I have two adult cousins (over 40) who still live with their parents, have never held jobs, and are sci-fi/fantasy/dungeons and dragons obsessed. My brother-in-law is 25, lives in his mother’s basement with no plans of going anywhere, and is obsessed with Japanese Anime. I’ve also known several other people (all male) who are like this, not to mention the countless Trekkie jokes about 40-year-olds living with their parents etc…
My question is this. Is this incredibly common? Also, why is it that there aren’t any women (or any I’ve heard of…) that are into this living-at-home-at-forty/playing Dungeons and Dragons thing? Is it purely male?
Good question. I’m male, and 38. I freelance and so am offered an inordinate amount of free time most months, compared to those who work 40-50 hours a week. Of course there are those months where I never sleep…
I became bedridden for a while due to an injury in late September. Now, I was given a perfect excuse NOT to do ANYTHING but hang out on AOL ( my drug of choice ), eat fattening foods and watch mindlessly violent movies from Blockbuster.
It lasted about a week and a half. I’d be snotty here and just say that women can’t wait to grow up and men can wait till they’re 80. But, I’m not sure it’s that simple or that smarmy. Societal influences, parents coddling kids, urging them to " find their own spaces", etc- may all contribute to a 40 year old who feels that building a shrine to Yeoman Rand out of used bottles of Astroglide may be a perfectly good use of their adult life.
I went nuts. Yes, it was comforting to borrow down and eat pretzels all day. It was also a mental reaction to physical pain. I can't imagine those people who carefully construct their days around re-runs. I do know adults who deeply believe that they are "owed". They are Owed a lifestyle, they are Owed a nice house and car, they are Owed techonology and assets. All without hard work. It's not the way I was raised, but I know people like this.
Any sociologists in the Dopers Minions able to offer up quantitative thoughts here? I will agree with the OP- I don’t know any women who do this !
Cartooniverse
Women do it too, they just do it differently. Instesd of just living in their parents’ basement without jobs, they marry a man with a job, and live with him (and the kids) in one set of parents’ basement. (presumably because that’s the only way they can live on one income and have nice cars and vacations, judging by the people I know who do this).The only thing I can think of worse than being forty and still living with my parents would be being forty, married with kids, and living with my in-laws.
I have a female cousin in her thirties who still lives at home with her parents. I’ve never talked to her at any length about this, but I believe her reasons are something to the tune of god telling her to do this, to sequester herself off from the outside world. 'Course why she’d not a nun or something, then, I don’t know.
I’m a bit confused by the question. Yes, living with parents well into adulthood is a bit odd and perhaps worrisome, but what do D&D and anime have to do with Peter Pan Syndrome? I don’t see why they would be considered age-specific hobbies. There’s adults who collect stamps, too. So what?
I don’t necessarily think that Anime and Dungeons&Dragons are age-specific, I just find it interesting that most of these 30+ boys are into that.
I mentioned my brother-in-law. He is 25, has never had a girlfriend, and doesn’t seem to have any interest in finding one. He devotes a lot of his time to constructing Robotech-like armour out of cardboard. I’m not joking.
Now why is it Robotech? Why aren’t any of these guys obsessed with the stock market?
If your brother-in-law lived in the middle ages, he could probably make a nice living as a blacksmith building armor for knights and such. Too bad. I guess some people just aren’t cut out for the modern workforce.
This kind of thing is not confined to males. There are some women I know who are the same way, except it’s not D&D or Amine that they’re into, but rock bands and soap operas.
Instead of building cardboard armour, they make scrapbooks and start fan clubs, and talk about their ‘crushes’.
I used to feel bad for them, but I don’t any more. Their families allow them to continue, and they have to know deep down that someone close to thirty should not be getting by on allowance.
Rose
They’re just losers and I’d just like to remind all of you that not all geeks are losers. I think if you looked around you’d see all sorts of other males who aren’t geeks doing the same thing. But I haven’t heard of any females like that. But then I don’t know of any males like that either.
Marc
I have an uncle who’s nearly 40, and I don’t think he’s had a girlfriend in 20 years. He used to work for an insurance company, had a car and an apartment, and did well for himself, purchasing lots of audio/video equipment, a boat, etc.
He fell in Taco Bell’s parking lot one day when it was icy, and, for some reason, won quite a bit of money in a settlement with them. For a few years after that, it hurt when he walked. He quit (or lost) his job because of ‘disability’, and soon the money dried up. He moved home to his old bedroom, sold some of his more outrageous purchases, trailered his boat to our barn and let it rot, sold his car (to me), and basically holed himself up in his room, watching TV and ‘borrowing’ money from Grandma to go to the movies whenever my brother and I came over. Eventually he traded his audio equipment to another of my uncles in exchange for an old S-10.
I think a large part of these people is what we USED to call ‘fear of failure’ or ‘fear of success’. I’d say that it’s most likely depression. Danny is a very, very smart person, and reads rabidly, but, as my dad once said, he can’t line up an interview because he’s ‘afraid of failure’. So instead of failing, he just doesn’t try.
Recently, my grandparents moved from their large house they’ve lived in for 20 years to a small bottom level apartment, because it’s getting harder for them to get around. This shook Danny up alot. Apparently, he’s now gotten a job, and has purchased a nice looking Dodge Daytona.
I hope this means he’s out of his nearly 10 year funk.
To make a short story long, it’s probably a combination of mild-moderate depression, with lack of urging by parents, and a complacent feeling with life. No reason to change, this is how it’s always been, eh?
–Tim
The last thing in the world that General Questions needs is yet another “share my story and pretend it’s science” thread.
Does somebody have any actual information on this topic? Government stats? A university study? A magazine article?
I’d say low self esteem, low self worth and few social skills are major players. Due to our social constructs surrounding our interactions with other people (dating, independence, etc) the girls with low self esteem and self worth get into abusive-at-worst, unfullfilling-at-best relationships, because they are picked up by charasmatic yet uncaring guys who treat them the way the believe they deserve to be treated - ie, badly.
Guys who have low SE, SW and poor SS end up in the basement reliving their early teens well into their 40s. They don’t know how to go out and meet other people and get jobs and ask girls out, and they don’t believe that they deserve those things (they might say they deserve them, but if they believed it then they would at least make an attempt at realising them). So instead, they deny that these things are necessary in their lives and compensate with role playing and computer porn.
How’s that sound?
I think Homer’s post qualified as more than just “share my story and pretend its science.” I also think his point is valid that the motivating factor (or lack thereof) behind these cases of Peter Pan syndrome is a fear of failure/success.
Anyway, there are cases of women behaving the same way. When it happens to women, its referred to as Cinderella Complex, though. There’s a book on it here.
I agree with both points. Mine was a more general comment, directed both at prior posts and at future ones.
Who knows…maybe the OP was thinking of the Saturday Night Live sketch where William Shatner referred to 30-year-old
trekkies living in their parents’ basements. Is that really
part of it, I mean, are there really thirty-year-old obsessive Star Trek fans who still live at home, and who go out, in public, in Starfleet uniforms?
I’ll fess up and admit that I lived at home for a longer time than usual, but that was only because it took me that
amount of time to get my career on track. A worthless college major (but from a very respected college, thank God), going back to get a graduate degree that was
at least marginally useful, recessionary times, all these things delayed my departure. But once gone I never looked back. And whether “at home” or on my own, I was always fully employed or a full-time student, so I don’t think I quite fit the stereotype of the OP. But I do love Star Trek
and Lord Of The Rings!
Now I do have a 40-year old cousin (male), who never has been able to make a clean break from home. He went away to college at the age of 18. No good–he went back to his parents and enrolled at a local university. AFter graduating he joined a small packaging supply firm, worked his butt off and did well there–and got his own place for a little while. No good–he got into some kind of office-rage situation, and
was let go–and back home he moved. Now he’s been through at least one other job, and then been rehired by the supply company, but he’s still at home with his parents. M
My heart aches for the guy.
A friend of mine lived with his parents until he was about 31, got married, and moved into a house which he and his bride had bought! She had never lived away from her parents, either (except maybe being away a college).
Both partners were of the productive fully-employed category of stay-at-home young adults. As far as I know, everything has worked out great for this couple, who had been engaged for years, and they now have a six-year-old boy.
Still, I wouldn’t have given up the chance to live alone in my own place, at least for a year or two.
Well, here’s my two cents on why more men do this than women.
Females are generally treated by a different set of rules than men when it comes to parents–even those parents who swear they won’t and/or don’t treat their male and female children differently. Women living at home are scrutinized more than men, from what I have seen. Sons are generally allowed to date whatever kind of women they want. Sure, the parents may not like her, but they deal. Daughters, on the other hand, are more often “forbidden” to see certain boys for various reasons. Even after they become “of age”, their parents still extend that whole “while under my roof”-type thing.
I mean, I know many men who lived at home after reaching 18 and they would freely bring home women and sleep with them without so much as a word from parents. However, I have never met one woman who was allowed the same freedom. Most of the women I have ever met have been told by their parents that if they wanted to do “that sort of thing” that they would have to get their own place. There is still a huge double-standard when it comes to sexual promiscuity.
Now, I know that the OP specifically mentioned men who are more than likely serial masturbaters rather than sexually promiscuous. However, I believe that it is rules, standards and limitations such as the ones I mentioned that encourage women to more often get out from under their parents’ thumbs and get their own place/get married/whatever.
Pardon me for this–slightly off-topic, but . . .
That reminded me how when Nixon traveled to Russia a few months before he died in 1974, and Yeltsin snubbed him. The reporters were trying to get an angry reaction from him, but Nixon’s Russian press secretary refused to get upset. He said, “Mr. Nixon is a big boy now.”
Nixon was eighty-one years old.
I just thought that was funny! “A big boy now”
Yikes! I meant 1994.
evilbeth! On behalf of serial masturbators everywhere, I have to protest! We serial masturbators are not all loosers!
I, myself, am engaged to a BABE whom I consider it a privilege to even be in the same room with (why does she want to marry me? I have no idea… But I’m more than willing to take advantage of her lapse in good judgement!), AND I have a job and a life, too!
So there! 
[professor mode]Back to your studying!![/professor mode]