We’re fed up with boomerang kids ... say the parents
PARENTS are becoming increasingly resentful of children who return to the family home after university with little intention of moving out. They complain that this ‘boomerang’ generation of graduates are expensive and lazy, a study found.
The parents – many of whom left home for good themselves when they went to university as teenagers – worry that their children are too cosy and lack the incentive to strike out on their own.
They also fail to pull their weight around the house, treating it like a hotel and failing to do their share of the chores.
Two million men and a million women aged 20 to 35 live in their parents’ homes and the boomerang army has grown by more than
‘A lot of tension and resentment’
20 per cent since 1997, the Office for National Statistics estimates.
The unhappiness this is causing among parents was revealed in a study of middle- class families by the London School of Economics.
The LSE’s Professor Jane Lewis said: ‘We found that the graduates tended to be more positive than their parents about returning to the family home, although both groups expressed mainly negative feelings about the situation. It appears that some parents experience a lot of tension between supporting their children and successfully launching them as independent adults. There is resentment from some parents about children expecting to be treated as adults on the one hand, but not pulling their weight when it comes to household chores or taking responsibility for other aspects of their lives.’
The boomerang generation has boomed as graduates fail to find the jobs and see returning to the family home as more convenient and cheaper than looking for a place of their own. The trend has been driven by high house prices and high rents, especially in London and the South of England.
The LSE researchers spoke in depth to 27 families. The parents and children were all graduates.
The children, most of whom were aged between 22 and 25, were largely looking for careers rather than less ambitious jobs that would pay the rent, the study said.
One mother was ‘scared’ about her daughter’s prospects and ‘frustrated at not being able to develop her own job and about having to do more household chores for her daughter, who did not know how to clean to her standards’.
Another mother said of her daughter: ‘ Inevitably she gets treated more like a child.’
One mother said of her son: ‘He is in a waiting room really. A comfortable waiting room, but he doesn’t know when the train is coming.’
The happiest parents and children were from south Asian families, the study said, because they saw marriage rather than going to university as the proper point for the younger generation to leave home.
‘Many parents in the sample tried to take comfort from knowing that they were not the only people experiencing the problems,’ the study said. ‘Many young adults took comfort from knowing that many of their university friends had also returned home. There is therefore the possibility that returning home after graduation may become a new social norm.’