Yeah, I just double triple checked just to make sure, and there was a big uptick in people your age or older (even into their 30's and 40's lol) moving back in with the parents and that trend held steady over the past decade. I think how they view how things should be depends on how up to date the person talking to you is on current economic and societal trends and what their circle of friends/how they gather info tells them as far as how normal the idea of multi-generational households is these days.

Yeah, US culture is pretty independence-minded, but going it on your own before you're really financially established is a kind of false independence, and I liken it to the American car culture in a way, because much like how taking on extreme debt to buy a house or renting an apartment one can't afford gives one a sense of "independence", so too does driving a car give a sense of freedom that not being able to drive gives, but they both tie oneself down to something that's quite expensive to maintain and has a lot of external costs that aren't really thought about too heavily by most.

I mean, it depends on their age and your parents probably aren't SO old that they think that a house could be bought on a minimum wage job (which it could be for, say, your grandparents' generation), but they probably grew up with houses being a reasonable multiple of average or median incomes, and gas under a buck a gallon, lol. Shit doesn't really compare to the insanity of asset and commodity prices these days. Maybe just search a couple of articles that back your argument and hand them some printed pages and it'll speak volumes if you let the data stand on its own.