What ever happened to share houses?
A friend in her early 20s is agonising because she's under a great deal of pressure from her mother and (mostly) her mother's partner to move out of home. While I empathise with her feelings, especially with her feelings of being unwanted and forced to leave her home, part of me wants to tell her 'the world is not a secure place, and you need to take some risks to fly'. I think it's because she's reluctant to move out until she has a permanent job in her field. She's a recent graduate, and most jobs in her field for at least the first couple of years are 6 month contracts. In fact, I know several people in her field who are damn good at their job, and have been for years, who are still jumping from contract job to contract job. I want to tell her - job security is not going to happen right now. But that doesn't mean you don't have basic financial security - we have unemployment benefit, and study allowances, and while they are less than generous they are enough to survive on if you are careful.
It's a pattern I've seen with many of my younger University friends, who are going through their entire degree living at home. Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should state that I lived with my mother on and off until I was 25. I think it was a major mistake that damaged our relationship; you cannot forge an adult relationship with your parents while you are still living with them. (My response to this was to jump on a plane to London with a UK passport, 320 pounds and a list of relatives I could contact in emergency.) But I wasn't the norm - in my early 20s most of my friends were out of home and living in shared accomodation, at least 95%. And while I was living in the home my mother owned, it was rarely the two of us; we'd shared with others, mostly Uni students, pretty much my entire life. A shared house was my normal way of living while growing up, and I was hardly the only one in my circle who had that experience.
The thing is, looking back, I can't think of many friends of around my age who made it past 22 without moving out of home, and nearly all of them were bursting to get out of the door before they were 20 (as I actually did - as I said, I bounced in and out of home a few times.) But no one expected to move from their parents' place into their own flat, or in with just a partner; it was assumed that the first step was to move into a shared house. Moving out of the shared house situation was something you did in your late twenties at the earliest, more often in your early to mid 30s. Not just in Australia; the same was true in the UK.
And I think that was a good thing - it taught people to live with others who weren't their family. I loved having J-Bear here, but it did take her some time to work out that the Cleaning Fairy didn't do things like clean the toilet and the bathroom, and that her washing the dishes was not enough to ensure a clean house. It's a pattern I've seen with multiple 'newly independent 20 somthings' over the years. I'm not sure why they all seem to settle on the dishes as proof that they are doing their share - probably because dirty dishes are visible, and it is very noticeable when they are not there any more. A toilet that has been cleaned, a bathroom shower alcove that has been scrubbed, a floor that has been swept - not so obvious unless you know what to look for, or it hasn't been done in multiple months.
But of my current 20-something friends, more than half are still living with their parent at 25, and they have this expectation that they will move out either into their own flat or unit, or into a place with their partner, just the two of them. There is this idea that they simply can't live on Austudy/Newstart and/or a part-time job, and that when Uni is over, they seem to settle into the idea that they need to have a stable, well paying job that will allow them to move into a place on their own first before they leave home.
To my mind, it's unhealthy for several reasons: most of them are unhappy for one reason or another with the restrictions that living with their parents places on them; many of them either struggle with the relationship they have with their parents or else they behave as though their parents are unpaid servants; they have unrealistic ideas about the work and costs of independent living and are overwhelmed by the total responsibility when they do move out; they struggle to adjust to living with their partner as they learn for the first time to adjust to different living patterns of behaviour; they struggle to balance their finances and wind up in financial difficulty through lack of budgeting experience.
Maybe I'm just hitting the age where it's all "In My Day", but I don't understand where this reluctance to share housing comes from. I can't even really call it reluctance - many of them simply seem never to have considered it, and have difficulty accepting the idea as being legitimate, even when they have friends who are sharing.
It's a pattern I've seen with many of my younger University friends, who are going through their entire degree living at home. Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should state that I lived with my mother on and off until I was 25. I think it was a major mistake that damaged our relationship; you cannot forge an adult relationship with your parents while you are still living with them. (My response to this was to jump on a plane to London with a UK passport, 320 pounds and a list of relatives I could contact in emergency.) But I wasn't the norm - in my early 20s most of my friends were out of home and living in shared accomodation, at least 95%. And while I was living in the home my mother owned, it was rarely the two of us; we'd shared with others, mostly Uni students, pretty much my entire life. A shared house was my normal way of living while growing up, and I was hardly the only one in my circle who had that experience.
The thing is, looking back, I can't think of many friends of around my age who made it past 22 without moving out of home, and nearly all of them were bursting to get out of the door before they were 20 (as I actually did - as I said, I bounced in and out of home a few times.) But no one expected to move from their parents' place into their own flat, or in with just a partner; it was assumed that the first step was to move into a shared house. Moving out of the shared house situation was something you did in your late twenties at the earliest, more often in your early to mid 30s. Not just in Australia; the same was true in the UK.
And I think that was a good thing - it taught people to live with others who weren't their family. I loved having J-Bear here, but it did take her some time to work out that the Cleaning Fairy didn't do things like clean the toilet and the bathroom, and that her washing the dishes was not enough to ensure a clean house. It's a pattern I've seen with multiple 'newly independent 20 somthings' over the years. I'm not sure why they all seem to settle on the dishes as proof that they are doing their share - probably because dirty dishes are visible, and it is very noticeable when they are not there any more. A toilet that has been cleaned, a bathroom shower alcove that has been scrubbed, a floor that has been swept - not so obvious unless you know what to look for, or it hasn't been done in multiple months.
But of my current 20-something friends, more than half are still living with their parent at 25, and they have this expectation that they will move out either into their own flat or unit, or into a place with their partner, just the two of them. There is this idea that they simply can't live on Austudy/Newstart and/or a part-time job, and that when Uni is over, they seem to settle into the idea that they need to have a stable, well paying job that will allow them to move into a place on their own first before they leave home.
To my mind, it's unhealthy for several reasons: most of them are unhappy for one reason or another with the restrictions that living with their parents places on them; many of them either struggle with the relationship they have with their parents or else they behave as though their parents are unpaid servants; they have unrealistic ideas about the work and costs of independent living and are overwhelmed by the total responsibility when they do move out; they struggle to adjust to living with their partner as they learn for the first time to adjust to different living patterns of behaviour; they struggle to balance their finances and wind up in financial difficulty through lack of budgeting experience.
Maybe I'm just hitting the age where it's all "In My Day", but I don't understand where this reluctance to share housing comes from. I can't even really call it reluctance - many of them simply seem never to have considered it, and have difficulty accepting the idea as being legitimate, even when they have friends who are sharing.