Recently, the number of young people under the age of 18-35 living in their parents’ homes has surpassed that of people in the same age group living with their partner in the United States. In the mid-20th century, the latter were twice as numerous as the former.

In Spain this trend has also occurred: more than 78% of people between 16 and 29 years of age live with their parents, something that had never been registered in recent decades, according to the Emancipation Observatory. The moment of independence comes later and later .

What is the reason for this trend? The causes that explain this phenomenon are material and economic, but also psychological.

A choice or a necessity?

Part of this tendency to stay at home with parents is not the result of a decision, but of necessity. In Spain, for example, the youth unemployment rate is so high that the difficulty of finding a well-paid job prevents many young people from being able to become emancipated . Moreover, instability is the main factor among young people who work: in Catalonia, approximately 85% of the new contracts are temporary.

In the face of the responsibility required to start building a life together, lack of money means that people under 30 have less freedom to become independent.

More and more singles

Another reason for the low number of people living with their partner and not with their parents is simply that people stay single longer .

Decades ago, the idea of starting a family was practically an imperative, but today many people choose not to commit themselves. One of the reasons is that among women the economic dependence on the figure of the man is less and less, and on the other hand the new lifestyles give priority to individualism over the importance of the nuclear family.

The idea of enjoying life more freely means that young people have less reason to find a partner and start a life together by sharing everything. Increasingly, singleness is seen as the “default marital status”, while previously people who did not live with a partner were seen as a project for a future family. Now it is not necessary to look for an excuse to justify why a family has not been formed , and this makes us more likely to see the possibility of returning to live with one’s parents as something more attractive and with some advantages.

At the same time, new paradigms of affectivity, such as polyamory, have made coexistence and love life a little more dissociated. It is no longer so strange to be in open relationships where the most unusual thing is to live all in the same house or flat.

A deeper bond with parents

Another psychological factor that explains the growing trend towards emancipation later on is simply that parent-child relationships seem to have become closer and more satisfying over the generations.

The frequency with which parents and children share moments of closer affection has grown since the mid-twentieth century, and this is not only a consequence of the need to live at home: this is a trend that was already evident long before the financial crisis of 2008.

The same has happened with the subjective feeling of well-being that fathers, mothers and their sons and daughters say they experience in the company of the other family generation. The way in which personal relationships have been evolving within the family has led to a closer and more empathetic treatment than what happened decades ago. The abandonment of very rigid rules and the emphasis on the authority of the father, who came to adopt an authoritarian and cold role, has contributed to this.

Now, emotions are expressed more directly, and family members are not as reluctant to show their feelings and seek emotional support from others. This makes living together more bearable in many ways, and living under the same roof as the parents seems, in fact, an attractive (and in many ways, comfortable) option.

An independent career

Previously, it was normal for only one of the family members to work outside the home, while the rest depended on him. Today this is not possible: the adults in the house must go out and earn money to support the family.

This has led to a new working mentality, according to which everyone must first of all be his or her own economic engine . The consequence of this is that living with one’s parents is seen as one more resource to progress towards self-sufficiency, whereas previously this option did not make as much sense.