It is still normal in many parts of the world.
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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Your mileage may vary depending on your parents.
And then turn around and give massive discounts if you buy bulk, raising the cost of living alone to almost double to that of a couple or small family.
Also why so many areas are zoned single-family housing and don't allow apartments or other "missing middle" types of housing. Houses require a lot more resources to maintain, including utilities and increased car dependency.
My mother's family was similar to this a few generations ago, 4-5 generations used to live in one house in Midwest USA. Their home spread from one city block to another. That said, I cannot imagine living in a <2500 sqft home with my parents and my significant other. My SO would go Thunderdome on my Mom and my dad would be freaking out on the sidelines.
I have a coworker who is engaged, he lives at his parent's place and his fiance lives at her parents place. As someone who lived without my parents (even if it meant having roommates) since 18, I cannot at all understand long term living with parents.
Communal family living was a thing in the past because modesty, temperance, and christian values were expected norms. If you want to be a puritan, or don't have familial shame, then do whatever you want. For me, I'm gonna have my privacy and peace.
PS: My coworker can't spend the night with his fiance because her parents are mega religious. He can either sleep on the couch or go to his parent's place. Likewise, his parent's won't let her stay overnight at all because they aren't married.
Communal family living was a thing in the past because modesty, temperance, and christian values were expected norms.
Most of human existence have communal family living... it wasnt until the last century were it became common place to leave the family because we no longer live in an agrarian society and work can easily be found away from your family home.
I think the space you're referring to is a big point. We don't build generational family homes. We build single family homes.
As with so many things, we can't have nice things not because "people are doing it wrong", but because we don't have the infrastructure for it. -walkable cities -public spaces
- reliable public transportation
- climate change
Exactly, I don't know how big that place was in modern context, but from what my mom said the home had doors on opposite sides of the city block and upwards of 20 people lived there from ages 1-90.
Anything is better than living with my parents. I'd rather sleep under a bridge.
As someone who literally slept under a bridge to escape a horrible home, I can confirm!
boy do i know how that goes.
You're overthinking it.
Parents just want their lives back. Plain and simple.
When your kids are 18+ they shouldn't be impacting your life that much, assuming you spent the time doing things like chores, boundaries, etc as they were growing up. I moved out at 25. I bought groceries, did yard work, helped clean the house, did my own laundry, etc. I don't care if my kids choose to stay with me past 18.
The key term is delayed adolescence. Having a 19 year old that has a job, does their own laundry, pays their own bills, etc is different from someone who is still on mom and dad's insurance and phone plans, not paying rent, and not buying groceries.
As an example, at 25 I was working full time and my boss was 10 years older than me. My car insurance went up and I was complaining about it to my boss. Overall he didn't think it was a big deal, but the next day he came in and told me that our conversation had got him thinking. Turns out his parents were still paying for his phone bill and car insurance. A 35 year old man living on his own and his parents were still paying his fucking bills and, icing on the cake, he wasn't aware of it.
We don't fit in our house I don't need all three to leave, but I need one of them to. I don't have an office/personal space.
I also don't have an office space and worked covid from my basement. I think modern homes are too big, but I also totally get the desire for a home office. Unfortunately, for me at least, most homes that have an office also come with things like a formal dining room which seem like a waste of square footage.
I don't have a basement or an attic. My oldest sleeps in part of what once was a one car garage garage. It now is a laundry room and a small bedroom. There are many nights when the only place we don't have someone sleeping is the kitchen, the laundry room and the two bathrooms. I really could use an office space tho. I've been working from home more in 2025 than any other year and my PC is in the living room but there are often teenagers sleeping in there and I like to start working around 5am because my wife gets up for work at 4. I'm just waiting it out at this point, one of these kids will move out someday. Right?
Right?
That does sound pretty tight. We're very fortunate to have a basement, which is pretty common in the Midwest but not universal. Without it the covid years would have been very tough, especially since our kids were very young at the time and wouldn't have understood "parent working". We wound up having to put a lock on our basement door.
The way your post reads, it seems like you're doing the best you can. I'm sure a kid will move out someday and wish you the best both before and after that occurs!
Yeah they're 20, 17 and 15. It could still be a few more years but we're making changes to keep the living room more free. It's also been extra challenging because for the last six months my job has been going through big changes and I haven't had an office at work either, which is why I've been working at home more. I can't tell you how many hours I've worked standing in my kitchen, sitting at a conference table alone at work, or working from my car or a cafe or something. It's actually been really cool, but sometimes really challenging.
That's the difference between having an "adult child" and a "responsible adult" living with their parents.
Not every parent has the latter 😂
There are horror stories of adult children abusing their parents and basically taking over to house.
But honestly, even with a responsible adult child in the home, it's not the same as having an empty nest. And I'm sure it works both ways with the adults living at home, feeling like they want their own space and not just shared living quarters.
We want to have loud, animalistic sex on my kitchen counter at 3pm.
I've just spent six days on holiday with some of my extended family, all adults, staying in a hotel with my own room and en suite bathroom. It was great and we had a lot of fun but after less than a week I'm VERY happy to be back in my own home with the knowledge that it'll just be me and my cat in the morning. Maybe some people would prefer to keep living with family into adulthood, maybe I would if I'd been used to it but as it stands I love my parents and siblings though the idea of living with them fills me with dread.
It's culturally dependent. It is not taboo to still live with your parents in some countries. And considering the housing market difficulties, it is actually becoming more acceptable in places where the practice has been previously taboo.
I would need dramatically more distractions and mental health if I had to live with my parents still
So…. It’s a psyop at age 18, but not at 21? What about 24? When is it not a “psyop”?
Could it possibly be that it was once believed that at around the age of 18 is when people should become mature enough to be responsible for taking care of themselves? No?
Or is it just not enough that the cost of living is going up every year to have a reasonable argument to remain home with family- now it has to be a “psyop” by big banking.
Horses, people- not zebras.
"Psyop" is the wrong term, but there is some truth to what they are saying.
During the post-WWII economic boom, the US government was rapidly expanding the highway system, making suburban land cheap and accessible. Developers like Levitt & Sons started mass producing suburban tract homes, and banks favored financing them over multi-unit buildings, due to the GI bill and FHA loans. This is when the "nuclear family" ideal was developed, which was defined as a single generation of husband and wife + minor children living in a single-family home. It was a marketing ploy to sell more houses, more appliances and furniture, more cars, etc. All of this led to more isolation, which in turn led to more consumption.
As George Carlin once put it, "you don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge." That's the case here. This was just Capitalism doing what Capitalism does, which is sell more shit to more people.
You're absolutely right.
This is just something we will tell ourselves to cope with our spiraling quality of life.
There's enough existing housing and resources for the vast majority of people to live off a single income.
Wealth inequality keeps all that excess under the control of less than 4000 billionaires that now own most wealth that exists.
I think it's more complicated than that , I immensely despised living with my parents and even if it was unaffordable I didn't want to move back even though I did a few times
Its because the US excluded housing appreciation from the CPI, leading to lots of cheap debt all over the world that gradually bid up home values via the cantillon effect. Its now called owners equivalent rent, and its ridiculous.
Exporting all our production to China also helped dropped rates via deflation, though housing being excluded allowed it to simply flow into housing instead of achieving prosperity.
Remember, just because someone posts something on the Internet with confidence, doesn't mean they know what they're talking about.
A lot of people really need to stop taking advice from Twitter/X, Facebook/Meta, Reddit/Lemmy, etc.
Spare me the predictable reply "but why should I listen to you" or any variation.
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