Mairam Mansy is quickly reaching the benchmarks of adulthood.

        She turned 21 last summer. She'll claim a diploma from the University of Cincinnati on Friday and she'll launch a career in pharmaceutical sales next Monday.

        But like many of her peers donning caps and gowns at colleges across the country this spring, Ms. Mansy is not ready to take one of the most significant leaps from childhood to independence — moving out on her own.

WHO'S LIVING WITH PARENTS?

About 30 percent of young adult men, and 20 percent of young adult women live with their parents, according to the 2000 Census. But those numbers are slightly skewed, because they include college students who are living away from home but whose parents claim them as members of their households. Among the young people living with parents, the Census shows:    18-24-year-olds    Men: 7.4 million or 56 percent    Women: 5.6 million or 42 percent    25-34-year-olds    Men: 2.2 million or 12 percent    Women: 1 million or 5 percent    Total 18-34-year-olds    Men: 9.7 million men    Women: 6.6 million women    Source: U.S. Census Bureau

        Ms. Mansy plans to stay under her parents' Symmes Township roof for the immediate future. And she'd like to stay put until marriage, unless career demands force her to move.

        She had a taste of independent living during her junior year of college, when she moved into an apartment with a friend. But within nine months, she moved back home.

        Sure, she has to endure the occasional squabble with her younger siblings over whose turn it is to clean the bathroom and she admits to a certain amount of friction with her parents about whether she should have a curfew. (“I have to be home by 2 a.m. and I'm 21 years old,” she says with a tone of frustration. “I think it's ridiculous.”)

        But those are minor complaints, she insisted. Sharing an address with mom and dad has many advantages.

        “It's nice to come home to somebody,” Ms. Mansy says. “I missed just somebody really caring about me and their support. “No matter how much money I had living outside the home, it still didn't feel like home.”

        That appears to be the view of a majority of college graduates this spring. In May, 63 percent of U.S. college students said they planned to live at home, according to an online poll by MonsterTRAK.com, a job search company.

        Tough economic times seem like an obvious explanation for the trend. The class of 2002, which entered college with expectations of multiple job offers, perks and bonuses, is leaving school in one of the worst hiring markets in years.

        “Now the opportunity to leave home, based on getting this great salary that was going to provide them with their own independence may be somewhat delayed,” says Linda Bates Parker, director of UC's Career Development Center.

        But Frank Furstenberg, chairman of the Network on the Transition to Adulthood, a $3.4 million MacArthur Foundation project focusing on the development of young adults, believes the phenomenon of 20-somethings living at home is part of a much larger shift in society that has been going on for almost 50 years.

        “In the middle part of the last century, when the parents of today's young adults were being launched into adulthood, the tempo of the transition was very rapid,” says Mr. Furstenberg, also a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “People went into marriage and set up their own household in a very compressed period of time.”

        Today, education has become a lengthier process. “People can't enter the labor force and form a family in their late teens or in their early 20s,” Mr. Furstenberg says. “It requires more skill accumulation and more material resources than was the case a half century ago.”

        Young adults are waiting longer to start careers, waiting longer to get married and waiting longer to have children. Those changes are behind the movement toward longer dependence on parents, he says.

        Mr. Furstenberg objects to recent media coverage portraying the live-at-home trend as an indication of something wrong with young adults today.

        “I wouldn't characterize them as lazy or dependent or lacking self-reliance,” he says. “I think it's a sign that they're at home doing what they should be doing, but they simply don't have the wherewithal to live independently.”

        Though the research isn't conclusive yet, most parents probably welcome the chance to keep their children close by a little longer, Mr. Furstenberg says.

        Ms. Mansy's father, Sam, believes having his daughter home strengthens the family bond.

        “This is a very mobile society and we work a lot and move around,” Mr. Mansy says. “To have a family and be all together is something very precious.”

        But that doesn't mean he wants his daughter to stay at home forever.

        “I'm expecting one day that she'll get married and move out,” he says with a laugh. “I don't want to support the son-in-law.”

        Charlotte Hayes, whose 25-year-old son Bob has lived at their Villa Hills home throughout college and two years of graduate school, also is more than happy with the arrangement.

        “For us, it's wonderful,” she says. “I like him as an adult. “He has a wonderful sense of humor. We stay a family even though he's 25, and that's fun.”

        Despite their families' welcoming attitudes, many stay-at-home young adults do say living at home can carry a stigma.

        “It's kind of embarrassing,” says Linda Hoesl, who plans to keep her bedroom in her parents' Westwood home after her graduation Friday from UC. “You kind of feel like you're not really grown up because you're living with mom and dad.”

        Such feelings are what drove Ms. Mansy to move out during college. “But after I experienced what it was like to live on your own and moved back home, then I wasn't embarrassed at all,” Ms. Mansy says. “I realized how much my parents did for me and how much they supported me and motivated me.

        “It's so time consuming if you don't live with your parents and you have to do your own laundry and cooking and cleaning. You're so stressed about bills and you have no one to turn to for advice. “You take it all for granted until it's gone, then you know how good it is.”

        Bob Hayes, a graduate student at UC, admits to the occasional twinge of self-consciousness about his living arrangements — but he believes he's making the most prudent move toward securing his future, and he says many of his friends recognize that.

        “Staying at home allows you to save up money that you would be spending on rent or other expenses,” Mr. Hayes says. “It allows me to build a little bit of anest egg before I get out into the real world and start paying real bills.

        “Eventually, I want to get started with a family and a home, but I have to put things in the proper order. I have to consider my education first, finish that and take other considerations into account later.”

        Another factor that keeps many young adults at home is their distaste for the alternative.

        “A lot of people that I know who live on their own, they live with three or four other people,” says Tammy Bachtal, a soon-to-be UC graduate who lives with her grandparents in Finneytown. “That's not something I would be interested in doing. I don't want to live someplace that isn't nice. I don't want to live by campus. I like to live in a nicer neighborhood, and I don't want to live in a party house. “I don't want to worry about other people paying their share of the rent.”

        Critics might say that haggling over the rent and struggling to make ends meet in a shoddy apartment are necessary steps in the growing-up ladder. But young adults who stay at home strongly disagree.

        “Some people my age are just unwilling to bite the bullet and stay with their parents,” Mr. Hayes says. “For some reason, they feel the need to get out and establish themselves. I feel it's possible to establish yourself even with your parents.”

        Mr. Hayes goes so far as to say staying at home will make him more successful as an adult. “I've had time to gain perspective both on education and my future career as well as in life.”

        He's also had more opportunities to seek advice on his chosen career, electrical engineering, from his father, a professional in the field.

        “If more people my age were willing to consider their parents as their friends and allow themselves the opportunity to get to know them a little better, that might be a positive thing in their personal lives and in their education,” Mr. Hayes says.

        His mother echoes those views.

        “I have no concerns whatsoever of him assuming responsibility,” says Charlotte Hayes. “I know he will take on his own home within the next three or four years, and I know he will do it well. His home will run more smoothly than mine even does, and mine runs well.

        “A lot of people will say he needs to go away to college to grow up. No. No. No. I say you can grow up and still live in this house.”

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