Moving back into the parental home as an adult was once seen by many youngsters as a retrograde step and even something to be ashamed of. Now, a new study suggests that such a move actually improves the mental health of these “boomerang adults”, thanks in no small part to a stressful and increasingly expensive rental market.
“We expected that probably their mental health would get worse if they had to give up their independence and that they might feel that they were falling behind their peer group and going back might seem retrograde,” said professor of population science Emily Grundy, who co-authored the study with Dr Jiawei Wu. “So we were quite surprised to find that on the contrary their mental health seemed to improve.
Nearly 5 million adults live with their parents, according to the 2021 UK census, a 14.7% increase on 2011., published in Advances in Life Course Research, suggests that the so-called “boomerang generation” may find parental support beneficial – especially if it enables them to escape the stress of the private rental sector.
“It also means that the spacing of generations has got much more variable and there may be some people whose children come back and other people who have still got children at nursery, the whole stages of life we maybe need to have a less rigid view about.”
Possibly at the expense of the mental health of their long suffering parents! 😂😂😂