Adult children living with parents is nothing to be ashamed of

When a close relative, a member of the millennial generation, married several years ago, he moved in with his wife’s parents. Recently, when his wife cheated on him and kicked him out, he moved back to living with his mother.

My old babysitter’s daughter, a fashion designer and another millennial, is single and has never left home. When I recently visited them, she was throwing a temper tantrum because her mother didn’t have time to make soup for dinner that night. Apparently, since she was a child, dinner has usually meant at least three dishes and a soup in their modest middle-class household.

Apparently, millennials in practically every developed economy are moving back home; some never left. This is considered a recent trend in that it is a break from the previous generation, at least in Western society. Pew Research finds that 36 per cent of millennials are living with their parents in the United States, up from 32 per cent from before the global financial crisis. Economists have myriad explanations, from the impact of the financial crisis, the bursting of property bubbles in the US and Europe, to the rise of non-contractual temporary jobs and a new lifestyle. Some have argued the phenomenon may have become structural.

In the past, Western families generally expected their children to become independent after their teenage or university years.