No empty nest: Young women live with M & D like it's 1940

A Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data found that 36.4 percent of women between the ages 18 and 34 lived with parents or relatives in 2014, the most since at least 1940, when 36.2 percent lived with family.

Economic forces such as increasing student debt, higher living costs and economic uncertainty, are also playing a role.

Young women and men began staying home or returning there at a more rapid rate after 2000, a trend that sharply increased with the economic uncertainty brought on by the housing collapse and recession in the late 2000s.

Another factor in the change, Fry says, is increased ethnic diversity across this age demographic, which in turn has introduced cultural traditions of living with parents and relatives longer into life.

Sholes is still a few credits shy of graduating but isn't sure if she will return because her private school was very expensive and she's not confident she'll be able to find a job in the film industry even with a degree.