Living at Home Does Not Make You Twelve Again

Can we please retire the phrase failure to launch? Rent has become what it has become. Deposits are enormous. Plenty of people in their twenties live in their childhood bedroom while working full time, commuting and saving for their own place. Their address does not tell you whether they can manage adult life. But there IS a problem that can develop when an adult child lives at home, and it has very little to do with the address. What happens on an ordinary Tuesday? Who notices that the milk is finished? Who books the dentist appointment? Who calls the bank, landlord or insurance company? Who remembers the bins? This is where somebody can quietly become twelve again, not because the parents are controlling, but because everyone is trying to be helpful. In a 4 September Sydney Morning Herald feature, Wendy Tuohy gathered several different views. Nicola Palfrey, a clinical psychologist at Headspace, sees no problem with supporting adult children when that support is useful. Psychologist Sabina Read pointed to the other side. When parents take over job applications or conversations with a landlord, they can remove the exact practice a young adult needs. The article also includes a parent who wants everyone out by twenty four. So what could a family actually do? Here is one suggestion. Sit down together for twenty minutes and write down four things: Who owns which household jobs? What money is paid, and when? What does privacy mean in this home? When will we review the arrangement? The first word matters. Owns. Not "helps with." If the bins are your responsibility, then you also work out how to remember them. Your mother does not become your reminder service. The same applies to cooking twice a week, doing the weekly shop or whatever fits the schedules in that household. Once a task has an owner, it stops being a generous favour and becomes part of running the home. Then there is money, the subject everybody avoids because it can feel rude from either direction. Does the adult child need to contribute? What amount is affordable? Rent-free support can work perfectly well too, as long as it does not turn into a permanent debt of gratitude that gets brought up during every disagreement. Some parents save the contribution for the eventual move. Others use it for electricity, food or other household costs. Either can work. The important part is that everybody knows what was agreed. Privacy probably creates the most unnecessary arguments. Adults need privacy. That includes a closed door and the ability to spend a weekend without giving a full report. At the same time, an adult living with other people should say when they will not be home for dinner and try not to wake the whole house at 2am. Is that really a childhood curfew? No, it is the kind of consideration any flatmate would expect. Then choose a review date, perhaps six months away, and put it in the calendar. That gives everyone a normal opportunity to say the arrangement is no longer working. It does not have to become an eviction, a family crisis or a betrayal. Parents, before writing the cover letter or taking over the difficult phone call, ask what kind of help is wanted. Perhaps you can read a draft. Perhaps you can sit nearby while the call is made. Sometimes a person needs more help, but it should be discussed rather than appearing automatically. That uncomfortable gap between doing everything for someone and leaving them completely alone is where confidence grows. Of course, health, disability, money, caring responsibilities and safety can change the whole situation. If the home itself is unsafe, this advice does not apply. For many families, though, living in the Emerging Adult Blob under a parent's roof is not a personal failure. It is a household arrangement that needs clearer rules. What would have to change for everyone in that home to feel like an adult?