BOOMERANG ADULTS
As the cost of living bites in the ‘‘post-Covid’’ world, young adults are increasingly choosing to move back in with their parents. Hanna McCallum explores whether it’s time to re-examine the ‘‘leave home at 18 and never turn back’’ outlook and the benefi
When Kadeisha Coombe left the comfort of her parents’ home at 21, she vowed to never move back. Being almost homeless while in between flats did not make her budge on her outlook.
She ‘‘literally never’’ thought she would return home.
But four years after leaving home, struggling with worries about her job because of Covid-19 and grappling with inflation and rising rent, Coombe reconsidered her options.
After lockdown made her rethink her career, she returned to part-time study, and found having a quiet, secure environment was important.
In April, she moved back in with her parents in Torbay, Auckland, joining her younger sister.
‘‘I did a few years in the flat party scene and as fun as that was, I could not do that now. It’s not what I’m after,’’ says Coombe, who is now 25. ‘‘I’m in no rush to move out now.’’
Coombe pays $250 a week to cover rent and food, which is $70 cheaper than what she was paying in the flat, before the landlord was set to hike the price.
‘‘Some people say it’s a lot, [but] I think it’s more than reasonable for the shelter, support and food that I’m getting.’’
Coombe says she ‘‘definitely’’ felt stigma around ‘‘moving back in with mum and dad’’, but now says: ‘‘I rate it so much’’.
‘‘If I was still single I think I would find it a bit awkward . . . but I’m in a relationship now, my parents know him . . . I’m not bringing random people back to the house.’’
Coombe is one of many young adults making the move back home in the hunt for stability and security.
Data from Stats NZ for 2013 to 2022 show a gradual but small increase in 18 to 34-year-olds living with their parents, from 23.8% to 26.6%.
However, in the same period, there was a 13.5% rise in the same age group who work full-time and live at home.
Dr Kate Prickett, a family sociologist and demographer from Victoria University, says she observed a ‘‘big shift’’ in people moving back home because of the first nationwide lockdown.
The ‘‘boomerang adult’’ returning to the family home was part of an ongoing trend where more people aged 18 to 30 were moving back in with their parents for a period of time, she says.
The current generation of young people are entering adulthood at a time when houses are more expensive, forcing them to delay other big life changes like finding a partner, marrying and having children, Prickett says.
‘‘That’s not unlinked to the cost of living crisis.’’
This week, Stats NZ revealed a 10% increase in prices of fruit and vegetables during May than at the same time last year.
Meanwhile, the national median weekly rent jumped 7% year-on-year to reach $575 in March, to add to the effects of inflation which hit a 30-year high of 6.9% in the three months to the end of March.
‘‘This generation is more likely to go to university as well, so that again prolongs getting a job and getting stable,’’ Prickett says.
‘‘But it also means that they’re maybe entering adulthood with more debt than others, which stops them from acquiring other debt that helps them get into stable housing, for example.’’
For Maike Schaumkel, moving out of her parents’ home is a move yet to happen. The 28-year-old has lived at her parents’ home in North Shore, Auckland, her whole life, and two of her adult sisters are also still there.
‘‘I was kind of embarrassed about it for a while, but then I did start to have those thoughts of, ‘Why am I embarrassed about this’, and thinking about how it’s a very Western perspective on it, and that my dad being Tongan, that’s not anything strange at all.’’
Her mum, who has a German background, is ‘‘more inclined’’ to encourage her children to move out, while her dad would be ‘‘happy for us to just stay home till we get married’’, she said.
‘‘I’m not embarrassed about this, I just thought that I should be.’’
Despite enjoying living at home, it is not without challenges, and navigating having five adults in the same household has its ‘‘ups and downs’’.
Schaumkel said they went through a process of setting boundaries and a shift from a parent and child dynamic to an adult-to-adult relationship.
‘‘It’s definitely had a good shift where we don’t have to tell them everything that’s happening, but a lot of the time we choose to because we respect them and we do live in their house.
‘‘When you assume and don’t communicate, that’s when the problem happens.’’
She has challenged herself not to be ‘‘too comfortable at home’’, and says although part of her wants to experience flatting, she doesn’t think she would be ‘‘missing out on a big part of life’’ if she didn’t.
‘‘We joke about it, I’ll be the last one there.’’
Schaumkel also believes the idea of having to be independent and not rely on others is a Western view.
‘‘The family unit is just so important . . . You do need people, and community is really important for that.’’
Prickett says the stigma of living at home is a ‘‘hangover from prior generations’’, despite economic pressures having changed over time.
‘‘We need to recognise that the context for this current generation has completely changed.’’
The ‘‘normal’’ steps of young adulthood reflect a ‘‘very Western, Anglo, Pa¯ keha¯ way of thinking about the world, but also a dominating narrative in colonised New Zealand’’, Prickett feels, but she says they are now changing.
Kerry Donovan Brown agreed moving home and ‘‘renegotiating’’ relationships with parents could come with challenges.
Brown moved back to their parents’ home in rural Canterbury at the age of 34, just after the 2020 lockdown when they were made redundant, staying in a sleepout.
‘‘We all probably had to work quite hard,’’ they said of having to renegotiate the parent-child relationship. ‘‘It can be quite hard but quite rewarding as well.’’
Their mum, Celine Donovan, said letting go of being a caregiver and that side of parenting was challenging.
‘‘You want to protect but you gotta let go, and that’s a bit of a balancing act as well. I hope that part of being a good parent is that I don’t try and live my kids’ life for them, but then I want them around me.’’
Campbell Taylor, 29, values having different voices and the opinions of his parents ‘‘on tap’’.
Having lived away from home for a decade, including five years overseas, moving back in with his parents in Christchurch was an initial shock, but he found being back home as an adult not drastically different to living with other adults in flats.
‘‘I’ve often appreciated being able to come home and there being older voices to listen to and people in a different stage of life.’’
Taylor felt the disruptions from Covid19 gave him a ‘‘free pass to be different to your own expectations, or the expectations of others’’ and allowed him to make ‘‘uncool decisions’’.
He decided to launch his own jewellery business instead of pursuing a career in architecture, and moving home gave him the flexibility to do so.
‘‘I just didn’t want to have that same mindset of ‘everything will fall into place after a career’. There are implications to changing your priority, which aren’t always glamorous, but we can’t have everything, even though I feel like we’re either told that we can or we’re told it’s sensible to hustle to get everything now.’’
About to enter his 30s, Taylor says he had never considered moving back home before.
‘‘You enter different stages of life and everyone’s ‘babies, houses, dream jobs’, and I’ve definitely gone through phases of looking sideways at everything and getting pretty bitter,’’ he says.
However, questioning his choices and envying others ‘‘sap[ped] the joy in contentment [rather] than being motivating’’.
Prickett says as more adults start living with their parents it will become ‘‘more acceptable to society at large’’.
‘‘We [will] stop looking at it as something that should be stigmatised and just a natural part of our lifestyle.’’
Research by Consumer NZ in April found parents were playing a significant part in supporting their children to afford getting onto the housing market, including allowing them to live rent free.
Spokesperson Gemma Rasmussen said the ‘‘bank of mum and dad’’ was now pivotal in the first-home buying process, but this meant there was a greater divide between who could buy a first home and who could not.
‘‘We’ve reached a point in New Zealand where it’s no longer enough to do all the ‘right things’ to buy your first home – to get a job with a good income, save furiously and cut back on the ‘nice to haves’.’’
Architectural designer and housing advocate Jade Kake said Ma¯ ori were no exception to feeling the pressures of high living costs, but with disproportionately high lower-income families, moving back home could be ‘‘a different experience’’ to a Pa¯ keha¯ young professional.
‘‘For Ma¯ ori moving home, they might be returning to wha¯ nau where there’s not adequate space; maybe everyone wants to live together but they live together under economic constraints.’’
Kake said it was common for Ma¯ ori to live in multigenerational households and that they did not have the same stigmas around families living together that often exist in Pa¯ keha¯ families.
Having multiple generations in a household was important for sharing knowledge, and could offer both a ‘‘safe and positive space’’ for wha¯ nau support and somewhere for language and culture to thrive.
‘‘I’m in no rush to move out now.’’ Kadeisha Coombe