This dispatch is part of our Series: Hispanic Gen Z. This series is being crafted by a multidisciplinary team of RPA analysts, strategists, and behavioral scientists, including our Hispanic Inclusive Intelligence Team. The effort cites sources such as Census data, academic research, government studies, industry papers, and social media content.
Gen Z wants to move out. Eventually. And Gen Z Hispanics are no exception. But in Hispanic culture moving out is borderline taboo—and many in this cohort are deeply conflicted about it. How can brands play a positive role and connect with Gen Z Hispanics during this complex juncture?
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- Familismo is a dominant force in Hispanic culture, coloring virtually every aspect of Hispanics’ lives.
- With this backdrop, Gen Z Hispanics are far and away more likely than any other group to stay in the family home.
- And for this demographic, the stay-at-home vs. move-out calculus is deeply complex, involving immediate and extended family, both past and current, on US soil and overseas.
- In fact, Gen Z Hispanics who are living at home sometimes experience a bit of an identity crisis due to the imperative of family focus.
- While Hispanic women are increasingly likely to go to college, work full-time, and postpone (or simply forgo) marriage and kids, the notion of marianismo persists—which complicates things further.
How the Hell Did Everyone Else Do It?
“21f still living at my parents. A 1bed in my area averages 1600, add on pet fees and such and I feel like I’m drowning. How the hell did everyone else do it?” So starts a recent Reddit thread, entitled “How did y’all move out?”1 (Pet fees? Gen Z invests more in their pets than any other generation, being the most likely to accrue expenses like canine insurance and cat birthday cakes).2
Responses to “redsockcrew” vary: “I ain’t moving till 25 at least.” “I’m not passing up free internet, parking, and utilities.” “I need roommates and a bit more money before I can probably do so but the problem is I live in a small ass farm town and don't have any friends.” “I’ve lived with about 15 different roommates and 4 partners.” “Military.” “Modern society is deliberately set up to make it almost impossible.”
A parallel thread, on the subreddit “Hispanic,” asks for advice on “leaving family/moving out.”3 Note the implied interchangeability of the two terms. Here responses are remarkably different in both tone and content: “Going out on your own and defying tradition can be very scary. I left my family and moved [out]…They guilt me about it constantly, but this is the happiest I've ever been…but you'll also miss out on family time.” “It's important to prioritize your own well-being and future while also considering the needs of your family.” “I think you should sit down with your family and explain how you feel.”
1
A Tale of Two Trends
Gen Z is more likely than any generation in recent history to stay in the nest. But the subtext is radically different for Non-Hispanics vs. Hispanics. Among Non-Hispanics in the US, the default for many generations has been to move out at 18. “Adulting” was exciting rather than scary. Only in recent years has it become more common for twenty-somethings to express an interest in boomeranging, or just staying put. While Millennials were routinely mocked for this “failure to launch”4—sometimes caricatured as videogame addicts with a preternatural taste for avocado toast—over the last decade parents have increasingly welcomed young adult children to stay.
Among Hispanics, on the other hand, the default for many years has been to remain in the family home until marriage, or even after marriage. One of the cultural values that is central to Hispanic culture is familismo or familism: A responsibility to take care of the family, and to take the family into consideration when making decisions.5 This means that the family stays together as a unit, unless there is a real reason to break. Moving out can signal disrespect and familial neglect. Opposite the trend for Non-Hispanics, however, Hispanics in recent years have become more vocal about wanting to move out on their own and forge their own paths—though this decision is often fraught with intense guilt and familial friction. On TikTok, similar themes are echoed among Koreans, Chinese, Middle-Easterners, and others.6
Trailer for US Bank “Translators” documentary that explores the experience of Hispanic children who are often put in the position of needing to serve as translators for their families.
2
Staying Put, by The Numbers
It should be noted that the new stay-at-home trend is historic. In 1980, just 32% of 18-29-year-olds lived with their parents. In 2000, it was 38%. By 2010, with the collapse of the financial market, the number rose to a shocking-at-the-time 44%. And then in 2020, with the eruption of the pandemic, it soared past the Depression-era record of 48% to an all-time high of 52%.9 It has remained more or less pinned there since, with 56% of 18-24-year-olds living at home in 2024 (vs. 58% in 2020).10
And, expectedly, Gen Z Hispanics currently lead on the living-with-the-fam trend. As of 2020, 58% of 18-29 year-old Hispanics lived with their parents, compared to 49%, 51%, and 55% of same-age whites, Asians, and Blacks, respectively.9 And from 2020-2024, despite minor fluctuations year-over-year, Gen Z Hispanics have consistently been 15-20% more likely than their Non-Hispanic counterparts to live with their parents.11
3
The Financial Struggle Is Real (Especially for Hispanics)
Tight finances are more relevant than ever. Most Gen Zers say they struggle financially,12 and moving out is expensive. The average cost of a 4-year college education, at a public out-of-state school, swelled to $176K this past year (that’s tuition, room and board—plane tickets, laptops, dentist appointments, and Owala water bottles are all extra).13 Even if they stayed in-state, and stayed out of school, they would need to scrape together a solid $1,554/month for rent (translation: $2,159 in LA or $3,865 in NYC), a price tag that floats mercilessly above the pre-pandemic trendline.14 And while the internet says the job market is strong, Gen Z is still financially scarred by the pandemic, saddled with more lines of credit and higher levels of debt than any generation before them.15
But for Hispanics, the economic equation is more complex, entangled with layers of familismo. Not only do Gen Z Hispanics come from households that are more economically constrained,16 but their families often carry heavier financial burdens: Many Hispanic households are multigenerational17 and, per a 2021 McKinsey & Company report, “32% of Latinos send remittances to family outside the United States, with more than two-thirds of those sending up to 30% of their income abroad.”18 Retirement wealth among Hispanics trails that of all other racial/ethnic groups.19 And, despite the strong work ethic in Hispanic culture, there’s an undertow belief that’s still all-too common: “You’ll never be rich.”20
Given this backdrop, Hispanic culture is known to prize frugality and ingenuity when it comes to managing household expenses (TikTokers estrada.twins tell us: “We are Mexican, of course we collect buckets of water when it’s raining”).21 So spending money to get your own apartment, when it’s not totally necessary, can be seen as wasteful and selfish. As one Gen Z Hispanic puts it in a conversation on BuzzFeed’s Pero Like: “Latin guilt is so real…our parents, our culture, has guilted us into staying at home as long as possible. Because why am I going to go pay rent in an apartment when I could be using that money to help out at home?”22 In the Hispanic subreddit mentioned above, several people ask the thread’s author: “¿Todavía puedes ayudar?” Can you still find a way to help out your family even if you move out?
Multiple generations within a Hispanic family sometimes pool credit and resources to purchase a home. And sacrifices made by both past and current relatives are considered part of the overall payment. So the family home is often viewed as a communal asset, to which Hispanics are both entitled and indebted by birthright.23
4
Familismo & the Hispanic Identity Crisis
On her site Project Eñye,25 Hispanic filmmaker and author Denise Soler Cox implores her audience: “Does following your heart feel like rejecting your family? Doing your own thing can often feel like you’re betraying them. And it takes a profound identity shift to realize that following your heart has zero to do with them…It’s ok to act and think for yourself. In fact, this is how you actually bring your best self to the people you love.”
This notion of “losing oneself” in the family system—or never really learning who you are to begin with, or needing to hide your uniqueness to “stay part of the family”—crops up again and again in Hispanic conversations about moving out. As one Gen Z Hispanic wrote about her moving-out journey: “As the oldest of four siblings, most of my life I have felt responsible for setting a good example for my brothers and sister and stepping up when my parents need support…It’s not that I didn’t love my own company; it’s that it was a foreign concept to me. Now I get to learn about myself on a new level.”26
Familismo has countless benefits, among them a significant and wide-ranging stress-buffering effect.27 Research has found that higher levels familismo are associated, in general, with lower rates of loneliness, depression, and suicide, as well as reduced physical medical symptoms.28 But the development of individual identity seems to suffer. And this is especially among LGBTQ+ youth and others who don’t fit the traditional “good child” mold.29
Licensed therapist @mentalhealthwithjojo discussing challenges for Hispanics in balancing personal and familial needs.
Among Gen Z whites, by contrast, identity is less frequently mentioned. Here the conversation is more pragmatic, and more often focuses, after pure economics, on self-care and work-life balance. Notoriously risk-averse and socially anxious, this is a group who has clocked in late to one major life milestone after another.30 And many are willing to trade the allure of getting their own digs for a saner pace of life with their parents.31 The declining stigma around living at home is frequently mentioned as a reason to stay (familismo has to some extent permeated mainstream culture). As is the near-obsolescence of committed relationships.32 After all, a strange apartment, in a strange neighborhood, living with strangers? TikTok “roommate horror stories” are legion.33
5
And Then There’s Marianismo
It’s important to note that among all Gen Zers, the largest increase over time in staying at home has come from 18-24-year-old women. By a landslide. In 2022, about 57% of men and 55% of women ages 18-24 lived in their parents’ home. This compares to 52% of men and just 35% of women of the same age in 1960.35 Younger women were, of course, historically likely to marry and move straight into their husbands’ homes. Student loans and social anxiety notwithstanding, the decline in marriage among younger women is the biggest single driver of the recent stay-at-home trend.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this decline is making bigger waves in Hispanic vs. Non-Hispanic households. Why? Because in Hispanic households, there’s not just familismo but also marianismo. Marianismo is an idealized conceptualization of femininity, named after the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, that is characterized by attributes like “submissiveness, selflessness, chastity, hyperfemininity, and acceptance of machismo in males.“36 Other definitions mention “interpersonal harmony, inner strength, self-sacrifice, family, chastity, and morality;” “feminine passivity, sexual purity, and self-silencing;” and even “semi-divine.”37
While not all Hispanic families endorse marianismo, young women are still expected to marry and start families young (an expectation that has considerably softened among whites). And those who don’t marry are expected not just to stay at home but to take on a marianismo-style role in the family (an expectation that is much weaker if not altogether absent among whites). Moving out is seen as potentially dangerous for Hispanic women. (In an apartment building alone? In an apartment with strangers?). While Hispanic men are held to ideals of their own—hard work, respect, the “provider and protector” model38—they are generally granted both more freedom and more initiative.
Sisters and brothers are almost always treated differently by their parents. But in Hispanic households the treatment can be especially discrepant. As a contributor to the website HipLatina writes: “[Hispanic girls] grow up afraid to get into any trouble, even if it’s for a good cause. We grow up afraid, period, and allow boys and men to take the lead in nearly everything”39 And this discrepancy continues into early adulthood. In a parody of her parents, one Hispanic TikToker lists three reasons that, at age 20, she is still subject to an early curfew: “One, she’s female; two, she’s not a boy; and three, and most importantly, she’s a girl!”40 Living at home is complicated for all Hispanics. But for Hispanic females it can feel suffocating.
Post by reporter @mayaa_brown discussing familismo, marianismo and how the nonprofit @conmimadre is helping to empower Gen Z Hispanic women.
Most 18-29-year-olds live at home, and many of them aren’t thrilled about it. But Gen Z Hispanics feel especially conflicted. They love their families and want to give back to them, but they also want to “live their own lives” and find out who they really are—beyond the confines of tightly defined familial roles. Meanwhile their Hispanic parents make them feel guilty for wanting their own space. And money is tight all around. On top of all that, there are outdated expectations around gender roles to contend with. For Gen Z Hispanics, the level of complexity around the decision to move out can’t be overstated. The Redditor who asked for advice on “leaving family/moving out”? She later added this: “UPDATE: I did it!!! It was the hardest thing i’ve ever done in my life for sure but so worth it. Feel free to message me for any advice it was (and still is) a wild ride!”3
In this Series:
Dispatch #1: Who are "Gen Z Hispanics"
Coming Soon:
Dispatch #3: Millonario Mindset
Dispatch #4: You Know You’re Hispanic When…
Note: In this report, we are looking to uncover overarching patterns. So, we will often make general observations and predictions. We recognize that we may overlook individual, subgroup, and intersectional differences in doing this, but our project is trained on broad trends. More micro trends will be important for marketers to dive into on a case-by-case basis. We also recognize that the statistics and content available to us as third-party researchers may be biased, incomplete, or otherwise flawed. To address this, we’ve sought to source information in various forms, from various places, and to gut-check and fact-check wherever possible. But the information we are working with isn’t always perfect. Finally, we are also using the term “Hispanic” loosely, often interchangeably with the terms “Latino” and “Latine,” to refer to groups with Spanish-speaking heritage. “Hispanic” is the term that is largely preferred based on current research, though we recognize that different terms differ in meaning and nuance.
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