Young adults living at home: independence, intimacy, and intergenerational relationships in shared family spaces

This chapter is concerned with young people’s changing patterns of home leaving. Around the world young people are delaying the process of moving out of the parental home and are living with family for much longer periods into early adulthood. There are a number of reasons for this transformation; principally it reflects the shifting experience of adulthood and independence as well as changes to family formation and employment for young adults. More than this however, changing patterns of home leaving among young adults are suggestive of transformations within intergenerational relationships and what it means to feel “at home” during young adulthood. As young people delay leaving home, they share their home space with parents and wider family well into adulthood, and this has implications for intergenerational intimacies as well as individual identities. Negotiating shared family space can be a complex and emotionally charged endeavor, not least for young adults who have previously lived away from home only to “boomerang” back at a later date. This phenomenon, studies suggest, is a growing trend in the Minority World. Accordingly, this chapter brings together literatures on changing patterns of home leaving, the meaning and experience of being “at home” for children and young adults, and the emergence of boomeranging or “homecomings.