One issue that nobody’s mentioned is that it’s very healthy (at least IMHO) to live alone because you learn how to live alone. As in no other people around. As in making your own company. Financial independence is all well and fine and certainly people need to learn it, but equally important is emotional independence.
I’ve seen people royally messed up because they remained far too attached to their parents and too needy of parental approval and that crippled them in that they were not able to conduct their lives well. I think being too needy of company and of having people around can lead people to make bad choices.
My mom would have kept me with her 'til the end of her days if she could have. I didn’t think that was good for either of us and moved out on my own when I started university. From that day to this, I’ve fended for myself. Even when times were bad, I’ve never borrowed money - I’ve always managed to get by and I’m pleased with myself because of that.
ParentalAdvisory, you think you know what it is to be on your own, but I guarantee that until you do it, you won’t understand what it really means.
Something else that Girl might be thinking in relation to Guy: if you haven’t moved out of your parents’ house by your mid-20s, when are you going to? Are you going to go from expecting Mom to take care of you to expecting Girlfriend to take care of you?
I’ve never met anyone who lived on their own but expected their mother to cook, shop and clean for them. I’m sure it happens, but it seems totally bizarre to me. That would send me screaming in the opposite direction from a prospective date.
Well, I’m another loser then. I’m 25 and I’m at home. I’d very much love to move out, except under the current situation, it’s not very practical/likely.
I’m working on it, though, dammit. I’d love to get the fuck out and put up with asshole neighbors. I certainly get no kickbacks or major rewards from staying at home, outside of having some of the bills taken care of, which starts to get into the touchier nature of my living at home.
Without knowing your exact situation (like your mom may be bedridden), that’s what everyone who still lives at home says.
“I get to save money.”
“I couldn’t pay the bills.”
“I don’t want to put up with such and such.”
It always sounds like a cover up for “too scared” though.
I love my parents, but give me flat broke, age 23 and living with assholes in a shitty part of town over living with the 'rents any day. I know that people have a different view of the subject, but don’t expect me to respect it.
My knee-jerk reaction is that you shouldn’t be living with your parents after your twenties (I effectively left home at about 19. After that, the longest I ever spent there was one month).
But then I recall that I know a lot of people who stayed with their parents into their forties and beyond. One of them is a successful lawyer. Another has essentially inherited the house, his parents having both died while he stayed there all these years. Heck, when I met Pepper Mill, she was living with her parents (although paying rent).
For a lot of people, it’s finicially difficult to leave – it depends on the market situation and rents where you live, so I’m not quick to judge. But, knowing the people I do know in this situation, or have been in it, I can’t call them losers.
Out of curiosity, is there a particular difference in views towards a woman living at home? It certainly gets trotted out much less as a “loser” figure - is it because it is less stigmatized or less common?
My ex, who just turned 28, sees no problem living with his parents. The fact that he does tells me that I made the right decision in breaking up with him.
I’m an independent person. I need my own autonomy and freedom. A sense of ownership and self-sufficiency. No matter how cool or hands-off my parents could possibly be, there is no way that I would be able to feel like a full-fledged adult living under their roof. It would always be their house and therefore, I’d always be subject to their rules and regulations. Which means if I wanted to have friends over for a late night party, I’d have to consult with them first. If I wanted to stay out into the wee hours and stumble home at the crack of dawn, I’d have to give them a heads up to keep them from worrying. If I wanted to have a sex life, the thought of my parents walking in on me or hearing me would always be in the back of my mind. Even if they weren’t directly trying to curtail my behavior, just the very fact that they’re my parents means that I’d be feeling that way. Childhood memories don’t vanish overnight.
To be compatible with me, a man needs to hunger for self-sufficiency just as much as I do. Someone who lives at home (like the guy in the OP) is basically saying he doesn’t prize that a whole lot. His behavior says that he rather take the easy way out because he doesn’t appreciate the value of living on his own, taking care of himself. How can you not appreciate the value of living on your own? Doing your own shopping? Paying your own bills? Buying your own furniture and appliances when you have the financial means to do so? Looking around at your space and seeing your identity reflected back at you?
To generalize, women like men who are ambitious, confident, sophisticated, and capable. None of these qualities come to mind when I think of a person who lives with his parents. Practical, maybe. But practicality just by itself is rarely impressive. You have to sidle that up with something stronger.
I’d say anyone who has been working full time for a year and is still living with their parents is on their way to loserhood. If you’re still living at home, you are not grown up.
I know parents who, when their children wouldn’t pay the high rents in this area, bought cheap condos and turned them over to their children. That seems to work.
The people I know who lived with their parents into their 20s were all men. In general, the men I know were more likely to have an aimless period after college, whereas the women I know went straight into grad school or jobs. I’m not sure why this is the case. It seems in some ways that it’s more socially acceptable for men to be slackers. Or maybe unmotivated women just get married and expect their husbands to support them instead of expecting their parents to.
It also depends on your own personal experiences. I come from a culture that is very much around the idea of living with your parents until marriage, and my parents did everything to instill this feeling into me too…causing the exact opposite reaction in me. Moving out was made very painful and very traumatic for me and yet when I look back I see it as a rite of passage. I find men who haven’t moved out don’t really share the same outlook as I do on life…they don’t find life as a series of trials (some fun, some not so) as I do, but rather as a sort of game, where they can take their time about anything.
Just look at who I’m in a relationship with. There were two brothers. The one went to college three hours away, and moved out right after college. The other stayed in his house until he got married. I’m with the one who moved out and I’m content to have the other as a brother but I would not date him in a million years. He still comes home whenever they have a fight, and they’re over there almost every weekend with the new baby. I understand this, kind of…and yet I would never want to live it.
In my eyes not moving out right after college would almost immediately be a dealbreaker. And I know some of my friends are probably reading this, some of the ones who live at home, and I would like to make it clear it’s not in a friendship that it matters! Only in a relationship.
I think living on one’s own is a valuable experience and agree that it teaches lessons about self-sufficiency and household management that you just can’t learn in the same way if you always have that parental safety net in the background.
However, lest my horse get too high, I have to admit, my parents help me out a lot. They’re well off, and they’d rather spread the wealth now than make us wait until they die for an inheritance. My wife and I live within our means, and we’ve never needed to be “bailed out” of a bad situation. But, for one example, we would almost certainly still be paying rent on a cheapo apartment instead of a mortgage on a house in a nice neighborhood if my dad hadn’t helped us out with the down payment.
So my visceral reaction may be “loser,” but my own situation makes me hesitant to judge. Even with a college education, starting out as an adult can be pretty tough these days, and if parents want to give their kids a leg up by helping them out financially, I say more power to 'em. Still, you need to balance that with some level of independence, or else you might never learn to function without that help. Even a kid who’s living in their own apartment, but having their rent payed by their parents, is a much better situation than a kid living at home with absolutely no financial or household responsibilities.
As Anaamika suggests, there is a huge cultural component to this question. Although my background is Hispanic, and there was a certain push to stay at home, I was in my own house a year after school. Struggling, too, because among the many rewards of being a public defender we do not find “money” listed.
My wife grew up in the Dominican Republic and was a lawyer herself, and the oldest of five kids. She continued to live at home until her late twenties, until she moved here.
And now things have come full circile – a couple of years ago, my mother got hit with hip replacement surgery and wet macular degeneration at the same time, which left her temporarily unable to walk and permanantly blind. We had her move in with us, ending up remodeling the house to create a mother-in-law suite on the first floor so that she could have living quarters with no stairs to worry about.
And now that my mother-in-law is widowed, my wife is trying to get her to consider coming to live with us too. Fortunately, the remodeled house is big enough that if we do that, I’m confident that there’s enough room for everyone to feel like they have their own space, but still feel part of the family! And my son will get TWO grannies to dote on him…
I’m sure it’s less stigmatized/more socially acceptable for a woman to live at home until she gets married. I have several female friends who lived at home until they married - and since women tend to be younger when they marry, they were out of the house by age 22 or 23, and so that appears as less ‘loserish,’ than, say 28 or 30.
According to something I read awhile back, though, it’s less common for adult women to live at home these days than it is men. The article said that this is attributed to the fact that parents tend to be more restrictive with daughters, expecting them to follow more stringent rules about who they can have over, when they should come home, etc., and this tends to make women more likely to want to move out. I moved out the minute I had a full-time job and that was a major reason why. I think my dad would have been just fine with it if I still lived there today (I’m 45). :rolleyes:
This is a fairly heavily cultural thing - and in some situations a geographic one.
When I moved to the NYC area when I finished school, I noticed a whole lot more people living with their parents past their early to mid 20’s. The percentage was way, way higher than it was on the west coast where I grew up and went to school.
Now, granted a certain percentage of those people were flat-out sponging on their parents. They usually said they were “saving up for a place of my own” but they weren’t making any plans or moves toward living on their own, if you see what I mean. No savings, no thoughts on neighborhoods they might want to live in, no keeping an eye on the housing market, no “when I have my own place” comments, etc.
However, I noticed a lot of people who were living with their parents longer than I was accustomed to for good reasons - either they couldn’t afford a place of their own (and rent in NYC is ruinous - let alone trying to actually buy something) or because the parents (or single remaining parent for people in my age bracket) couldn’t really afford for them to move out. My husband’s aunt had all four of her kids living at home until just recently - her oldest still does at 27. Her kids weren’t so much sponging as they were helping their mom with expenses - they all contributed to the household upkeep. One of her kids moved out when she got married and another moved out because he’s a pro athlete and his team is in Colorado, but the other two are still living at home - and nobody thinks they’re losers because of it.
I think Nava is right - there’s a world of difference between sponging and having a mutually beneficial arrangement that includes your parents. In the US we tend to assume anyone living at home with their parents after about age 24 is sponging.
That’s another thing. A lot of these people I see living with their parents tend to be fairly less adventurous. Their parents live in NYC/Long Island/what-have-you so their heart is set on moving to the same place, even though they can’t afford it and it will take much longer than, say, moving upstate for a bit.
This attitude I really cannot comprehend. I will admit freely this entirely stems from my upbringing. I was born in India and have lived in MI, TN, and then NY throughout my life…moving to a new place holds little fear for me and lots of excitement. But…it’s almost like they feel they can’t live anyplace else except for what’s familair for them.
Apparently so do you. I never mentioned “sponging”, so when you did choose this particular post* "Originally Posted by DrDeth
Well, as long as you are in college +one year. Really, you will not mature until you move out. After you move out, it’s Ok to occassionally hit up the folks or a few bucks, beleive it or not most actualy prefer that you do. (They get to feel needed. But not a lot, a few bucks.)
However, once they need you to look after them, then it’s fine again. I had to do this for my Dad fo a year, until he passed."* you choose poorly.
To me, it’s not sponging so much as becomeing mature.
And of course, some of the other sex won’t consider you for a mate until you do.
That’s the problem I’ve run into. My husband lived with his (long divorced) mother at the age of 27 when we started dating. I didn’t consider him to be a “sponge,” as he helped with bills and larger jobs around the house. He was working full time and going to school full time and mostly only ate a meal and slept a few hours at home.
The problem was that when we married and both were working full time, I had expectations of a 50/50 division of labor. His attitude was still one of “helping out” as if it was my home and he was doing me a favor by loading the dishwasher. His mother never expected him to do laundry or scrub bathrooms at home, so he had no real grasp of exactly how much work does go into keep a household. He didn’t really figure this out until he became a full-time stay at home parent and we agreed that the household is largely his responsibility. He’s stepped up to the plate admirably, but it was a rude awakening for the first few months.
This is why when I am Queen of the Universe I will make a decree that all men and women must spend at least one year living entirely on their own, that they may see that toilets don’t scrub themselves, and the milk fairy does not deliver gallons of 2% to the refrigerator while they are sleeping.
I personally would be very suspicious of maturity/emotional attachment issues with anyone, male or female, who hadn’t moved out by a year or so out of school. When I was 22 and had been living on my own for two years, I was dating a 32 YO man who still lived “at home”. I found there were any number of areas where I was much more mature and prepared to deal with life than he was. Still am. He did move out when I told him I’d never consider marriage with someone who hadn’t lived on their own, and he’s not shown a whole lot of maturity in dealing with jobs and financial issues in the 17-18 years since then. And I say that with a great deal of love, because he’s still a good, good friend.
