What ever happened to share houses?

[anthraxia]

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

Comments

[frankiefan13]

I've bounced - I moved out with Andrew, to a house we were looking after, and stayed to house-share. When we had a friend who needed flatmates we moved in with him, then when the owners wanted the house back we moved back in with our parents, and in a few weeks we move to our own place.

Now I think about it, I know quite a few people who house-share. But I think a lot of people find it hard to find people to share with, because the majority of share houses advertised at uni, for starters, have a lot of restrictions placed on who can move in (or so I noticed - maybe I looked at the wrong ones?)

My parents often complain about this, the attitude this generation apparently has that is against house-sharing and moving out young. I can think of a few reasons.
1 - my generation is spoiled rotten.
2 - we're incredibly lazy, and like our comforts
3 - our parents are more tolerant than our grandparents were
4 - the culture has maybe taught us to be reliant rather than independent.

My friends that live at home are either too content with being kids, or too scared/lazy/poor to take the leap and find somewhere. I'll admit, I was with the second group til we got the opportunity to move - my parents charge board when I live at home, but it can be exchanged for housework and that, I can do. I was never exactly pushed to move out, and as I'm spoiled rotten, I chose the easy option.

I really don't know where I'm going with this.

[anthraxia]

I think it's a combination of reluctance to leave the comfort zone and extreme reduction of peer pressure, rather than laziness per se. And what you describe - jumping back and forth - was pretty common then too (it's what I did, certainly.)

I don't think it's 'being spoiled' but rather something in how our society works and sees things has changed, so we no longer look at 20-somethings living with their parents in the same way.