Boomerang kids are no kind of hardship

ASTUDY by the London School of Economics finds the effect of boomerang children on parents is akin to suffering an illness because it curtails the parents’ freedom which they have been enjoying since the kids flew the nest.

What a sad comment on modern life. We have moved in the course of 50 or 60 years from generations living happily together to small units which are fine as long as they keep their distance.

It is difficult to see why parents should find their children’s presence restricting unless they have reverted to treating their grownup offspring as juveniles. Adult children do not need looking after, and can house-sit while their parents swan off on holiday.

I left home in my 20s but briefly boomeranged in my 30s. I kept losing flat purchases because my own sale three times fell through at the last minute, so I decided to sell anyway and roost at home while I bought. My parents enjoyed it so much that they were sad when I left again. They said it reminded them of how empty the house seemed when my brother and I had returned to our boarding schools.

MY grandmother was bombed out in the war and came to live with my parents, so I grew up with a granny always at home. In due course my own mother came to live with me after the death of my father. Some of my friends carried on living at home until they married. My mother grew up in a home which had not only a grandmother but a bachelor uncle and many a household of the time contained a maiden aunt.

We have gone from the extended family to the nuclear family to households of one. Nobody likes living alone more than I do but God forbid that I should ever consider any member of my family the equivalent of a disability.