Research supports my clinical experience and indicates that dating is on the decline among teens and young adults, despite the fact that the majority of single men and women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four want to be in a romantic relationship. The challenge? Many simply don’t know how to navigate the path to finding one.

Recent research from BYU’s Wheatley Institute shows that several practices within each spouse’s control contribute to stable marriages. I emphasize two of these: being fully committed to your spouse and participating in religious activities together.

Unlike two disparaged archetypes — the American basement dwellers and the Japanese hikikomori who rely on their parents for support — the trad son offers something useful to his parents: labor in exchange for his upkeep, whether it be cooking, cleaning, yard work or running errands. In other words, you might say the trad son is merely being a productive member of a household, which parenting expert John Rosemond says even a 3-year-old should do.
That said, there’s no question that the arrangement can be appealing for both young men and their parents, who might enjoy both the help and the pleasure of having their son stick around longer than expected. And it’s been pointed out that this isn’t as unusual in other cultures, where it’s simply called a less trendy term: multigenerational living.