Carothers' personal life during this time was busy. He was having an affair with a married woman, Sylvia Moore, who with her husband filed for divorce in 1933. Concomitantly he worried about the financial problems of his parents and planned to bring them to Wilmington. With no thought of the possible emotional ramifications of this move, he bought a house in Arden about from the Experimental Station and moved into it with his parents. He was 37 at the time. Interactions with his parents soon became tense. Carothers was still seeing Sylvia Moore, who was now single, and his parents greatly disapproved of the relationship. Finding the tension in the household too wearing, his parents returned to Des Moines in the spring of 1934.