The latest Eurostat figures showed 68% of Irish adults aged between 25 and 29 were still living at home last year, revealing the social consequences of the housing crisis. Dr Jill O'Mahony, Lecturer in Sociology at South East Technological University joined RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime to discuss the impact that living at home is having on people. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full above).
One listener called Catriona told the show: "Moving back in with your mother after independence really affects your mental health, I think. And just yourself esteem, your self worth. You feel a bit like a failure that you couldn't do something so simple as to find a home for your family. You do everything right, you have a permanent job, your husband has a permanent job - you're not supposed to go back to your parents house at that age.
"My mother was so gracious taking us in and she never complained and we owe her so much, but not everybody has that. If she was not there and did not have the space, we would most certainly have been homeless. We have so many bills, just normal bills - no credit card debts or anything like that - but with Saint Vincent de Paul, we had to get help and that is extremely stressful and the embarrassment of it, the embarrassment of asking for help to buy food for your child. It's a chapter in our lives that we prefer to forget."
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O'Mahony said Catriona's experience is "absolutely" representative of how people feel about living at home at an adult age. "This is really a trend over the last 20 years, since the economic downturn in the early 2000s. What we really need to be discussing is the cost of living crisis now, but also the soaring costs of renting, the difficulty in accessing the housing market if we want to buy a property, and the general disparity between our wages versus the money that we have to spend on our rent and our mortgage, our food, our electricity, and that gap is widening ever more over the last 20 years."
What impact is living at home having on people in their 20s and 30s?
"It seems to be a common theme, that people feel as though they haven't quite achieved what they should be achieving at whatever age they're at - that they're essentially doing something wrong. This is partly to do with the fact that in modern Ireland we kind of have this idea that moving out of home and becoming an independent adult is almost a rite of passage. Until you do that you haven't quite achieved the status of adulthood and everything that goes with that."
"When we move home often we regress in our behaviour and research shows that our parents also regress in their behaviour towards us. So we essentially become the child again and our parents become the carers again. We slip into the role of being cared for, whether that's to do with being fed and having meals prepared for us, having our clothes washed. Also maybe that idea of relying on our parents whether that be financially, emotionally, because we're also relying on them in terms of security. We're relying on them to provide shelter."
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Is it a uniquely Irish thing to want to move out of home?
Intergenerational living does happen in other cultures and in other countries and before we became "a modern Ireland" we had a predominantly agricultural society and multigenerational families living together was the norm, says O'Mahony. "But I think we need to account for the rapid modernising of Ireland and the fact that we looked to America, we looked to the UK, for an idea of what we should be as an emerging modern society," she says. "In those societies there was that push towards independent living being connected to adult status, as opposed to the more continental European idea of maybe staying at home until you're ready to move out and maybe buy a home, or long term rent a home with a partner."
Is it a difficult adjustment for parents too?
"Of course it is. We're talking about parents who have seen their adult children 'spread their wings' and build a life for themselves. But then as a result really of the cost of living crisis, as a result of economic difficulties, we're seeing these children and grown adults coming home. This has an impact on the lives of the parents. They don't have as much of their hard won freedom - they spent all their time parenting their kids and bringing them through to adulthood and suddenly they're back there."
"Those old roles are very difficult to move away from when your kids come back. As parents no matter what age they are you always see them as your kids, don't you? So it's very difficult to to move them into another category now as independent adults just sharing your home. Realistically they're always going to be your kids, so they have that to contend with."
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From RTÉ News at One, 68% of young Irish adults still living at home with their parents
But there's also an additional financial burden, O'Mahony says. "If adult children are coming home, they're doing so for a very valid reason. They're doing so because they need to save money for a mortgage deposit, or they need to find a job, or build themselves back up for whatever reasons. But they're generally financial reasons."
How does it impact young people sustaining and forming relationships?
O'Mahony says research is showing that when adult children move home there are often rules like 'you can't bring a partner in after this time at night' or 'we don't like people sleeping over' or 'let us know what time you're home' or 'don't have your music too loud' and so on. Rules that you might have lived by as a teenager can suddenly become part of your life again. "This has an impact on you in terms of your sense of identity and how you feel about yourself as an adult, your privacy, your ability to have a normal social life that someone in their 20s and 30s would have. All of that is kind of stunted."
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It can also be difficult for parents, who are sometimes pensioners, to take on the extra financial burden of having adult children back in their home and it can be difficult to have that conversation, if adult children aren't contributing enough. "The advice generally is to have a very open discussion where parents and adult children sit down together and discuss the rules on both sides. What do they expect moving forward?What would they like for the next year or so?" It's also essential to have a time frame, whereby both parties know how long this might last for, what the ultimate goal is, so that you have an idea of where you're going and what your aims are, she says.
