Your mileage may vary depending on your parents.
Anything is better than living with my parents. I’d rather sleep under a bridge.
As someone who literally slept under a bridge to escape a horrible home, I can confirm!
boy do i know how that goes.
So…. It’s a psyop at age 18, but not at 21? What about 24? When is it not a “psyop”?
Could it possibly be that it was once believed that at around the age of 18 is when people should become mature enough to be responsible for taking care of themselves? No?
Or is it just not enough that the cost of living is going up every year to have a reasonable argument to remain home with family- now it has to be a “psyop” by big banking.
Horses, people- not zebras.
You’re absolutely right.
This is just something we will tell ourselves to cope with our spiraling quality of life.
There’s enough existing housing and resources for the vast majority of people to live off a single income.
Wealth inequality keeps all that excess under the control of less than 4000 billionaires that now own most wealth that exists.
“Psyop” is the wrong term, but there is some truth to what they are saying.
During the post-WWII economic boom, the US government was rapidly expanding the highway system, making suburban land cheap and accessible. Developers like Levitt & Sons started mass producing suburban tract homes, and banks favored financing them over multi-unit buildings, due to the GI bill and FHA loans. This is when the “nuclear family” ideal was developed, which was defined as a single generation of husband and wife + minor children living in a single-family home. It was a marketing ploy to sell more houses, more appliances and furniture, more cars, etc. All of this led to more isolation, which in turn led to more consumption.
As George Carlin once put it, “you don’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge.” That’s the case here. This was just Capitalism doing what Capitalism does, which is sell more shit to more people.
It is still normal in many parts of the world.
I’ve just spent six days on holiday with some of my extended family, all adults, staying in a hotel with my own room and en suite bathroom. It was great and we had a lot of fun but after less than a week I’m VERY happy to be back in my own home with the knowledge that it’ll just be me and my cat in the morning. Maybe some people would prefer to keep living with family into adulthood, maybe I would if I’d been used to it but as it stands I love my parents and siblings though the idea of living with them fills me with dread.
lol yes wanting freedom and to be away from your parents at 18. A psyop. Jesus Christ.
I’m 42 and my parents recently moved in with me. Someone killed me.
Most people in most of history don’t want that. Or at least not enough to make their life immeasurably worse.
It’s culturally dependent. It is not taboo to still live with your parents in some countries. And considering the housing market difficulties, it is actually becoming more acceptable in places where the practice has been previously taboo.
You’re overthinking it.
Parents just want their lives back. Plain and simple.
When your kids are 18+ they shouldn’t be impacting your life that much, assuming you spent the time doing things like chores, boundaries, etc as they were growing up. I moved out at 25. I bought groceries, did yard work, helped clean the house, did my own laundry, etc. I don’t care if my kids choose to stay with me past 18.
That’s the difference between having an “adult child” and a “responsible adult” living with their parents.
Not every parent has the latter 😂
There are horror stories of adult children abusing their parents and basically taking over to house.
But honestly, even with a responsible adult child in the home, it’s not the same as having an empty nest. And I’m sure it works both ways with the adults living at home, feeling like they want their own space and not just shared living quarters.
We want to have loud, animalistic sex on my kitchen counter at 3pm.
Great graphical description…Feel free to use your pet as the third partner and have a threesome…The true essence of animalistic sex !! 😂😂😂
The key term is delayed adolescence. Having a 19 year old that has a job, does their own laundry, pays their own bills, etc is different from someone who is still on mom and dad’s insurance and phone plans, not paying rent, and not buying groceries.
As an example, at 25 I was working full time and my boss was 10 years older than me. My car insurance went up and I was complaining about it to my boss. Overall he didn’t think it was a big deal, but the next day he came in and told me that our conversation had got him thinking. Turns out his parents were still paying for his phone bill and car insurance. A 35 year old man living on his own and his parents were still paying his fucking bills and, icing on the cake, he wasn’t aware of it.
We don’t fit in our house I don’t need all three to leave, but I need one of them to. I don’t have an office/personal space.
I also don’t have an office space and worked covid from my basement. I think modern homes are too big, but I also totally get the desire for a home office. Unfortunately, for me at least, most homes that have an office also come with things like a formal dining room which seem like a waste of square footage.
I don’t have a basement or an attic. My oldest sleeps in part of what once was a one car garage garage. It now is a laundry room and a small bedroom. There are many nights when the only place we don’t have someone sleeping is the kitchen, the laundry room and the two bathrooms. I really could use an office space tho. I’ve been working from home more in 2025 than any other year and my PC is in the living room but there are often teenagers sleeping in there and I like to start working around 5am because my wife gets up for work at 4. I’m just waiting it out at this point, one of these kids will move out someday. Right?
Right?
That does sound pretty tight. We’re very fortunate to have a basement, which is pretty common in the Midwest but not universal. Without it the covid years would have been very tough, especially since our kids were very young at the time and wouldn’t have understood “parent working”. We wound up having to put a lock on our basement door.
The way your post reads, it seems like you’re doing the best you can. I’m sure a kid will move out someday and wish you the best both before and after that occurs!
Yeah they’re 20, 17 and 15. It could still be a few more years but we’re making changes to keep the living room more free. It’s also been extra challenging because for the last six months my job has been going through big changes and I haven’t had an office at work either, which is why I’ve been working at home more. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve worked standing in my kitchen, sitting at a conference table alone at work, or working from my car or a cafe or something. It’s actually been really cool, but sometimes really challenging.
I think it’s more complicated than that , I immensely despised living with my parents and even if it was unaffordable I didn’t want to move back even though I did a few times
Yes, that’s the psyop working
Imagine your preindustrial ancestors having this feeling
Damn I really struck a nerve. My preindustrial ancestors would have shared a house between three generations, like most humans across the world and throughout history
My pre-industrial ancestors would have been dead from what is now preventable disease or mutilated by slave owners. 🤔 But assuming they weren’t I’m pretty sure they’d be in a better position to move out since they’d probably know how to build a house and would have a community to help do it.
My preindustrial ancestors would just murder their parents, hell my one of my industrial ancestors butchered half of their kin for being early lost causers.
Remember, just because someone posts something on the Internet with confidence, doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about.
A lot of people really need to stop taking advice from Twitter/X, Facebook/Meta, Reddit/Lemmy, etc.
Spare me the predictable reply “but why should I listen to you” or any variation.
Username checks out
I wish this was our problem. Of course, there should be no shame in living with your parents. But it should be out of free will, and here in the Netherlands sadly that isn’t the case for many. Our housing market simply doesn’t offer affordable housing options. For many young people the only option is a rental apartment that will cost you so much, that if you can afford it at all, you can forget about ever saving any money. Which means that you’ll effectively be stuck in this situation forever. Which is an option to consider, but meanwhile those who can afford to buy a house, because of rich parents or whatnot, they have a far better deal, often even paying less on a monthly basis, while at the same time their house increases in value. It’s a major dividing factor in our society, separating the rich from the poor. Of course staying home is another realistic option to consider, and more and more people make this choice, but only for lack of a better option. The real tragedy is of course when staying at home is also not a realistic option. A fucked-up housing market makes the vulnerable all the more vulnerable.
I’m in the party that thinks if you have a full-time job you should be able to afford a home
Both can be true, we can put pressure on all fronts
Also homes could be way cheaper if zoning were fixed, density were legalized, and property taxes were retooled into a land tax
I dunno about America, but Australia has the problems you listed, but we also have problems with tax incentives to investing in housing rather than investing elsewhere, which also helps push up property prices by increasing demand without affecting supply.
The real reason your parents want you out is so they can fuck everywhere in peace and bring the kink back into their life. Kids are the ultimate mood spoilers.
*meant in jest, you’re all lovely*
Other way around too. One major reason why the current cohort of 18-25 year olds aren’t getting any is because no one wants to bring someone back to their parents’ place.
When I was that age we fucked anywhere, no need to go home for that… Unless the old folks were away for the weekend of course
That’ll get you on the sex offender registry these days
I don’t live in Americanistan
USA needs love hotels like elsewhere (Asia, LatAm)
I would want the entire room sterilized before I check in.
And so would the people who use it after me.
So you just request the same service you alwaysss do the morning after at the Hilton, after having had called ahead to explain your reason for booking
No THIS POST is a psyop to help normalise the idea of generational family living at home again so that we’ll swallow the ungodly recession and poverty that will be brought upon the entire working class; should we not agree, as a global unit, to Tax the rich and restore wealth to the Government, Middle and Working classes and out of the hands of Billionaires. Fuck this post.
I mean, the us government put out multiple PSA style propaganda videos after WW2 pushing to reshape how Americans lived into the nuclear family unit that mostly lives in suburbs like we see today. It was a concerted effort, and only kind of worked due to the unprecedented prosperity of post war America
It can be both.
i suppose you’re one of the people who insists that they are always right solely based on the fact that “it has always been like this”. i.e. you claim “it’s natural that we all live in individual houses”, though that’s actually a fallacy:
people are naturally tribal animals and we used to live in rather large groups of around 30 people or more for most of human history. it’s an incredibly young thought that people live in 4-person homes. (i couldn’t track down the exact time when this started but it must have been sometime within the last 200 years, i guess.)
what are your actual arguments in favor of the single-family home?
I don’t think we should incentivise single family homes but I also thing people shouldn’t be stuck living under the ownership of their parents. You know it won’t be an equal relationship even after age 18 the dominate continues as long as the dependence does
yeah, i recognize the problem of power imbalance. in fact, i recommend people sleeping at their aunt/uncle’s house for that reason, because there’s not so much of a power imbalance. just an idea ;-)
Yeah. This is ignoring the fact that not only did they live in the same house, but also the adults used to have the absolute authority over their children. Living standards changed and it’s okay. Even now, my parents dread me living with them as an adult because that would mean me never becoming fully independent.
Sure, I can contextualise this with the fact that every single year since the 2008 crash the economy has worsened as the mega rich have collected massive amounts of wealth. Wealth extracted through endless advertising and social engineering, across every single denomination in the world while paying basically zero tax through exploiting tax loopholes. This forces every single country’s central bank to print more money which drives inflation. Which is absolutely meaningless to the absurdly wealthy because billionaires will notice no change whether it’s 50 dolllars to fill their gas tank or 5000. If we continue as we are now, generational living will become absolutely necessary for everyone because in 2 generations the wealth gap in the west will grow to resemble some of the poorest parts of India. This is reality, there is a reason 2 working adults with full time jobs cannot afford a 1 bedroom apartment in san francisco and homelessness is rampant. It’s why it’s 1.2 million euro for a fully-attached, 1 bedroom bungalow on the South Side of Dublin city. As the rich acquire more and more wealth they will out compete us all for resources, for our homes, food, politicians, countries. It is why most millennials will never retire and it’s the reason for the rapid decline in birth rates across the globe. The internet and social media have been nothing more than a giant skinner box, used to redirect your ire away from the Billionaire class and at other members of the working class. Be that racially, with immigrants and asylum seekers. Or, politically, left and right. Wake up comrade.
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Here’s the thing.
It shouldn’t be stigmatized, and it shouldn’t be something that’s any of anyone else’s business beyond being an interesting fact about a person. Just one more nugget to find.
There’s no single right answer for everyone.
Families are fucking complicated. Some of them, you could happily live together your entire life. Others, you might need a giant house and you’d still have friction. Some, you don’t even want to be in the same state, much less share a house.
It is, however, true that as the number of people in a group increases, the work required to maintain healthy relationships increases exponentially.
If there is not parity between those relationships, it multiplies the effect. Which means that everyone involved has to be willing to adapt and change over time for things to stay hair and healthy. When that isn’t the case, the household is going to split in some way or another, and that usually means someone leaving is essentially necessary.
Think about it. Two people that love each other have work to do to maintain their relationship, be it romantic, friendship, parent/child, siblings, whatever. You add a third person to that, and instead of one relationship you have 4, not three. Because each individual relationship exists, and now the three way one does.
Now, think about two people starting a family. Say they only have one kid. The kid becomes an adult, with adult needs, responsibilities, wants, and habits. If the parents keep treating them like a child, dissonance will occur in most situations.
Now, have that child get married too. You’ve now got 4 individual relationships to maintain, the original triplet, the new triplet with the spouse and parents, plus a triplet with each parent, the child, and the child’s spouse, then the quartet.
That’s a shit ton of work. You’ve got all those people having to compromise, adjust their habits and remember boundaries. That’s not something where everyone is going to major the optimum decision every single time. It’s impossible almost, though if everyone puts in the effort roughly equally, it can be maintained for a lifetime.
Now, the second couple have a kid. Map out those connections and the level of difficulty spikes hard.
But, as hard as it is, if you find someone that’s living in shared space, people still assume there’s something wrong with the younger adults involved. And there may be, but it isn’t a certainty the way people assume it will be.
There’s benefits and drawbacks to every option when it comes to how a family lives, be it centralized, spread out, or fully disconnected.
Now, I’ve done all of that. At various points, I’ve lived with my sibling and parents as an adult; we’ve all lived apart as individuals, we’ve lived as duos (though not in every combination), and I’ve had two partners that lived with me during all of that, and a best friend that was there through damn near all of it, and his husband for a while, plus my kid in the mix.
At various points, different people owned the house, even though it’s been the same house that I grew up in for most of that. It was originally my dad as owner, with my mom having her share of that as a spouse. Then they divorced, and my dad got the house and my mom got a big check. She still lived here, but that’s a separate thing. Then my dad fucked up, and me and my best friend bought it. Now, I’m the only one on the mortgage.
The dynamics of that meant that the “power” shifted as ownership did because at the end of the day, whoever is on the mortgage/deed has final legal responsibility, financial responsibility, and that means having final say on some matters, no matter how democratic everything else is. That creates an extra dynamic on top of all the others.
I can tell you for sure that it takes work, hard emotional work, to navigate every iteration of that. When that work isn’t being done by everyone, shit can get bad fast.
But it’s also amazing. The amount of good in it is mind boggling if you take each family unit being apart as the goal that is the only measure of success. When everyone is clicking along, and there’s equity between everyone, gods it’s beautiful.
Just on a practical level, everyone with income had more left over than they otherwise would have, and none of us have ever had to face the bad times alone. We’ve had each others back more times than I can even count (I tried, and I kept remembering more until I gave up, and I was creeping on triple digits where the level of support was part of at least one of us making it through).
And on the emotional level? It can be chaotic, yeah, but if you don’t know the goodness of being able to just hug your dad any time you want to because he’s just in the other room, I’m sorry. Right now, I can go hug my dad, and don’t have to leave the house. He’ll laugh, and ask what’s up. I’ll say “nothing, I just love you”, and then we’ll get teary eyed and he’ll say it back, and then we go about our days.
It isn’t for everyone. But gods damn, it sure as hell isn’t a bad thing to try either
Wow, what a write-up, this is lovely.
I’ve also been in a lot of the situations you’re describing and ultimately became the person providing shelter and stability for others, too (of course it’s far more complex than such a simple statement, as you know).
We’ve never made those arrangements permanent, it’s always been phases of some years where people who’ve needed it most have come and then gone when they’re ready. To be clear we’ve never kicked anyone out, nor (many years earlier) have I been kicked out, nothing like that. I just suspect the genetics in my family make it very difficult for us to be told how to live by another for long, no matter how reasonably or gently, lol.
For instance my pops having to ultimately be subject to my rules (I just mean in the ways you described) was eventually too much for him and he made the necessary steps to move on, and the relationship stayed healthy.
Like you said there’s lots of different ways to do things and the most important part is that everyone’s dignity is preserved, and everyone involved is prioritizing each other person as best they can in addition to their own needs, which is hard to do.
I’d be open, perhaps, to a more unconventional long-term arrangement with several of the family members in my life (including chosen family), especially as the world gets harder and harder, but I’m also content to be a temporary place of calm and respite for folks as I can.
And like you said, the mutual give and take that’s involved is everything. With the right people, anyway - I have to acknowledge there’s a broad swathe of folks I’d never want to live closely with and who I expect would be largely uninterested in compromising and prioritizing the well-being of others. Quite unfortunate for folks who grow up surrounded by too much of that.
That resonates a lot for me :)
