TEXTO II

Mum, can I come back home?

Is it cool to stay at home when you’re an adult?

Lizzie Speller

A survey by the Social Market Foundation (SMF), an independent think-tank, confirms that nearly one in four men and women aged between 20 and 30 chooses to live with their parents. Far from recklessly seeking independence, as my generation did in the late sixties, they are lured home by the prospect of financial security and being looked after, creating what the SMF calls a new trend of “lifelong parenting”.

Sharon Copeland, 23, an exhibitions administrator, is typical. She left her parents’ home for a year to live with a boyfriend but when the relationship broke down she returned, not out of sentiment but because she needed somewhere to live. “My mother was glad to see me return and I love it here”, she says. “I live very cheaply. I give my parents £250 a month all in. Mum does my ironing; I don’t have to ask. As I’m saving money at the moment I can’t afford to live by myself.”

Most young adults who live at home have previously left and justify the move back in terms of temporary unemployment, extended study or career change. Some mention economic or emotional casualties of early relationship breakdowns, others cite the high cost of living and say that they are saving for their own property.

And they are not all without choice; most could have set up independently. Nor are the advantages flowing in only one direction: Allan, a 24-year-old Londoner, senses that his mother is dependent on his financial contribution. “I feel guilty about leaving her short of money”, he says. “Economy doesn’t come into it; in fact, moving out would see me slightly better off.”

I think the crucial difference between my generation and its successor is that if I or my contemporaries had returned home 25 years ago, it could only have been to the role of child; and an expectation that a communal family life would continue seamlessly – interrogations, orders, grannies, hamsters, Sunday lunch et al. By contrast, the most successful of these new, all-adult families are scrupulous in respecting physical and emotional boundaries, and although those living at home invariably mentioned convenience first, they all said that they enjoyed their parents’ company.

(www.timesonline.co.uk)

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