(MONEY Magazine) – DAVID RICHARDS, 49, and his wife Lonnette, 43, are of an age when they should be battling healthy cases of mid-life crisis. Instead, they are afflicted with an even more modern malaise: the full-nest syndrome. Their daughter Elizabeth, now 21, returned to their Colgate, Wis. home after dropping out of the University of Wisconsin at the end of her freshman year. Six months and many intergenerational arguments later, she left to share an apartment with a friend. But Elizabeth lost her job, wrecked her car and was back on her parents' doorstep within two months. Sighs Lonnette: ''Do you tell your daughter she can't come home again? No, you say, 'Come to Mommy and Daddy and we'll make it all right.' '' More than a year has passed since their daughter's second coming, and the Richardses now wonder, noisily at times, if she will ever leave again. Most young adults stop depending on their parents for shelter or financial support once they finish their schooling or marry. But a growing minority repeatedly fail -- or refuse to even try -- to achieve financial independence. Today 53% of all 18- to 24-year-olds live with their parents or depend on them financially while residing in college dormitories, compared with 43% in 1960. Some kids aren't out on their own when they approach middle age: 11% of all 25- to 34-year-olds live at home, up from 9% in 1960. Countless other adults live on their own but rely on Mom and Dad to help pay the rent -- or buy the house. Indeed, even advertisers prey on parents' fears. An ad in Business Week urging parents to buy their children a magazine about careers is illustrated with a cartoon of two middle-aged beggars, hats in hand. One supplicant holds a sign that explains KID IN COLLEGE. The other's placard reads COLLEGE GRADUATE LIVING AT HOME. The parents of these dependent adults may resent postponing long-planned vacations or depleting their retirement savings because their kids need cash. Yet they also feel guilty if they just contemplate snapping their checkbooks shut. ''Some people think they're bad parents if they set limits. They even worry that their kid will end up as a bag person,'' says Mary Yahle, a registered nurse at Milwaukee Psychiatric Hospital who counsels parents having trouble nudging their adult offspring toward independence. Of course, the urge to nurture your children is natural. ''The pull to help a child is very strong, because parents are used to sacrificing from the day their children are born,'' says Jean Davies Okimoto, a Seattle psychotherapist and co-author of Boomerang Kids (Little Brown, $15.95), a guide for parents whose adult children have returned home. It is possible to wean your offspring from your wallet, but mental-health professionals warn that it isn't easy. Children who fear adulthood -- or expect too much from it -- need emotional as well as financial support from their parents if they are ever to achieve independence. Yet it's difficult for parents who are supporting a child to treat him like an adult. Psychotherapists caution that no one solution is perfect for all families, but they do urge parents to follow these guidelines: -- If your adult children live with you, don't let them forget that it's your house. Above all, make it clear that they must abide by your rules while they are under your roof. For example, Jerry Kraus, 64, and his wife Jeri, 43, convened what they call a ''board of directors meeting'' after Jeri's son Richard, 23, returned to their San Diego home for the third time in five years. Richard studies business at a junior college and works as a short-order cook. His sister Michelle, 19, studies fashion design at a community college and has yet to leave home. At the family conclave, the kids agreed to do their own laundry, clean their rooms and smoke only on the patio. Even with house rules, however, there is bound to be tension. Complains Jerry Kraus, who heads a mortgage company: ''My stepson has taken over the bedroom that used to be my office, and my workshop is full of mopeds, bicycles and other stuff. Even the dog has been affected; she can't fall asleep until she hears the fourth key turn in the lock.'' -- Charge live-at-home kids for room and board. If your boarders are unemployed, demand household services in lieu of rent. That's what Ronald Lawson, 44, and his wife Dianne, 42, have done. If their three sons are working while living at home, they contribute 25% of their take-home pay, up to $200 a month, to the household kitty. Ronald Jr., 25, and David, 23, have bounced back to the Lawsons' Tacoma, Wash. home twice after ditching low- paying jobs or breaking up with live-in girlfriends. They're now living away from home with new girlfriends. Michael, 20, has yet to leave home. He has been looking for a job in machine design since graduating from vocational school 18 months ago. Says his father, a retired Air Force master sergeant who is now an emergency communications operator at Evergreen State College: ''Michael won't admit it, but I think he's afraid to move out because his brothers didn't make it.'' Many parents unwisely recoil from charging their children for room and board. The Richardses of Colgate, Wis. fret that they will have to stop acting like parents if they start playing landlord and ask Elizabeth, who works in a clothing store, to pay rent. Her mother Lonnette, who holds two bookkeeping jobs largely for the extra income, rationalizes: ''If we charged the kids, they'd feel that they have ownership rights and can run the house.'' Adds her husband David, who complains that his daughter's spending is out of control: ''If Elizabeth had to pay us, we'd get even more dunning notices in the mail.'' -- Cut the apron strings, even if your kids are still underfoot. Granted, that may require the skills of a Houdini when your children are still tied to your purse strings. But if you want your kids to start acting like adults, you cannot keep on demanding that they carry an umbrella in the rain or come home every night. -- Set limits. Dependency can drag on indefinitely if you let it. For instance, the Lawsons of Tacoma at first didn't blame Michael for shunning low-paying fast-food jobs even though he needed a new car. He hadn't found full-time work because companies that are hiring machine designers are located 30 to 45 miles away, and his 1972 Volkswagen isn't up to the commute. After three months, his parents' patience finally wore thin. So Michael agreed to settle for any kind of work if he didn't find his dream job within two months. -- When a child who has left home asks you for a subsidy, don't say yes automatically. If you set him up in an apartment or house that's completely out of his financial league, you're fostering a false sense of adulthood. Seattle psychotherapist Phyllis Jackson Stegall, the co-author of Boomerang Kids, advises parents to sit down and discuss the situation before rescuing a kid who cries poverty. Find out how much money the prodigal has left over after paying for food, shelter and other necessities. If you decide to lend a hand, set a time limit of, say, six months. That way your son or daughter will have an incentive to find cheaper lodging, a roommate or a better-paying job. -- Decide whether that artist offspring of yours is really a deadbeat dilettante. Patrice Horn, 60, and her husband Jack, 61, are convinced that their two sons aren't just dabbling in the arts. Andrew, 26, an actor, shares their three-bedroom apartment in Arlington, Va. rent-free. He performs steadily at local dinner theaters and works as a waiter between acting jobs. Tony, 33, a painter, lives in Seattle. He's been self-supporting since he dropped out of college and now renovates buildings to supplement the income he earns from sales of his works. Occasionally, however, the Horns send him cash for big-ticket purchases, such as a washer and dryer. Their daughter Lisa, 28, a public relations account executive in New York City, never asks for money. Says Patrice, a magazine editor and writer: ''I've never asked my sons when they're going to get real jobs. They get incredible satisfaction out of what they're doing, and that's exciting to me.'' -- Don't give serious amounts of money without demanding something in return. San Diego financial planner Graydon Calder exemplifies that rule. Calder, 58, and his wife Joan, 55, have four daughters and a son, ages 35 to 26. Two daughters and their husbands have occupied a condominium that Calder bought as an investment. He charges $600 a month rent, which is slightly below market. If he asked for much less, the Internal Revenue Service might disallow the tax deductions he takes. Another daughter and her husband borrowed $5,000 from Calder to make a down payment on a house. In addition, Calder bought a house in partnership with a daughter and son-in-law who lived in the condo. He lent them $26,000 for the down payment, which they will repay over 15 years. Actual carrying costs came to $1,100 a month, but the couple paid only $800 during the first year they lived in the house while Calder covered the balance. The couple's monthly payment was set to rise $100 annually until it hit $1,100. At that time, Calder planned to give them full title to the property. But the couple are ahead of schedule and will take possession after only two years. Says Calder with obvious satisfaction: ''I've seen people really spoil their kids, but we've tried to help our children in a businesslike way. They know that we also expect a financial commitment from them.'' What if a child finally goes off on his or her own only to return to the nest like a homing pigeon or ask for money after a few months or a year? ''You should be empathetic and supportive,'' says psychotherapist Stegall, ''but make it clear that you won't help solve his or her problems with a check. That may mean simply saying no.'' While your child struggles for independence, you will have to do some sweating too, getting used to saying no and setting limits. Just keep telling yourself what Stegall tells her clients: a parent's job is eventually to be out of a job.

BOX: THE CLINGING-KID SYNDROME

Why do some young adults dodge their financial responsibilities? Mental-health professionals and others who have studied the problem cite six reasons: -- They fear adulthood. In Necessary Losses (Fawcett, $4.95), an eloquent book about personal growth, Judith Viorst argues that many adolescents are afraid to grow up because it means relinquishing innocence, illusions and ''that sense of endless options -- that feeling that he could (if he would just decide what he wanted) be a Soviet expert, marine biologist, journalist.'' -- They're paralyzed by the complex educational, career and personal choices they must make. Says psychiatrist Ikar Kalogjera, who heads the young-adult treatment program at Milwaukee Psychiatric Hospital: ''They don't know who they are or what they want, and they're very vulnerable to the rejections, losses and failures that inevitably occur.'' -- They've failed to develop a sense of self-sufficiency because they've always been handed the best of everything, from designer clothes to a cushy summer job in the family firm. When they are finally asked to become their own masters, their fragile hothouse egos wilt, according to Seattle psychotherapist Phyllis Jackson Stegall. -- They're unwilling to start at the bottom. In interviews with hundreds of dependent adults for a book called The Postponed Generation (Morrow, $16.95), journalist Susan Littwin detected a sense of entitlement that child psychiatrist Robert Coles first identified in the offspring of the superrich. Today the attitude that an affluent and ever-stimulating life style is a birthright appears to have trickled down even to the sons and daughters of the lower middle class. -- They believe that money flows from a bottomless font. That's unsurprising, since for many, it has. Parents who blame the schools for failing to teach money management get no sympathy from Beverly Neuer Feldman, a Los Angeles career consultant and the author of Kids Who Succeed (Rawson Associates, $17.95). She argues that parents should tell even young children the truth about family finances. -- Their parents don't want them to grow up. Some older people come to rely on their offspring for companionship. And sadly, a full nest keeps some couples from facing the fact that their marriages are empty.