Looking back, I should have ran away at ~16, things would have been much better.

I'm on several Japanese dating sites. It's not uncommon to see people in their 40s and even 50s living at home. I have a friend in her mid 40s still living at home. It's common to see mom's (50s-60s) and daughters (20s-30s-40s) going out together. One of my closest friend's from Malaysia in is 40s, his older brother lives at home with parents, his wife, and their 10yr old son. It's normal.

I know in the USA the culture tells you "GET OUT!!! YOUR PARENTS SUCK!!! FREEEEEEEEDOOOOOMMMM!" and I'm sure I could name 100+ cultural references but that's hardly the norm for the world. And I gotta say, I'm kind of jealous of people who have no issues spending lots of time with their parents. I love mine dearly but it would be hard to live with them for some reason.

I suspect that 40s/50s in dating sites is biased datapoint.

I moved out of my parents’ home when I was 16 and never looked back. My 16 year old isn’t likely to be leaving anytime soon. He spends his evenings with his family and drives a good bit of the dynamics (game nights, weekend agendas, etc). He simply likes it at home. I’m vigilant about the time at which he’s probably going to need to separate in ways he hasn’t signaled yet, but for now, we’re all happy to be together.

But he’s not 18 and in the job market and making an economic selection. But when the world is as crazy as it is now, maybe those who like their parents enough to return home are harbingers of something could that can come out of this — stronger familial connections. Certainly, my generation doesn’t seem to have it going backwards...

My brother who now has kids lives with my parents. He works with my dad and they get along well. He’s now had like 2 rental properties on the side and probably has at-least 3X higher net worth than me.

So while I enjoy the freedom of being in another country alone, I sometimes do ponder how life would have been if I stayed with/near them. Our kids would have enjoyed spending time with grandparents for sure. My wife could use that help. Right now she is stay-at-home mom. If we had grandparents close by, she could work. Day care is just too far expensive to be worth it.

Staying with parents has a lot of benefits (esp with covid WFH thing) if you have good relationship with them.

IMHO Day care is one of the best investments a society can make, I would not like living in a political environment that makes it too expensive.

Those were called "squats" when I was young, that's where I ended up at 19. Although I wasn't trying to escape my parents at that point, I was planning on leeching off of them. I ran away for the first time when I was 14, by the time I was 19 free food and rent in the suburbs sounded pretty nice. My parents weren't having it.

For example: my parents don't live on a farm, but their house is between a corn field and a forest. The only work in the vicinity is farm labor, local gov, or retail/service. I guess a remote job could be an option, but their only internet option is slow unreliable DSL (cuts out every 20-30 minutes, phone company unable to diagnose the issue).

The nearest city is about a half hour away. It's relatively small, but does have some opportunities. No tech scene though, of course. There are a couple of small factories remaining, some banking/insurance business, hospitals and medical, and more retail/service.

My dad was an electrical engineer, and he had to commute 1+ hours each way to get to his office. Even if I was willing to commute that far, that wouldn't be an option since that company left long ago.

My parents do have an absolutely gorgeous view of a scenic rural valley outside their front windows though, and 100s of acres of forest behind them.

As for your DSL I too had the same problem and I found stability after I switched to Netgear from Linksys. Have you looked at that?

I disable all the built in Wi-Fi and just use the modem and use a separate Wi-Fi hw so that I don't tax the modem hw.

I was excited by this statistic. If this becomes commonplace, it will carry less stigma, and hopefully happen more often where appropriate.

No one is saying people can't move out. All we're saying is that in most countries in the world, there is no stigma to not moving out. Some kids move out when they head out for college. Others move out when they get married and set up families. Others move stay together, and the grandparents help raise the kids.

All of these should be okay.

In the US, they're not. The reasons people are staying are economical, but the reasons most people want to move out are equally broken: image and social pressure. People living with parents in the US are perceived as losers.

COVID19 exasperates this problem. Since the only people moving back in with parents are doing so due to economic reasons, the messaging that sends becomes stronger. I don't mind more than half of 18-29 year olds living with parents. That's only occasionally a problem. I do mind more than half of 18-29 years old living with the ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL STIGMA of moving back in with parents. That's where the majority of the harm comes from.

(No, I'm not arguing there aren't abusive / dysfunctional / etc. families. It's a common. It's just not the majority case.)

"Involved" isn't the same as "coerced," US stereotypes to the contrary.

To get things out-of-the-way: All the data I've seen suggests that couples in such countries DO actually appear to have stronger relationships and people in relationships DO appear to like each other more (at least a few years in).

General analysis:

US: Couples go into a relationship with the expectation of a Disney-style romance, with a soulmate, prince charming, and all that. Sometimes, that's even there up-front, but people change, and 10 or 20 years down the line, "soulmates" will usually be less compatible. At that point, people are hit with disappointment, conflict, and quite often, divorce. The expectation of potential divorce also gives less incentive to invest into the relationship too. That's especially true in times of crisis. If you're hit by a car, does your mate stick with you or move on? People need to hedge.

PI: Couples go into a relationship with the expectation of initially being different, but of needing to the work to make it work, since they're in it for life. They're not disappointed when reality doesn't look like Disney, and usually they work together to make things work out. Couples tend to grow together over time, rather than grow apart, which is a healthier dynamic. In crisis situations, couples can count on each other to have their backs, since if things go badly for your partner, they go badly for you and vice-versa. Plus, you'll be counting on them in 50 years, so if you're not there for them now...

Refs: Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari.

But there is a more general aspect that parents can objectively evaluate compatibility and quality of your partner in a way that you can't. Again, it's worth noting there's a scale here. Do you inform your parents? Get advice? Ask permission? They pick, with your permission? With your advice? Entirely arranged? It's a spectrum.

That is not at all how things work in western cultures.

That’s not meant to be a judgement, we all met for dinner a few years later, they have kids - four generations staying together, they seem happy and every time he talks about her, his eyes still light up in a way that you can’t fake.

It's a win win win and anytime this is brought up the first thing people say is "Well I could never live with my parents! I had to get out of there" but honestly there's a lot worth tolerating when you're younger if it means that when you're older you have four more helping hands when you are in your early 20s, starting your careers, and having children.

Don’t get me wrong, if my parents weren’t able to take care of themselves, they would definitely move in with me. My parents are both in their late 70s, and independent, but I don’t see my dad living by himself with his hearing and eyesight going if something happened to my mom.

In the contemporary world, it’s no different than Tinder/OkC, just the CSS(HTML) is different but the dynamics are the same.

He went to India for two weeks and came back talking about marriage. He had never met or spoken to his now wife beforehand.

That doesn't sound normal.

They met during that time in India and married shortly thereafter.

As somebody with a high school senior I am ready for my kid to enter the world. It’s not that I want to get rid of her but instead as a responsible parent I want to push in the controlled direction of accepting greater independence and responsibility. In putting that stress upon my child, which was a normal expectation 20 years ago, I am helping my child develop continued maturity well beyond her peers.

I also had the freedom of nobody knowing or caring where I went and how late I came home (=greater responsibility for planning my time).

But I understand what you mean - i had a childhood friend who went to a 2 years vocational school after highschool (during which he lived at home) and then enlisted in the army for 4-5 years (in a non-combat technical role). I suspect the army basically takes care of you when you live on base because afterwards he moved back home & I got the feeling he pretty much stayed stuck in a child role for years later (may be complicated by mental health issues).

I think never having had to really be completely responsible for himself held him back.

Many in industry and service sector who are ‘company men’ and never quit their first job until retirement also face the same problem. Double edged sword.

in other words, the objectivity has to come from someone who has been on the receiving end without having been part of the system.

For example: If I am Indian and I have an accent. Whether it’s understandable to Americans should be deemed by Americans. Not Indians.

If anything I am decidedly (perhaps obcessively) less conformist than most developers I have worked with BECAUSE of my military experience.

This really sounds more like a personal problem that you're projecting onto tens of millions of people. Perhaps "this generation" (whatever that means) has burnt bridges with their family because they offer nothing but baseless, judgmental platitudes about the demise of the youth?

Relax, friend. There is nothing new under the sun. The current generation isn't better or worse than those that came before. The world changes here and there, but most things stay the same. Don't fret so much about the future of civilization. Be present and let the rest unfold as it will.

I suppose here there is a distinction to be made between "never left" and "came back."

Though I guess often the "came back" turns more into "my parents live with us."

I don't think there's anything wrong with kids and parents living together long term, but I agree that there needs to be the forced maturation of having to deal with your own problems at some point in between.

It's the kids who are 25 and don't know how to open a bank account that are the worry.

I remember helping a 30 year old do laundry because they had never done it in their entire life.

A good analogy might be a programmer. It's a night and day difference between being on a team where someone else does the hard stuff and just pushes dumb tasks your way, versus striking out on your own and having to figure everything out.

Hey, you can figure out life as an adult even while living with your parents. Of course this does not mean spending your day in front of a PlayStation. Living with your parents in your 20's is a great money saver, and it's actually the norm outside the english speaking world. The only downside are decreased sexual opportunities, if you are in that sort of thing.

I live in one of them. English is my third language.

But, how do you have a social life - let’s be honest a sex life - if you live with your parents and they do to? For most young men living in the west in normal times don’t women frown on men who still live with their parents?

My wife, son and I moved in with my parents to save money one summer when we were between homes - lease was up and our house was being built. I could work remotely and my wife worked for the school system. It was really awkward in our forties even though we all tried to make the best of it.

We both love our parents but we also like our privacy. When we do have your standard couple disagreements, the last thing we want is our parents being involved.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line

This has been true for at least a thousand years. America was largely settled by people from this folkway.

The influence that this pattern, and the bans on cousin marriage (out to fifth cousins in some cases, but second cousin marriage was commonly forbidden), has had on what we sometimes call WEIRD people, is interesting, if a bit off topic.

At least in the early 20th century, multigenerational Irish, German and Italian immigrant households in New York were all fairly common, so I find it hard to square with what you're saying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_patt...

I attribute that to widely available "free" University education (women were equally represented in student populations, if not at 50%, at 45% for sure, though "citation missing") soon after the World War 2, housing availability, etc.

So the Hajnal line is trivial to disprove by just looking at numbers for a single country East of the line like Serbia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Serbia

Knowing some internal details like the fact that Kosovo probably had highest fertility in Serbia until it split off, the situation in 70s probably mirrored the one from countries West of the line.

The pattern Hajnal notices more likely corresponds to migration into cities (move from agriculture to industrialization and now services) and wider availability of education and employment to everyone, but in particular women (which happened in Communist Yugoslavia) and rising standards of living, rather than historical cultural traits as he claims in his paper (though I found only an abstract).

With more effort and closer look, I am sure that all of this could have been disputed even in 60s when the paper was published.

And interestingly, more recent data suggests that West of the line now has a higher fertility than the East in Europe.

Ten minutes is a very different level of acoustic and visual privacy from "same house."

2) my parents have an extremely conservative view on dating that I don’t share.

3) my mother verbally abused me most mornings and I would rather be homeless than return to that

4) my parents live in an extremely rural place that makes socializing a challenge.

Living at home stunts that development and everyone else is worse off because we don't get the benefits of what unique things that person(not their parents) could have contributed to the greater society.

My dad paid rent in Pasadena, put himself through a Cal State, and put a roof over my mother and sister's head by working at a gas station. He will be the first to tell you that simply isn't economically possible anymore.

I certainly was never able to do that either. I just moved out and rented a room in an area I could afford and worked from there. Just because your Dad had it really easy doesn't mean its become crazy difficult.

It does come across like you have a very high expectations about life because you happened to have very privileged parents. Most people in the US never had the advantages your father had and we get by just fine. Maybe we'll never be millionaires, but I think we'll both be okay.

I don't know what your personal life situation is at the moment, and I do apologize if you are on hard times. I know it's rough out there. I'm inferring from your comment that you are in the United States. Do you really think a shot at a rented roof over one's head, a college education from a state school, and a kid is asking for the moon?

I would encourage you to dig deeper into US history over the last 75 years. You might find some surprises.

Trust me, we'll be okay.

It so happens that this pattern is economically inefficient, and only in our inability to support it does its discontinuation serve as a negative economic indicator. American culture makes it an effective metric in the U.S. Where it's already common for children to live with their parents longer though, such as in India, the original choice could very likely be to stay, which makes the metric less useful.

And yes there are people who are over 18 and are subject to physical punishment.

Of course there can be complications, like the money you put in for the rent may be spent on some utterly stupid crap. That is what my dad does. He should save, god damn it!

Leaving the family is good for many reasons. It teaches you to be independent, to live on your own, to handle your responsibilities, manage your earnings, i.e. to become an actual adult instead of relying on your family to cook, wash and do all/most of the chores for you. You can't get ready for a family and provide for them if you can't do these kind of things on your own in the first place. It's all about building experience and self-reliance.

Of course every family is different, but in society at large having kids staying longer with their parents definitely delay actual adulthood.

The other absurd expectation is that laundry and cooking requires some special figuring out. Like, this all primary sounds like an issue of you all parent 7-16 years old more then anything else.