Some live with their parents, considering it normal and natural, or having no other options. But living with a mother and father can be detrimental to adult children. And from the article you will find out exactly why.
Why do children stay with their parents?
For what reasons do children stay with their parents as they grow up and become more or less independent? The reasons are different:
- It's comfortable. Parents, especially those who do not work, can perform many responsibilities around the house: cleaning, cooking, shopping, caring for their grandchildren (if the adult child has his own family). In this case, children bear a minimum of responsibility.
- It's profitable. If there is no separate housing, then living with parents eliminates the need to purchase it. There is no need to rent an apartment, pay for utilities separately (and sometimes mom and dad pay for everything).
- There are no other options. Sometimes living with parents is a necessary measure due to the lack of separate housing and money to buy or rent it.
- Addiction. Moreover, a wide variety of types are possible. Children can depend on their parents: financially, emotionally or psychologically. But often fathers and mothers of adults who are afraid of loneliness or life without their beloved daughters and sons face addiction.
Advantages and disadvantages of such accommodation
Living with parents has both advantages and disadvantages. Let's first consider the advantages:
- Tangible assistance, both from one of the parties and mutual. If parents are elderly or sick, children take care of them. And if mom and dad are still full of strength, they can help the child: cook food, do laundry, look after their grandchildren, and so on.
- Benefit for children. They do not need to spend money on renting or purchasing separate housing. It remains to pay part of the utility bills, but sometimes such expenses are fully borne by the parents.
- Peace of mind for parents. For mom and dad, even an independent child who does not depend on anyone remains a child, and therefore if he lives separately, and especially far away, this always becomes a reason for worry.
- Support. Father and mother will always support their child, no matter what, they will take his side and provide help in difficult situations. When living separately, there is often no shoulder nearby to rely on. Of course, you can talk it out over the phone, but real face-to-face communication is much more pleasant and effective.
- Conflict of interests. An adult develops his own views on life, its way of life and way of life. Parents may think differently, which will lead to disagreements and scandals over a variety of reasons, such as cooking, keeping the house clean, and so on.
- Total control. Of course, not all mothers and fathers control and care for their adult children, but this still happens quite often and, of course, stresses and angers children.
- Unnecessary and sometimes overly intrusive advice. Although mom and dad will give them in order to help, children often react with hostility to inappropriate recommendations. And this is another reason for disagreement.
- Increased dependence. The further you go, the more difficult it is to get rid of it. And in this case, children may not become independent at all. And parents who are heavily dependent on their child will not let him go free, making independent life impossible.
- Difficulties in building your own family. Parents can, unconsciously or consciously, with good intentions, interfere in their child’s relationships, preventing them from solving problems. Sometimes cohabitation leads to divorce, and the adult child remains alone for a long time or forever (if he does not decide to move out).
- Lack of freedom. The child cannot allow himself to do too much in front of his parents, feels discomfort due to their presence, has no personal space, does not organize his life the way he wants and considers necessary.
- Increased grievances. If you are angry with your father or mother for something, then their constant presence will only aggravate the situation, increasing hostility and anger.
Reasons why you should move out from your parents
Why can’t children who have matured and become independent live with their parents for a long time or permanently? There are several obvious reasons to start an independent life in your own (or at least rented) home:
- Personal space. Living separately, you can do what you want (of course, within reason), and no one will reproach you for anything. You can bring guests or your other half into your own home without permission; here you can arrange everything to your taste, creating a cozy corner.
- Gaining independence, getting used to adult life. A child separated from his parents will finally learn all the difficulties and realities, learn to solve problems, and become self-sufficient and responsible.
- Pleasant meetings with mom and dad. You will miss them, which means that visits to your home will be long-awaited and bring real pleasure.
- The opportunity to build a personal life without constant interference from loved ones. And even if you make mistakes, everything that is most personal and intimate will remain within the couple or family.
- Independence. Separation from parents (separation) is an inevitable and obligatory stage of growing up. And if you don’t go through it, you can forever remain infantile, helpless and unsure of yourself.
- There are fewer reasons for conflicts. There will be nothing to quarrel and argue about.
How to solve problems that arise when living together?
What should a guy or girl do if he (she) lives with his parents and understands that this harms everyone? First, ideally, move out and start living separately. If there is free housing, it's easy. If it does not exist and is not expected, it makes sense to think about a mortgage or building a house.
Secondly, indicate your independence and the degree of interference in your life from your father and mother. Explain to them that you are an adult who has the right to make your own decisions.
Thirdly, try to organize a personal space, protected from everyone. Set up your own room (if possible) and provide a lock on the door to keep the room locked. Let your parents know that they cannot enter your corner without warning or without your presence.
Fourth, look for compromises. Communicate, solve problems together and calmly, discuss plans and decide how to live better and more comfortably for everyone. Silent dissatisfaction will ruin relationships and lead to a nervous breakdown.
If you still live with your parents and you are not happy with this state of affairs, change the situation. Living together with mother and father is sometimes harmful and even dangerous, but separate housing has many advantages.
The Village editors have noticed that our readers are interested in more than just city life, fashion, food and weekend plans. Complex ethical issues are often discussed in our community. We did not leave this unattended: in the new section, The Village will answer such questions with the help of experts in the field of ethics, psychology and sociology. In the second issue, we figure out what age it is normal to live with your parents.
Olga Konovalova
senior trainer of the Higher School of Psychological Counseling, family psychologist
The norm is different for everyone, but when deciding when it is better to leave their parents, I would focus not on age, but on when a young man or girl can independently pay for rented housing and provide for themselves. If this is possible, then the person is considered to be independent of his parents. Usually they don’t move for a long time because they can’t rent an apartment or cook and do the laundry themselves.
But even if there are no domestic or financial problems, young people sometimes still refuse to live separately. There can be many different reasons for this: for example, they can live independently, but do not believe in it. Or they are strongly involved in relationships with parents and play some special role in them. Children may think: if I leave, my parents will be bored or they will kill each other. Life with a family can also be simply convenient.
The fact that independent and financially independent young people take a long time to start an independent life is a problem. This leads to greater infantilism, and the more infantile a person is, the less he wants to build a family and have children. Scientists conducted the following experiment: they provided experimental mice with everything and satisfied all their needs. As a result, the mice simply refused to reproduce; they did not want to change their hedonic position.
People have the same thing: leaving your parents means taking on responsibility, and many people think that this is scary. They perceive it not as a right, but as a negative perspective: they are afraid to take responsibility for their lives and build relationships. Some are sure that they must be responsible not only for themselves, but also for their partner, although this is not so: each person is responsible only for himself and only with the appearance of children for them too. And even this responsibility eventually passes to the children themselves.
KARINA PIPIA
sociologist of Levada Center
More than half of Russians (54%) believe that unmarried adult children should live separately from their parents. Moreover, separate living is primarily considered as a desirable option by young people aged 18 to 24 years. More than two-thirds of respondents who adhere to this point of view see independent living as teaching them independence and responsibility. Every fourth young Russian believes that this is a way to reduce conflicts with parents and weaken their control.
A third of respondents, on the contrary, believe that living with parents before marriage is quite normal. Young people who support this position refer to a lack of independence and responsibility for their actions, while older Russians refer to the ability to control children and protect them from mistakes.
In general, the consciousness of today's Russian youth is firmly based on paternalistic principles. Young people do not consider independence and self-sufficiency as a priority principle of social life, and they entrust the solution of problems to the state. Within the family, this is transmitted to parents, who are expected to provide a normal level of well-being. Since the time of “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” by Max Weber, little has changed: yes, Russians have become individualists, but they have not become more independent people who control their own destiny and do not expect outside help. Support for repressive laws shows the persistence of patriarchal attitudes - including among young people. Declaratively, young people are ready to live separately (and most parents agree with this), but in reality this is not always possible due to lack of resources: living together is sometimes forced due to low income and lack of affordable housing.
Among those Russians who support the separation of adult children and parents:
believe that children should live separately because they become independent and learn to be responsible for their actions
they say that children become independent earlier, joining work life
note that children are freed from strict control by parents, which leads to a decrease in conflicts between them
We are confident that children are beginning to listen more carefully to their parents’ advice
Among those Russians who advocate cohabitation of adult children and parents:
believe that a separate life weakens parental control and children may go down the wrong path
think that children are not ready for independent life and do not have the skills to organize their own life
We are sure that independent living leads to alienation in the relationship between children and parents
they fear that living separately from their parents leads to the fact that parents may be left without financial support for their children
Foreign experience
Christina Cheney
In our country, everyone leaves their parents at the age of 18, when they go to university. After finishing their studies, some return, but this is not perceived very well in society. It is believed that after 25 years of age, living with parents is definitely not normal.
Tonya Wexler
Great Britain
In the UK, it is customary to move out from your parents early - when you start studying at university. But everything depends, of course, on the circumstances: young people can continue to live with their family if, for example, they have a large house. By the age of 24, almost everyone lives separately, although this is not necessarily related to the ability to provide for themselves. Among my British friends aged 25–27, there are guys who live separately, but with their parents’ money.
Daria Zlotnikova
Most French people move away from their parents immediately after school: good universities are scattered throughout the country, and even Parisians can go to study for the desired specialty in another region. So many people leave their father’s house around the age of 18. Relationships with family quickly become guest relations, parents maintain their distance and almost do not interfere in the lives of adult children. Many student couples start living together early in order to save on apartment rent. Single students usually rent studio apartments of the most modest size; in Paris it comes to 8–10 square meters. A young Frenchman would rather live in a closet under a roof than under the wing of his parents.
Olesya Buryan-Tseytlin
Many Israelis after school go straight into the army for three years. During this time they do not live at home and are only there on weekends. After the army, around the age of 21, it is not customary to return to your parents. If someone lives with their family again, then, for example, for no more than a year to save up for study or travel. Universities have dormitories, and all the students I know live there during their studies and even after their studies. Although recently, due to the fact that everything is expensive in Israel, young people have begun to live longer with their parents. Many return to them with their own families in order to save and save up for their own home.
Vanessa
Philippines
Family ties are very strong in the Philippines. Young people stay with their parents after university, even if they get a job. There are still families in which even couples live with their parents, and sometimes with uncles and aunts under the same roof. Usually the groom brings the bride to his parents' house. This is due not only to the cultural tradition of strong family ties, but also to the practical side of the issue: living with their parents, people are not forced to pay for housing. Therefore, even if you are 40 years old, in the Philippines no one will judge you for living with your parents.
illustration: Olya Volk
Family and relationships: advice from psychologist Olga Yurkovskaya
Grown children should leave their parents' home. Otherwise, they will never become real adults, remaining hostages of “intrafamily moral incest,” when the social roles of husbands and wives, fathers and children are confused.
However, many families, due to lack of money or independence, live in the same house, and sometimes even in the same room with their parents. This creates painful relationships that often represent two extremes.
Why separation from parents must take place
An example of the first extreme is my friend’s mother-in-law, who even at fifty years old asked her mother how to make sandwiches. The daughter-in-law with square eyes listened to their conversation. A woman of almost retirement age runs to her mother asking how to make sandwiches! No, not a joke, I asked in all seriousness. And what’s more, having the opportunity to live separately with her husband and child, a friend chose to exchange two separate apartments, her two-room apartment and her still old mother’s one-room apartment, for a shared three-ruble rent in order to live with her mother.
But her sister, on the contrary, showed the complete opposite, and this is the second extreme in the relationship. At seventeen, she fled to another republic just to get away from her mother and her authoritarian claims. And when the mother asked to stay with her freedom-loving daughter during the major renovation, she responded with a categorical refusal. Absolutely no! Complete denial of any connection.
Unfortunately, there are less than half of families in which generations live separately from each other in the post-Soviet space. Mostly young spouses continue to live with their parents. This was once the norm. But once upon a time, daughter-in-law was the norm! Do we now consider sex between father-in-law and daughter-in-law normal? No, but we continue to consider the life of several generations of a family in one apartment to be the norm.
The cause of scandals in the family — "two women in one kitchen"
In Soviet times, “in cramped conditions, but no offense,” when there was no sex, and everyone was united by peace, work and May, they could huddle in “Khrushchev.” But this housing was built as temporary, to replace barracks. It was not planned that generations would live in dank five-story buildings with a shared bathroom, having children and crowding each other.
It is living together in a cramped space that leads to relatives changing roles in the family, not feeling their boundaries, and confusion occurring - who is raising whom and who is financially responsible for whom. And in fact, such cohabitation, as in tsarist times, can be considered incest. Let it not be physical, as daughter-in-law was, but definitely moral.
Because when a young spouse moves in with his wife’s parents, they adopt him. It turns out that the brother sleeps with his sister, who have the same parents. And both spouses play two roles - actually, husband and wife and children for their adult parents. What if children are added to this? It's turning out crazy! The child does not understand whose authority is stronger, grandmothers or mothers, one said it is impossible, the other allows it, the child rushes between one and the other generation, knowing that he will get everything he wants, the main thing is to know who to turn to.
Meanwhile, grandparents turn into a second pair of parents - replacing the departed mom and dad. And parents, in front of the child, receive a scolding from their elders, losing all respect in the eyes of the younger generation. What will all this lead to in the end? To three generations of infantile people, dependent on each other, who do not know how to build personal boundaries and take responsibility for their lives.
Why can't you still live with your parents?
If you are an adult, and especially if you want to have your own children or are already raising them, separate from your parents. And live separately, and leave your parents alone. Let them live their lives as best they can. There is no need to retrain or re-educate them. There is no need to put pressure on them or drag them towards you. Take care of yourself.
But the main thing is to take care of yourself at a distance from the older generation, in your home. Otherwise, you will never truly grow up and be able to raise independent children. It is impossible for an adult son or daughter to live peacefully under the same roof with their parents and be an adult, live with their own mind and act contrary to the opinion of the older generation - it is simply impossible! You will either face constant scandals, or you will have to obey mom and dad in everything and give up your adult rights. What for? Renting an apartment costs much less than your freedom.
A nice provocation, in which I was interested to watch live the reaction of commentators to such a sensitive topic. In that post, I played the role of a pathetic asshole, besotted with business and money, and the commentators, accordingly, taught me wisdom, telling me that you still need to love your parents and help them at the first opportunity.
After that publication, and it received more than 50,000 views, a stream of tirades poured into my personal messages from particularly moral people who considered it necessary to teach me in private. Among the messages there was one very short but succinct message from a 32-year-old girl (indicated in her VK profile). After reading it, I decided that I would definitely write on this topic separately sometime.
“Andrey, don’t pay attention to the trolls. I’ve been living separately from my parents for almost 10 years and am happy, but before that it was pure hell with daily life lessons from those who themselves have not achieved anything in this life.”
Should you live with your parents or try your best to leave your parents' house as quickly as possible? - that is the question. It would seem that the answer is obvious: living with parents, because it is cheaper (relatively, free), more comfortable (dad - technical support, mom - service personnel) and more familiar. Bonus - The refrigerator is almost always full of food, which in most cases is also paid for by parents. Moreover, the status of a child, by the standards of parents, lasts up to 30-35 years. Then it’s inconvenient for the neighbors that such a forehead without a family, so they try to quickly get the offspring married somewhere or get married.
Separate apartment - this is convenient in terms of freedom of action. You can drink beer with your friends, you can have sex with a girl when you want, and not when your parents are not at home, or you can work until three in the morning, and your mother will definitely not say: “Okay, I don’t care about your deadlines, go to bed quickly!” . A separate apartment has one disadvantage: as a rule, it is rented, which means it costs money. In the regions there are probably 20,000, and in Moscow there are 40,000.
If you survey everyone around me, you’ll get a funny picture. It turns out that those people who left their parents’ home at the age of 15 (immediately after school and, as a rule, to a university dormitory) achieved more than their acquaintances who began living in a rented apartment at the age of 25. The trick is that having tasted independence from their parents, they no longer wanted to return to their previous “room” conditions, and this gave rise to incredible motivation to work.
Further, several more interesting points emerged. Those who, after college, hung out with their girlfriends to rent a larger apartment, by the age of 30 have not lost their connections, have many friends and lead a fairly active lifestyle. For example, they travel a lot. Life "collaboratively" taught them that a rented apartment, and even a room and some common toilets and kitchens - This is not horror, but a normal format of cohabitation. Such acquaintances now live quietly without mortgages, without loans.
But those who rented an apartment alone live much more alone. They don't have noisy parties; they love individuality in everything. Only those who have achieved more or less stable financial heights travel (and many have achieved it), but almost everyone has mortgages and business loans. They want exclusively their own in everything in life. Two people even bought their own apartments in Moscow), one of them - young woman.
People who lived with their parents until they were 25 and later (now live), almost all of them are managers at various levels, at best - not very large-scale IP specialists. Some have children, others just got married (or got married) in their 30s. There is also a thought that unites this category: I wish I could move to my own personal apartment faster! Honestly, from the mouths of families with children, it sounds like “One of the grandparents would have fixed up the apartment faster.” In general, sad and pragmatic. Although, of course, they saved a lot over 10 years. Surely there were enough drinking bouts in my youth)
What is your path to "own territory"? At what age did you live separately from your parents? What's better- save and live with your parents or starve a little, but live in a rented apartment?