Peter pandemonium

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Some call them boomerang children, kidults, or rejuveniles while the more disgruntled among older generations refer to them as ‘KIPPERS’ (Kids In Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings). People who choose to live with their parents well into adulthood have become a hot topic amongst media commentators and social scientists throughout the western world.

In Australia, 39 per cent of adults up to the age of 34 lived with their parents in 2001 and that figure is expected to rise to more than 40 per cent over the next 20 years.  Meanwhile, the US and UK have already surpassed these figures, prompting talk of a new phenomenon dramatically entitled ‘Peter Pandemonium’. It’s one of the idiosyncrasies of the so-called Generation X (people in their 30s) and Generation Y (people in their 20s) and some say it is all rolled up in their reluctance to simply ‘grow up’.

“Peter Pan would probably have little incentive to run away if he was living in London, New York or Tokyo today,” says Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, England. In his 2003 essay entitled ‘The Children who won’t grow up’, Professor Furedi talks about the ‘infantilisation’ of society that involves a range of adult behaviours that celebrate and perpetuate childhood pursuits such as video games, toys and cartoons while postponing the traditional measures of adulthood, like marriage, mortgages and procreation. The growing inclination especially amongst young men to live at home into their thirties is, he says ‘the most striking confirmation of the process’.

Depending on who you are, this notion of growing up (or not, as the case may be) will either irk or delight you. KPMG partner Bernard Salt last year called for ‘an end to the unjust occupation of the family home by layabout Gen Ys sponging off parents everywhere’ in an opinion piece entitled ‘Gen Y’s free bed, board and bonking’ for The Australian. The Sydney Morning Heralds’ Lisa Pryor joined the fray in a recent opinion piece entitled ‘Kick ‘em out for their sake and yours’ in which she says that allowing children to stay at home longer is ‘creating a generation of screwed up, immature twentysomethings.’ She accuses baby boomer parents who ‘harbour these overgrown adolescents’ of  ‘depriving them of the skills and satisfactions of life as a grown-up’ and says the phenomenon has as much to do with the needs of the parents as the needs of their kids. ‘…baby boomer mothers cling onto their adult children in an attempt to stay relevant, even if it means putting up with wild parties and raided fridges and constant requests for lifts to the train station,’  she writes.

Needless to say, Salt and Pryor are not alone. Opinion columns from around the world, with titles such as ‘Get out and Stay out”, ‘Tough Love’ and ‘Growing older, not up’, denounce those who live with their parents and prolong traditional notions of growing up as lazy, irresponsible, selfish and costly. Meanwhile, their mums and dads are being given titles like ‘helicopter parents’ because they are seen to hover around to help with or even “fix” elements of their children’s lives rather than making them stand on their own two feet.

On the other hand, best selling Australian author of ‘Generation Y’, Peter Sheehan, is one who sees the trend to live at home longer partly as a positive move towards more collaborative parent/child relationships and partly as a natural reaction to a range of social forces. “If the parents are happy and the kids are happy and there’s mutual respect what’s the problem?” he asks. “There’s a lot of reasons people are staying at home longer but they’re more to do with circumstances than a conscious decision to manipulate or exploit parents.”

One basic element Sheehan believes has helped the shift in living arrangements is that baby boomers tended to be more affluent, build bigger houses and have smaller families than previous generations. “So there’s usually more room in the family home nowadays,” he suggests. “Generation Ys are also studying longer than any other generation in order to compete on the job market so a lot of people are well into their 20s before they’re even earning a regular income let alone thinking about mortgages and marriage.” 

Sheehan, who left home at 18, bought his first house at 19 and is now married with a baby at 25, also sees the inclination to stay in the nest as part of the elongating of perceived adolescence but doesn’t view this as a negative. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as grown up just like there’s no such thing as learned… There’s only growing and learning,” he says. “Every generation will try to impose their ideals onto the next generation and every generation will in some way reject or remodel the ideals of the last generation.”  He says one of the best things about our world today is that we generally have a choice about how we want to live our lives. “Most parents are happy that their children have that choice and most children are thankful that their parents have taught them about choice. We’re not better or worse than our parents. We’re just different.”

Dr Harry Blatterer from the School of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of New South Wales takes this notion of difference between the generations a step further in his 2005 essay entitled ‘New Adulthood: Personal or Social Transition’.  He says we need to develop a new understanding of what adulthood means in the social world people are facing today. “It’s a world that is very different from the one in which the previous generation had its maturity acknowledged,” he says.

He points to the baby boomer era known as the Golden Age – from the end of the second world war to the early 70s – where the ideal of what constituted adulthood was also the reality for the majority of Australians. “Becoming an adult then was a matter of following a life course that included what I call the classic markers of adulthood - independence, work, family,” he says. “Passed down from generation to generation, this standard model of adulthood is still a powerful ideal… but the very conditions for its attainment have disappeared.” A less secure, more casual labour market and the escalating cost of housing are two major factors Blatterer says have hindered young people’s ability to achieve at least two of those markers while the third is more about choice. “Birth control has played a major role in the way people are able to live their lives,” he says. “It has offered women and men, for that matter, choices they simply didn’t have 40 or 50 years ago. Baby boomers started the trends of choice that their children are now living even more fully than they did. ”

Nevertheless, Blatterer says we are still in a transitional stage when it comes to our opinions about adulthood. Young people, he says, are still being judged, by outsiders and themselves, against ideals of adulthood from a bygone era. “They talk about themselves as either “postponing” or “rejecting” adulthood because they still think of it the way their parents did,” he says. “We now seeing a different kind of transition towards adulthood where people are achieving their own personal growth milestones (such as the mature handling of a difficult situation or profound trauma) rather than conforming to those of a popular ideal but it might take another generation or two before we acknowledge this.”

The Reynolds Family

When 73 year old Sydeny Architect Ken Reynolds designed his Roseville home in 1961, he did so with a growing family in mind. He had no idea at the time however, that over four decades later it would still be housing not only he and his wife Shirley but three of their four adult children as well. “Luckily, the three levels of the house are virtually self contained so Shirley and I can rattle around on the top level, and the boys have the run of the bottom two levels,” he explains with a wry smile.

As the couple and their sons, Adam 44, Marty 42 and Gavin 37, share a few drinks and plenty of laughs around the dinner table there’s a sense that the boys’ reluctance to leave the nest permanently is a bit of a running joke. Yet there’s an even greater sense that none of the Reynolds family would have it any other way. “Oh they’re messy and they eat me out of house and home and every time you turn around there’s a big body in your way but we do like having them here,” says Shirley. “They come in very handy when there’s heavy work to do around the yard,” she laughs.

All jokes aside, the boys are quick to point out that each of them has left home at various stages of their adult lives, be it for travel, marriage, work, or just the experience of living alone. Each stint away has varied in duration from a few months to 10 years, but sooner or later they’ve all been followed by a return to the beloved home base. “Who wouldn’t want to stay here?’” asks Marty as he gestures out the window to the in-ground pool overlooking the property’s spectacular bush vista. “And you wouldn’t find a friendlier household than this,” adds Adam. “Mum and dad are so easy going and they’re always having friends over so it’s very cruisy around here.”

Cruisy it may be but there’s an unspoken respect for the fact that while they might be adults, these three men are currently living under their parents’ roof. “We don’t play loud music at night and when we have friends over for a BBQ we invite mum and dad and we clean up the next day,” says Gavin, who, like his two older brothers, does his own washing and the occasional bit of housework. “They still have to be prompted to take out the garbage or clean the bathroom but they’ll do it without too much fuss nowadays,” says Shirley with a wink.

Over the years, Shirley has also learned to wink, or at least turn a blind eye, to the boys’ bending of a few unwritten house rules, especially when it comes to so-called ‘sleeping arrangements’.  “I don’t like the boys bringing home ‘one night stands’ but I don’t think they’ve done that very often,” she says, as the boys begin to chuckle.

“That’s another reason the house works so well,” laughs Gavin. “It has so many entrances that there’s no need to sneak past mum and dad’s bedroom or anything like that.” He does admit however, to shuffling a few embarrassed young ladies out the door at dawn before Ken and Shirley have woken up. “I’ve never had any bad reactions to telling women I live at home but I suppose it would be a bit uncomfortable for a girl to be greeting mum and dad for the first time at the breakfast table.”

Long-term relationships are another matter. “We don’t mind them having steady girlfriends come to stay at all. In fact we like the extra company,” says Ken. “But if they ever married I think they’d need to find their own place and start a new life together.”

All three boys help out with the household expenses and are more than happy to do so. “We’d have to pay rent if we lived somewhere else so we’re happy to pay mum and dad for the privilege of living here,” explains Marty.

On a day-to-day basis the family spends quite a bit of time together despite the boys’ various work, sports and social schedules. “They seem to have a knack for arriving home just in time for dinner so we eat together as a family most nights,” says Shirley. “I usually cook enough for all of us and if they’re here they’re here and if they’re not we can have leftovers the next day.” If the boys do arrive late, they’re happy to cook a meal themselves but Ken would still prefer to know who was planning to be home for dinner. “I’d like them to ring ahead so we know how many to cater for. It’s all a bit casual for me,” he sighs.

As they look towards the future, neither the sons nor the parents are in any hurry to see their easy going dynamic change. “Our door will always be open to them,” says Ken.

“And we’ll probably always think of this as our base,” adds Marty, who plans to travel to the Northern Territory with his girlfriend Jenny this year. “I’d like to buy a house and have a family one day but I’m not fretting about the fact that I’m not there yet.”  Gavin shares his brother’s wander lust but not his ambition to settle down. “I’m not ready to grow up yet. A man to me is someone with a suit and tie and a mortgage and I’m having too much fun for all that so I’m happy to be a 37 year old boy,” he laughs.

Adam says he’s not sure whether he’ll stay in the modern, self-contained flat designed by his dad forever, but sees no reason to move out yet. “It doesn’t feel like I live with my parents really because I’m in my own apartment downstairs. They could rent it out to a complete stranger because it’s so separate,” he says. “I’ve spent years living away from home and I might end up doing that again but no other place could compare with what I have here.”

Words: Linda Peatling. Photography: Scott Hawkins.