Coinciding with the release of a movie called “Failure to Launch.†People magazine ran an article about adult men living at home with their birth families. Indeed, large numbers of adults are continuing to live at home with their parents but sons have recently been the focus of more attention than daughters.
The general tone of articles about this phenomenon are that it is deplorable. The little bird is refusing to live the nest even when he (the concentration is on the “hesâ€ÂÂ) has become a big bird. Men who live with their parents or, quite often, their mothers, are depicted as immature, lazy, freeloading Peter Pan types.
I think there could be a positive side to this trend. Even as I say this, I acknowledge that it does have some inevitably demented connotations. When I think of an adult man living with Mother, I have to recall Norman Bates in Psycho.
Movieland aside, it seems good that so many adults get along well enough with their parents that they do not fly the coop at the first opportunity. This may represent an altogether praiseworthy strength of the family. It seems to me a very recent conceit that says generations must live apart. It is a practice that can produce alienation and loneliness on all sides. That more adults and their parents continue to reside together may mean the return of the extended family and, perhaps, the decline of the unfortunate segregation of the aging from the young.
Men who live with their parents are not necessarily freeloading slugs. They may perform some residential tasks and provide comfort and company to their parents. Moreover, that more adult men reside in parental homes may have a social benefit in stemming the promiscuity that leads to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases along with the problem pregnancies that end in abortion or the births of children who are neglected or ill-cared-for. As one man quoted in People said, his circumstances mitigate against his doing a lot of pick-ups: “What can I say, ‘Your place or my mother’s?’â€ÂÂ
