Question

I`m not completely clear on what you`re saying. Do you like the fact that she still lived at home, or did you not like it? Maybe you don`t understand it?

It was`nt entirely unrealistic for girls to still live at home until they were married, provided the family was well off financially. Most girls did go on to college or had jobs and lived at home, but the norm, in the 50`s and the early to mid 60`s was to snag a husband, and hopefully, a good provider, and have babies, and be Mrs.Suzie Homemaker...... till reality and the times that were a changing set in. That was the way it was with all of my older sisters...a few have been divorced and remarried since.... Having been born in the mid 50`s, I was a teen, and young adult in the late 60`s/early 70`s, and had a different outlook. While it puzzled my folks, I felt that I should be albe to take care of myself, and do other things before marriage. I was`nt looking for a husband. I wanted to try a few things on my own before that. I joined the Army. After that, I met someone and got married....
As for the 1930`s, my folks told me that many families all lived together....Grandparents, adult children...etc... It was practical! The depression was not an easy time. You needed all hands on deck! In most cases, it was survival.
Times do change. I find it sad somtimes, that families are`nt as close knit as they use to be, and I do talk from experience.
What goes on in the movies is`nt always realistic, but the movies do reflect the times in which they were made.

The obvious reason, and what you thought I would say, is that the girl, who can't get a professional job, could not afford to have her own home. Of course Elizabeth Taylor could move into some small apartment with whatever money her parents gave her, or maybe some little job, but the job and home wouldn't be fitting for her family's stature. Also, she wouldn't be able to live in the way to which she had become accustomed.
What I really wanted to say though, was that it's more about the parent-child relationship from then to now. In some cultures it's insane that the child would leave the home at 18 to go off to college, because it would hurt the parents. They can't understand why Americans children would do such a thing to their parents. Though that is it to a relative extreme, it's what I'm trying to say.

Nothing but light! . . . Nothing but light!



Charlie (Requiescit in) Pace

Families of those days did frequently live under one roof. Houses were much bigger and money seemed to go a lot further. When my aunt graduated from college in 1955 as a teacher, she wanted to get her own apartment. My grandparents forbid it because it wouldn't have been respectable for a young woman to live alone -- she might be "talked about." So my aunt lived at home with her parents until her marriage a couple of years later. I often wondered why she just didn't defy her parents -- she was 22, earning her own money, and could have done or gone wherever she wished. I guess that wasn't done either. =

taylorje is right. Living alone in that era was frowned upon. There was a minor industry in "women's" hotels or apartments in big cities for women who took jobs but needed to keep up appearances and avoid stigma. It was a different time.

Uh, you do realize that the phenomenon of adult children continuing to live at home has become much more common again in the last 15 years or so, and especially now with the economy in the shape it's in? ;-)

Just a note - IIRC, in the original novel Kay's character is 24, not 20, yet *she* still lives at home, too. I agree that when parents and adult children get along, this arrangement can be a very good thing.