew study that found that 34 percent of adults between 18 to 34 who live with a parent because of economic reasons said, "living with their parents at this stage of life has been good for the relationship." Terrible times: bringing families together.

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Esther Zuckerman