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Trending: Where The Kids Move Back In

Tuesday, June 18, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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Of all the metropolitan statistical areas in the nation, ours has the highest percentage of young adults who move back in with their parents, according to a study released last summer.

Across the country, 24 percent of adults between the ages of 20 and 34 lived with their parents between 2007 and 2009, as the Great Recession greatly affected job opportunities and outlook for young Americans. That’s a significant increase over the rate of the previous generation; in 1980, 17 percent of adults in that age bracket still called their mom and dad’s place home.

But 24 percent is child’s play compared to the rate here. In Fairfield County, 34 percent of millennials between the ages of 25 and 29 still lived with their parents, according to an August 2012 study. At one-in-three instead of the one-in-four national rate, the county surpassed every other metropolitan statistical area in the nation. And compared to the MSA with the smallest percentage (which you’ll find lower in this post), The FC has four times as many millennials staying at home.

There are a variety of reasons that contribute to this. In a blog post last summer, the Atlantic Cities posited that our MSA “boasts the highest percentage of young people living at home (34 percent) thanks to its relatively high rate of unemployment (8 percent) and low marriage rate (29 percent).” You remember that low marriage rate, right? We wrote about it a few months ago, explaining that our area has one of the latest marriage ages in the nation.

The marriage age is likely to be linked to this on the other end of the spectrum as well. For example, Prov0-Orem, Utah is tied for the seventh lowest rate of young adults living under their parents’ roof, and Utah has the youngest median age of first marriage for both men and women, at 25.5 for men and 23.3 for women.  Check out the metro areas with the smallest share of kids boomeranging back.

Trending: Where Grads Go On

Monday, June 17, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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nt0614bethelhs-2045It’s high school graduation week! Twelfth graders across the state will be crossing the stage this weekend to grab their diplomas and begin a new chapter of their lives. And for most of the students in Southwestern Connecticut, that next stage includes a four-year college.

According to data from the State Department of Education, about two in three students (66.3 percent) of students graduating from the public high schools in our area will be heading off to a four-year school after they depart their hometown high schools. Of those who are moving on, the greatest share will head to private colleges out of state. In 2010, the most recent year for which data was available, about 29 percent of Southwestern Connecticut high school grads headed off to such schools. Six percent tried out private colleges in state, while 20 percent entered Connecticut’s public college network and about 12 percent made their way to public schools in other states.

In total, Southwestern Connecticut sends more of its alums on to four-year schools than the state as a whole. According to the education department’s database, a total of 57.4 percent of Connecticut’s graduating class of 2010 went on to four-year colleges.

Check out which high schools have the highest share of graduates going on to four-year colleges:

As you scroll through the slideshow, you may notice the difference between where certain schools are sending their grads. For example, each of the 11 high schools with the highest percentage of high school graduates heading off to college have a heavy leaning toward sending their kids to private schools out of state, while most others send the majority of these graduates to in-state public schools. In fact, other than the top 11 high schools in this ranking, there are only two others where the greatest share of college-bound kids head off to such schools: Westhill High School and the Academy of Information Technology & Engineering, both located in Stamford.

You may also notice that perennial school-chart topper Darien is nowhere to be found in the slideshow. It’s not a snub. For some reason, the State Department of Education doesn’t have 2010 listed for the Blue Wave. But if their 2009 report is any indicator, the school would have just missed the top 5, coming in at No. 6 with 89.4 percent of students heading off to four-year colleges, and 70.3 percent of those kids going to private schools out of state.

 

Trending: How Dads’ Roles Have Changed

Sunday, June 16, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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Tom Holleman dips his son, Charlie, as his other son, Will, looks on after jumping on their trampoline at their home in Westport on Thursday, June 13, 2013. Photo: Jason Rearick

Tom Holleman dips his son, Charlie, as his other son, Will, looks on after jumping on their trampoline at their home in Westport on Thursday, June 13, 2013. Photo: Jason Rearick

For Westport resident Tom Holleman, raising his children is a full-time job.

A 44-year-old married father of three, he has been staying at home with the herd since his oldest child was born a decade ago.

“I love staying home,” Holleman said last week. “I wanted to be a part of their lives. I wanted to have an active role in their growth, and I do the best that I can just to be involved.”

Across the nation, about 189,000 stay-at-home dads spend their day-to-day lives taking care of their children, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s more than there were generations ago, but it’s still a small fraction of the total full-time parents throughout the country ­– 3.5 percent, to be exact.

“I think when I very first started being a stay-at-home dad, it was interesting, because … there really was no other stay-at-home dad that I could think of that were my friends or anything like that,” Holleman said. “And you have to learn and figure out how to operate in that world.”

Dads these days are, on average, more involved with their children’s lives than a generation or two ago.

Back in 1965, married dads with kids younger than 18 spent an average of 2.6 hours a week taking care of their kids, according to data from the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit fact tank based in Washington, D.C.

That amount of time went up by a matter of minutes through the 1970s and ’80s, according to Pew, before climbing to 4.2 hours in 1995, 6.8 hours in 2005 and 7.3 hours in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available.

Many fathers clock even more hours than that on daddy duty.

Brian Walsh, a stay-at-home dad who lives in Danbury with his wife and two children, estimates he spends about six hours a day with his children.

“I make their lunches, get them ready for school and drive them to school in the morning,” said Walsh, 41, who spends much of his time coaching hockey and soccer.

“After school, if they have hockey that day, we’ll do hockey practice, or soccer on a soccer day. Then we’ll come back, eat dinner, spend time together, do homework and go to bed,” he said.

He and his wife spend most of their Saturdays and Sundays with the kids. And while the kids are in school, Walsh said he takes care of the house and gets the shopping done.

In total, the average American dad contributes more to housework these days than in the 1960s. According to the Pew data, fathers spent 4.4 hours a week on housework, compared with 9.8 hours a week in 2011.

And while dads have become more involved in their children’s lives, mothers’ time spent taking care of children has increased from 10.2 hours to 13.5; at the same time, their time spent doing housework has significantly declined, as paid work has increased. In 1965, women spent an average of 31.9 hours a week on housework and 8.4 hours on paid work. These days, it’s 17.8 hours in the home and 21.4 at paid work.

“With school involvement, I’m probably 80 percent and she’s 20 percent. But with family life involvement, I think we split it pretty well,” said Dominick Bria, 44, of Stamford. Bria, who has three children ­­­­­­­– one in college, one in high school and a third in middle school — has been active in parent-teacher organizations for several years, in addition to working in sales full time.

Being a father in 2013 is totally different than it was in the mid-80s, when he was his children’s age, said Bria.

“What’s different today? My dad loved us no question, but he didn’t listen to us about things that were school-related. The teacher was always right, and that’s not the case anymore. Now kids have a say,” Bria said. “I never remember parents being as involved as they are today — mom or dad. I don’t remember that at all.”

Walsh said when he first made the decision to stay at home with his children after his daughter’s birth in 2000, his own father resisted the idea.

“A lot of people were not big fans of it. Thirteen years ago, it was very rare,” Walsh said. “It was odd. You’d get strange looks and strange comments from people. Back then the economy wasn’t bad either, so people would wonder why I would stay home.” It’s better now that it’s a bit more typical, he said.

It can be financially tough sometimes to rely mainly on his wife’s paycheck from her job as a professor at a local community college, but the benefits of being there for his children’s first words and steps outweigh the financial stresses, he said.

And having the mother as the primary breadwinner is becoming more and more commonplace. In 1960, 3.5 percent of married moms with children under age 18 took that role for their families; in 2011, it was up to 15 percent, according to Pew.

“Nobody ever laid on their death bed wishing they had more money. They wished they had more time or they’d done more things,” Walsh said. “And those things for me, I get to do them. They say you can give a man a fish and he’ll have food for a day, or you can teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life. I get to teach my kids to fish every day.”

Similarly, Holleman and Bria said they place their children’s needs first simply because they want to be there for them as a trusted guide through life.

“I really think it’s fun to be around them, and to watch them be friendly with their friends, watch them grow and learn to do different things,” Holleman said. “I get to get a firsthand look … to watch them become the people that they are.”

And someday, they might just be dads themselves ­– the kind who aspire to give in the style of their own fathers.

“About three weeks ago, I realized my son wants to be me. He wants to do everything I can do,” Walsh said. “He wants to fix cars with me, fix things and use my tools and that’s kind of neat. It was probably one of the scariest moments I’ve ever had when I realized that, but also one of the most rewarding.”

maggie.gordon@scni.com; 203-964-2229; http://twitter.com/MagEGordon; http://facebook.com/TrendingWithMaggieGordon

Trending: Where the Single Dads Live

Friday, June 14, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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singledad

Fathers across the nation have stepped up the amount of time they dedicate to raising their children, when compared to dads from previous generations — a trend you can read all about in Sunday’s newspaper. But while the typical dad has tripled the number of hours he spends caring for his children every week since 1965, there’s still one group of dads that tends to surpass all the others in the amount of time they devote to their young ones: Single dads.

Across Southwestern Connecticut, there are thousands of homes where a single father is the only caregiver for children under the age of 18. Check out how common it is in your town here:

Trending: Where We Vacation

Tuesday, June 11, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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School’s almost out, meaning vacation season is just around the corner. As Southwestern Connecticut families plan their upcoming vacations, it’s likely a few spots will nab the title of the most popular spot for area residents.

The real estate website Trulia.com recently did a little digging to identify Americans’ favorite vacation spots, finding that Cape May, N.J., is the most popular place for its users to search for when they’re investigating vacation homes.

But here in Southwestern Connecticut, we have slightly different taste. Trulia provided Hearst Connecticut Newspapers with a Top 10 list for the vacation ZIP codes searched most by users in Fairfield County – and Cape May didn’t even make the list.

As Trulia’s Chief Economist Jed Kolko pointed out, most people searching for a vacation home tend to look in locations close to home. And that holds up here; three of the most popular spots for Southwestern Connecticut residents are in Massachusetts, while another three are in New York State and two more in Vermont. Sorry California, you didn’t even make the list.

Instead the most popular location for Fairfield County folks in Nantucket, making it much more popular for Southwestern Connecticut families than it is for Americans at large; in the national survey, Nantucket was listed as the 20th most popular spot.

On the whole, Fairfield County residents opted for locations in the Northeast, though Palm Beach did make a surprise appearance at No. 2, after being left of the national list altogether.

“I find that people this year, for some reason, are not traveling as far,” said Sonja Ziluca, owner and manager of Georgetown Travel, a travel agency located in Ridgefield. “They’re going to places like Mystic and Stonington, and of course, the Vineyard and the Cape, Nantucket, and also Block Island – places with a lot of boating.”

But more than anything, locals’ tastes differed from others around the country due to the price range. While Ocean City, New Jersey, the national list-topper had the highest price of all the locations in the national top 10 at $525,000. Fairfield County’s favorite Nantucket has an average price of $1.8 million. The Hamptons are no bargain either, with East Hampton’s average price listed at $1.3 million, and Southampton’s at $1.4 million.

Of course, Fairfield County’s vacation preferences do line up with some of our neighboring areas. Four of the top five locations listed for New York City residents were also on Fairfield County’s top 10 list. In the City, the top spot is East Hampton, which falls at No. 3 for Southwestern Connecticut travelers.

The Jersey Shore town of Cedar Heights also falls higher on the New York City list than it does in Connecticut, coming in at No. 5 for city residents, compared with No. 8 for Nutmeggers. And that popularity may be a recent change, according to Ziluca.

“I don’t have many people going to New Jersey,” she said. “I think people unfortunately got turned off from Sandy, though historically, Cedars has been very popular.”

Which vacation destination would you prefer?

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Trending: Where the Living’s Expensive

Saturday, June 8, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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A new report, capturing cost of living for the first quarter of 2013, shows that Stamford is the seventh most expensive city in the nation.

Sort of.

The cost of living index, compiled by the Council for Community and Economic Research, found that Stamford is 45.6 percent more expensive than the average American city when the cost of consumer goods and services are calculated. That puts The City That Works behind places like New York City, Honolulu, San Francisco and San Jose, but it’s not a game of absolutes, according to Dean Frutiger, project manager for the council.

10Stamford“It’s an index,” Frutiger said Thursday. “These numbers are relative to the complete amount of data submitted … and our data comes from volunteers on the ground in 300 participating communities.”

The communities included all have populations of more than 50,000 people and volunteers willing to do the legwork, so there are many places that could potentially push Stamford lower on the list that simply aren’t included, like nearby Greenwich, which is known to be quite a bit more expensive, or Key West Florida.

“Key West, that’s not in there. They would skew the data way high,” said Frutiger.

So Stamford may not necessarily be the seventh most expensive city in the country, but that doesn’t mean residents here aren’t spending more than their counterparts in other parts of the country. The index includes six different categories, like groceries, transportation, housing and other basics. After computing the cost of all those categories, the council creates a final index score for every participating city. Stamford’s is 145.6.

The national average is 100, which happens to be the exact number given to Little Rock Arkansas, meaning residents of that city, on average, pay the American middle ground for their goods and services.

For example, a T-Bone steak in Little Rock would cost a resident $10,23, according to data from the council. Here in Stamford, a resident would have to pay $11.77 for that same steak. It could be worse though. In Manhattan, where the 227.1 index number is the highest in the nation, that steak would cost $14.64. In the nation’s “least expensive” city, Harlingen, Texas, that steak would go for $8.50.

But it’s about more than steaks. Rent in Harlingen costs an average of $642 a month, compared with $790 in Little Rock. But move on up to Stamford, and the going rate is $2,033 – which is still a little less than half of Manhattan’s $3,958 rental rate.

“Relative to New York City, Stamford is a bargain,” said Mike DeSenne, senior editor for Kiplinger.com, who published an analysis on the council’s data earlier this week. “It might not feel that way, but it is.”

In Kiplinger’s earlier report, the media outlet labeled Stamford as the nation’s fifth most expensive place to live, after clustering No. 1 Manhattan, No. 2 Brooklyn and No. 5 Queens all into one city.

While Frutiger said it might come as a bit of a shock to residents that the city is so high up on the list, he noted that it really shouldn’t.

“Stamford has consistently been in the top 10,” he said. “This isn’t radical to us. It might be a shock for people to see their hometown on here, but it’s nothing new.”

maggie.gordon@scni.com; 203-964-2229; http://twitter.com/MagEGordon; http://facebook.com/TrendingWithMaggieGordon

Trending: Where We Buy Our Coffee

Friday, June 7, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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170104944Earlier this week, Boston.com ran an interesting map showing who pledges their allegiance to Starbucks versus Dunkin’ Donuts. Not surprisingly, the map revealed that New York City’s wealthy enclaves preferred their Starbucks brews, while most of Massachusetts leaned toward the locally founded Dunks.

It made us wonder: What would happen here in Southwestern Connecticut, where we can’t quite decide if we’re in a New York state of mind, or repping New England. (Red Sox or Yankees? Giants or Patriots? So many decisions!)

The answer is this: SWCT runs on Dunkin’. According to Trending analysis, there are 126 Dunkin’ Donuts in our region, which makes them roughly three times as common as Starbucks, of which there are 43. Check out the maps (then keep reading, ’cause that’s when it gets good.)

Starbucks

Dunkin’ Donuts

Of all the towns and cities in Connecticut, Stamford has the most Starbucks, with six separate locations, followed by Greenwich with four. On the Dunkin’ Donuts side, no one has more than Bridgeport, where there are 13 coffee shops scattered throughout the city. And no, in case you were wondering, Bridgeport has still not added a single Starbucks to its stock.

But with blue-collar Dunks outweighing upper-middle-class Sbux on a roughly 3:1 ratio, we found a couple towns with ratios that just don’t make sense — unless you know the towns.

Of all the towns with more than one of each coffee shop, there are only three where there are as many Starbucks shops as there are Dunkin’ Donuts shops. There’s glitzy Greenwich, wealthy Westport, and affluent Orange, which have four, three and two of each shop, respectively.

There’s also one of each in a few towns: Newtown; Darien; Ansonia; New Canaan; Wilton; and New Fairfield.

Trending: Why We’re Driving Less

Wednesday, June 5, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
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After decades of faithful attachment to our cars, using vehicles for everything from driving to work to lulling babies to sleep, Americans’ habits are shifting.

From 1970 on, the number of miles Americans traveled in their cars, trucks and SUVs increased by about 1.8 percent every year, as the attachment grew steadily — until 2004 when the average distance driven fell for the first time, according to Ben Davis, a policy analyst with Pioneer Group and author of the non-profit’s recent report “Transportation and the New Generation.”

Since 2004, the amount of miles driven by the typical American has decreased by 6 percent. While the shift can be seen in most age brackets, the millennial generation seems to be responsible for the largest share of the decline, Davis said.

“Back 30 and 40 years ago, people wanted to move out to the suburbs. The American Dream was a suburban area with a white picket fence and all of that,” Davis said this week.

“Now younger people want to live downtown, in places where they can walk, where there’s a lot going on, and there are friends within walking distance,” he said. “That’s not to say there aren’t people who live in suburbs, but there is a shift.”

Here in Southwestern Connecticut, a generational difference is easy to see in many towns.

Take Fairfield, for example. The suburban neighborhood with a buzzing downtown district and close proximity to Metro-North’s railroads has the largest generational shift in the region: While 74.7 percent of employed Fairfield residents between ages 45 and 54 drive to work, only 48 percent of 16-24 year olds do so. That leaves a 26.7 percent gap between the generations.

Stamford has the second largest gap, followed by Redding and Bridgeport.

There are several reasons for the change. Between 2001 and 2009, the number of miles traveled by 16-34 year olds on public transit increased by 40 percent, and they were more likely to ride bicycles to work, citing the environment and fitness as reasons for their choices, according to Davis.

Then there’s technology.

A study published by the car-sharing company Zipcar earlier this year declared that millennials are likely to place more value on their phones than their cars — if they have a car. According to the findings, 65 percent of millennials say losing their phone or computer would have a greater negative impact on their daily lives than losing their car. And one in four members of the generation said transportation apps on their phones have reduced their driving frequency; that’s twice the rate of those over age 45.

“There are some people who have totally dropped a car and they don’t even know how to drive. But I think what technology and a few other things have done is instead of a car being the sole way of transportation, it’s become one option for many people,” Davis said.

For 23-year-old Nicole Portera, who moved from her native Fairfield to Milford a year ago, and takes the train to work in New York City every day, leaning on mass transportation simply gives her the ability to use that technology to complete tasks ‑ and even get some needed relaxation.

“I like that I can read or take a nap or answer emails, things I couldn’t do if I was driving,” said Portera. “I also really hate traffic to the point where if I am driving somewhere and there’s traffic I’ll take back roads to get to where I’m trying to get to. I don’t have to deal with that when I’m on the train.”

In addition to using commuting times to multitask, the technology itself is curbing the need to be onsite for work and social reasons. Now apps such as Facetime, and websites such as Facebook mean people can be social without being in the same spot. And the Zipcar study found that 47 percent of millennials sometimes opt to spend time with their friends online instead of driving to see them.

danburyThat’s no surprise to Brandon Dufour, general manager of All-Star Driver, a Connecticut-based driving school with more than 60 locations.

“I’m 30 now, and I remember clearly the day I turned 16,” Dufour said. “I went to the DMV and waited in line for my permit. And that’s pretty rare now. There aren’t many 16 year olds that are doing that.”

In 1983, 46.2 percent of 16-year-olds and 68.9 percent of 17-year-olds had their licenses, according to a recent study written by Michael Sivak, director of the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan. In 2008, those numbers dropped to 31.1 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

Over the past several years, Dufour said he has noticed his teenage clients beginning the driving process a couple years later, at 18 or 19. Sure, there’s the technology factor, he said, with teens having less of a need to drive themselves since “their mom or dad is willing to drive them when they need to go somewhere, and when they don’t need to go somewhere, they have plenty of alternatives to help them be social.”

Dufour also attributes some of the change to the new driving laws, which went into effect in 2008.

The new laws in Connecticut mandate that drivers under age 18 log 40 hours of on-the-road training before receiving their license, and limits who can be in the car with them after they become licensed.

“Having a driver’s license was once seen as a mark of passage from being a teenager to putting one foot into the adult world,” said Bill Seymour, a spokesman for the Connecticut DMV.

“You were driving an expensive vehicle, and it was taking you places far beyond the immediate zone of your home. You were often alone in the car, or you were taking friends in the car. And it was that major step toward freedom,” Seymour said. “With the graduated driver’s licensing laws and some of the other restrictions such as no electronic devices, you really cut out the perception of it as being a right to passage, and it’s more like a hurdle that you have to get across. There are a lot of hurdles involved.”

As a result, Dufour said his company is “educating more 18 and 19 year olds now than we are 16 and 17 year olds,” signifying a big shift from years past.

And while the drop is most significant among younger drivers, with the average annual number of miles driven by 16-34 year olds decreasing from 10,300 in 2001 to 7,900 in 2009, it’s not strictly a phenomenon for younger people.
Charles Glaser, 70, lives in downtown Stamford and has traded in driving for walking and using his bicycle whenever he can. As an actor, he spends a good portion of his time commuting for auditions, which includes walking a few blocks, hopping on a train and hoofing it through Manhattan.

“If I didn’t have to have a car, I wouldn’t have a car,” said Glaser, who keeps his minivan so he can visit his children in Weston about once a week.

“I walk to the library. I walk to Tiernan’s, to the post office, to the Government Center, to the bank. I can walk everywhere,” he said. “I have to drive to the grocery store because it’s a mile away. But other than that, I enjoy walking.”

While Glaser makes it a point not to be reliant on his car, people in his age group are still more likely to drive themselves to work on a daily basis than younger folks. About 77 percent of Southwestern Connecticut residents over age 65 drive every day, compared with 65 percent of 16-24 year olds, according to census data.

And it seems the younger folks will continue this trend, altering the fabric of post-war American life, said Davis.

“We need to understand what this trend means and plan accordingly. We shouldn’t just keep building infrastructure, assuming the number of miles we travel will increase forever,” he said. “It probably won’t.”

maggie.gordon@scni.com; 203-964-2229; http://twitter.com/MagEGordon; http://facebook.com/TrendingWithMaggieGordon

 

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