We're Boomerang-Proofing Our Kids

Junior's far less likely to return to the roost if he's raised by a single parent or has lots of education, a recent study by Statistics Canada says.

Men raised by single parents are 43 percent less likely to boomerang — move back home after moving out as young adults — than men reared in two-parent families. Women raised by single parents had a 23 percent lower risk of returning. (Growing up in a step-family didn't affect men, but women raised in step-families were 26 percent less likely to return home as grownups.)

Children from affluent two-parent families were most likely to return home as grownups.

The study doesn't say why single parent and step families are more resilient to boomeranging, but its authors speculate that lacking resources in lone-parent families or tensions in stepfamilies may be at play.

That could be. But there's got to be more going on here—maybe single parents are role modeling independence and self-sufficiency, day in, day out?

Anyone care to speculate?