THAT'S MEN:Is it good that 30-year-olds still live at home, asks PADRAIG O'MORAIN
A LISTENER TO Spin FM informed the teen radio channel recently that, “Although I’m a fully grown adult, there’s nothing like being at home with yer ma”.
I don’t know how old the listener is but the item reminded me that the issue of the long drawn-out adolescence has not gone away – though it could be under threat from emigration.
Back in the mid-1990s, it was already being noted by commentators interested in such things that adolescence, which use to be expected to end by 21, was getting longer.
With young adults living at home for longer, adolescence was lasting, in some cases, until the age of 30.
Far fetched? Not at all. A university course or two (one false start and one degree) followed by a master’s interspersed with a couple of gap years and a certain amount of lolling about will get you across the line.
If you’re not going down the academic route, it may be more difficult to stretch it out for an extra decade but you can still manage to get well into your 20s without the inconvenience of moving into adulthood.
When I hit my late teens, the trend among my contemporaries was to get out of the family home fast and into a dingy bedsit on the often-disappointed assumption that being the occupier of an untidy, dirty, cramped space would attract women in large numbers.
But times changed and gradually the urge to get out of home deserted the younger generations, sometimes to the frustration of parents who were still expected to wait on them hand and foot.
This probably had something to do with soaring rents in the Tiger economy, but another factor, it seems to me, was the growing liberality of parents.
Not only were you now allowed to drink, smoke and eat pizza from the comfort of the sofa but, with a little luck, you might even be allowed to have your girlfriend stay overnight.
When the parents were escaping from their own parents, such a thing would have been unthinkable except in countries such as Sweden and Holland. In the early 1970s, one colleague told me of his shock when the mother of a young Dutch woman with whom he had spent the night popped into the bedroom the next morning with coffee. Those of us who were listening to him were jaw-droppingly awestruck to learn that such a world existed at all – but since we couldn’t afford the Aer Lingus fare we couldn’t pop over to check it out.
Gradually, Irish mothers became like Dutch mothers and the need to escape the suffocating confines of home to pull girls faded.
But now emigration comes into the story. Living at home can become a lonely affair when most of your friends have left for the UK, Australia, Canada and other parts. It’s not just a matter of emigrating for work – there is also the need to emigrate for the company of people of your own age.
And so, adolescence must come to an end for these young men and women. When they get to the other side they have to grow up fast.
Those who can continue to be students throughout their 20s will escape this fate and if they throw in a PhD they might even manage to postpone adulthood until the early 30s.
Is that good for them? I don’t think so. In their 20s they should be making their mistakes, crashing in flames and learning how to handle themselves in the world. In this regard, at least, the ones who emigrate and who are successful at meeting the challenges of adult life in another country will be better off.
I should, of course, apologise to Spin FM’s listener: for all I know he is not prolonging his adolescence at all but may just have called in with a bag of washing in the time-honoured tradition of young men who live away from home.
Padraig OMorain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited as a counsellor by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living,is published by Veritas. His monthly mindfulness newsletter is free by email.