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Allison Jennings helps her mother Susie make a spreadsheet. - Kyle Bursaw

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The ice cream probably melted.

Patty Winspur doesn't know this for sure, because she didn't know every detail of her son Skye's life when he lived outside their family home. But Skye, 26, returned home last year after two years abroad, and adjusting to each other's habits is just one change a family makes when a grown child comes home again.

"When he first came home, he used to get the ice cream out of the freezer, go and eat it and leave the ice cream container on the counter, melting. Now he puts it away," she said. "I don't know what happened to the ice cream when he lived at his place. Maybe he just let it melt, cleaned it up and bought a new one. I don't want to know."

Patty Winspur knows that in the grand scheme of things, melting ice cream on the kitchen counter is not a big disagreement for a family to have. But with families, little things can turn into big things, especially when everybody's under the same roof.

"There's little things like that," she said, "and we get on his nerves about questions of what he did that day or his plans for the future."

This is familiar territory for many families right now. Summertime might be vacation time or festival time, but for families in the Madison area and beyond, that span immediately after graduation is boomerang time.

Young adults are moving out of their dorms or apartments and back in with their parents. They've been dubbed "boomerang kids" for the way they left the family home but came back. The trend has even been played for laughs in Hollywood; in the romantic comedy "Failure to Launch," Matthew McConaughey plays a 35-year-old slacker whose parents hire a woman to pretend to fall in love with him so he'll move out of their house.

"It's a normal rite of passage now," wrote Elina Furman, author of "Boomerang Nation."

In her book, Furman says that moving back home "is not a sign of failure. It is, in fact, an indicator of sound financial planning that can help you forge a satisfying lifestyle on your own."

That doesn't mean it's always going to be easy. That's why two Madison mental health professionals are planning to start a support group to deal with such family issues. Jan Fullenwider, a licensed professional counselor, and Pat Gillette, a licensed marriage and family therapist, have seen enough issues in boomerang households to know that it's not always smooth sailing.

"They don't ever quite fit again," Gillette said. "You don't ever go back, really, nor should you, go back to the parent-child relationship the way it was."

Leaving the nest -- someday

A survey last year by MonsterTRAK, the student division of Monster.com, reported that 48 percent of students planned to move back home for awhile after college graduation. Forty-six percent of 2006 graduates said they were still at home.

Economics are a big part of it. The Project on Student Debt reports that debt levels for graduates have risen from an average of $9,250 to $19,200 in the past 10 years. In Wisconsin, almost two-thirds of students graduate in debt, and the average student debt is $19,536.

Things like car payments, car insurance, health insurance and the flat-lining of salaries compared to the cost of living only add to recent graduates' burdens.

Still, it's not just the money. Many of today's parents and children have a friendlier relationship than generations past, which can make heading home appealing for both parties.

"Some parents are just thrilled at the prospect of their kids coming home," Furman said. "That's a larger percentage than you'd think. That was the biggest surprise in all my research."

What helps both the parents and the adult child, Furman said, is knowing how common the phenomenon is.

That's what has helped Skye Winspur, who graduated from Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 2004 but has been living at home on Madison's southwest side after spending two years living in England and Scotland.

"I do have some moments where I thought it was a horrible thing, but it seems kind of common these days," he said. "I'm not ashamed of it."

Allison Jennings, 24, is in the process of making her second return trip home to Madison's west side. She moved back in with her parents after graduating from Drake University in 2006, and moved out when she got a job and an apartment in Madison with her older sister Jennifer. Now Jennifer is about to leave for graduate school, and Allison doesn't want to commit to another lease for the time being.

"I can't afford to live anywhere by myself," she said. "We could have extended the lease, I could afford it without my sister, but I wouldn't have anything in the apartment. I wouldn't have a couch, or a chair, or a kitchen table."

This return home is a little different than the first one, she said. Her dad has already starting using her bedroom closet for storage. She'll also be paying some rent, and not just mooching off her parents.

There will be one big challenge that Jennings and her mother, Susie, are fully aware of going in.

"Even my kids will tell you, I'm obsessed with everything being absolutely super clean," Susie Jennings said. "I want to see clean and my kids aren't neat."

Susie Jennings said that while she cried when her kids left for college, she didn't plan for them to move back.

"I love my kids but I also love my independence," she said. "With a lot of parents, you get married, you have kids, your kids leave and you wonder, 'Do you have a marriage?' We do, and then the kids come back."

The parent trap

That is the part of boomerang families that many people forget about, Fullenwider and Gillette said. Not only are the adult children on the cusp of a transition in their life, so are the parents. They might have been about to downsize their home. They might have to dig into retirement savings to help their adult child. They might be trying to shed some of the role of parenting and reconnect as a married couple.

"There's the additional stress that it causes on the parent and on the marriage as well as the relationship between the parent and child," Gillette said. "That's the real heartbreaker, that's what drives people into therapy. Their relationship with their kids matters so much."

It can be hard on everyone, Fullenwider agreed.

"The adult children can feel like failures, depending on the reason the child is coming home," she said. "There's guilt, negative self-esteem issues on both sides, that are bound to come out."

Patty Winspur said she understands that.

"Everybody wants their kid to be successful and make a million dollars, but the reality is they may need some help," she said. "There is still embarrassment about it, that somehow you're not going to win any prizes if your kid is at home."

For mother and daughter Ruth and Joa Kocvara, the boomerang scenario actually strengthened their relationship. Joa Kocvara, 34, is on her third return to her family's east side home; this stay has lasted 10 years.

"We joke that she came back and forgot how to leave," Ruth Kocvara said.

The first time Joa left home was for college. She didn't stay in school then, returned home and eventually left home again. At that point, Joa said, she more or less used her mother's house as a place to sleep. She left one more time, but then returned as a single mother to Shannon, now 13.

The Kocvaras say the first couple of years were rough, but now they have "gotten into our own groove," Ruth said.

Once Joa got a degree and a good job, she planned to move out, but her mother persuaded her to wait until she could afford to buy a place instead of rent. While the relationship with her mom is strong, Joa still likes to try to carve out her own time.

"I'll go to my room sometimes and pretend it's my apartment and I don't live with my mother," she said. "I realize it's just one room, but it has everything I need. Except a bathroom and a kitchen."

Better than we had it?

Many stories in the media paint a picture that boomerang families are a new, increasing phenomenon. But it depends on the source and how data are analyzed. A University of Kentucky study says the proportion of 18- to 34-year-olds living with their parents has risen 5 percentage points since the 1980s. Michael Rosenfeld, a Stanford social demographer and author of "The Age of Independence," analyzed census data back to the 1880s and told USA Today that, while recent numbers show a rise, the percentage of young adults living at home is still far lower than it was in the earlier to middle parts of the 20th century.

What seems to have changed most, the parents and counselors interviewed say, is the sense that each succeeding generation has it better than the previous one.

"Up until two, three years ago, all the people I met assumed their children would have as good or better life than they did because they had a better life than their parents. That has changed. It's a big shock for anybody, this country in particular," said Steven Winspur, Skye's father and a native of Scotland.

"There's sort of a collective guilt of what our generation hasn't been able to give our children," he said.

The boomerang scenario can be made easier for families in a variety of ways, the counselors and families say. The main thing is to live under the assumption that this is temporary and to not fall into child-parent behaviors.

"That's the struggle," Fullenwider said. "How do you negotiate and set up these boundaries so the adult child will be an adult in the household and how will the parents live their own lives?"

Joa Kocvara tries to schedule longer vacations to give her mother a break from her. Skye Winspur does volunteer work while looking for a job or exploring a career in the ministry. Allison Jennings plays softball to make sure she has a life away from the family home.

All generally let their parents know their comings and goings, not because they have a curfew but out of respect.

The Winspurs have found new ways of interacting with their son that are different than when he lived at home as a child. It's a new relationship that helps them all feel as if they've moved on even if their son is at home.

"Skye and I watch MSNBC on (election) nights and swear at the TV," Patty Winspur said. "That's not something we would have done together 10 years ago."

Susie Jennings said the challenge is to not make it too easy for the adult children, but to also get across the point that she and her husband, Lee, are there for them, too.

"There will be a lot of positive things about having her here," she said of Allison's return. "But ask me in six months."

More information

Jan Fullenwider, a licensed professional counselor, and Pat Gillette, a licensed marriage and family therapist, are planning to start a support group for "boomerang" families in September. Both work out of The Psychology Clinic near Hilldale Shopping Center. To learn more, call 819-7513 or 819-7525.