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Amid national conversation about why America’s young men are failing to thrive and what can be done about it, some new terms have emerged to describe men who live with their parents.
Call them stay-at-home sons. Or trad sons. Or even more disturbingly, hub-sons.
Is this brilliant rebranding or something new in the landscape of the American family? Articles about the terms suggest they’re little more than catchy phrases that took off because of the popularity of the term tradwife.
Writing for NewsNation, Aaron Tolentino said that “trad son” seems to be a derivative of “stay-at-home son,” which took off after a Jeopardy contestant described himself as one while winning nearly $60,000 on the game show last year. But that term has actually been around a while. The Wall Street Journal reports that it was added to the Urban Dictionary in 2007 but at the time was seen as an insult.
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.
The Guardian, reporting on the U.S. city with the largest percentage of stay-at-home sons — Vallejo, California — quoted one young man as saying it is a blessing to be able to live with his parents. “My definition of my home is my family and so I want to keep them with me as much as I can.”
And in Reader’s Digest, psychologist Jill Vance warned against moralizing on the subject, saying, “Whether temporary or long-term, what matters is the presence of agency — that the son feels his life has forward motion and purpose, rather than being defined by stagnation or obligation.”
Still, the trad label seems off.
The “traditional” son in the U.S. is one who leaves home after getting a job, finds a partner, marries and has children, giving his parents something infinitely more valuable than free yard work: grandchildren.
Calm words about Minneapolis from Knoxville
With so much anger about the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, it was refreshing to come across an interview with her former father-in-law, Timmy Macklin Jr., on CNN.
Identifying himself as a Trump supporter, Macklin refused to say anything bad about Good or the ICE agent who shot her, simply saying that he wished both had a closer relationship with God.
“It’s a hard situation for everybody. .. I don’t have any enemies. I love everybody,” he said, going on to add, “I don’t blame ICE. I don’t blame Rebecca (Good’s wife). I don’t blame Renee. I just wish that, you know, if we’re walking in the spirit of God, I don’t think she would have been there. That’s the way I look at it.”
Macklin’s words also got the attention of the evangelist Franklin Graham, who promoted them on social media.
Macklin also went on “Fox & Friends‚” where he said he wants to be a peacemaker and that he believes the larger battle is spiritual and not political. His calm demeanor stands in contrast to the many heated voices in this debate.
His son, the father of Good’s 6-year-old, was an Air Force veteran who died in 2023 at age 36.
Recommended Reading
Jay Evensen reacts to the recent indictments that allege 29 college basketball games were fixed in the service of sports betting:
“For even average American sports fans, alarm bells ought to be ringing. For die-hard fans, the earth should be moving.”
America’s experiment with sports gambling is a huge failure
The Rev. Theresa Dear invites us to remember that during his lifetime, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. faced criticism and rejection from people he thought would be in his camp: clergy.
“There may be times when it makes perfect sense for certain people to stand with you, but instead they abandon you. This can feel like a gut punch. However, we have to prepare ourselves for such a possibility.”
What Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream asks of us in 2026
Whether it’s a synagogue in Mississippi or a Latter-day Saint meeting house in Michigan, an attack on a place of worship should matter to all people of faith, Samuel J. Abrams argues.
“Fear in moments like this is not irrational. It is earned. But if fear becomes the organizing principle of religious life, institutions slowly hollow out from within. That is why, within Judaism, the deeper question is not fear. It is what comes next.”
When a house of worship burns, all faiths have a stake
End Notes
Every day, there seems to be a new negative story about the changes at CBS, the most recent being The New Yorker’s “Inside Bari Weiss’s hostile takeover of CBS News.” There’s also been criticism of the network’s promises to its audience, which include the statement “We love America.”
But what’s really happening with the ratings? If you missed it, check out my examination of the launch: Tony Dokoupil and the CBS Evening News declare ‘We love America.’ But can patriotism save the evening news?
Meanwhile, I am obsessed with a Washington Post story about a practice in Germany called lüften, which is airing out your house by opening your windows several times a day, even in the coldest winter months.
“Rain or shine, hot or cold (which, in Berlin winters, can be bone-numbing), windows must be opened several times a day to exchange stale indoor air for the fresh outdoor stuff,” Aaron Wiener writes.
German tenants are even required by law to open the windows of their apartment or house for 10 minutes, twice a day.
As I write, it’s 19 degrees outside, and I’m as far away from a (closed) window as I can get, thankful for the freedom to keep them closed.