Pi-Consulting

The same phrase can have diametrically opposite meanings, depending on where you are standing. Take the simple expression “That’s history”. To an American, the words mean that whatever “that” is, it is no longer relevant or worth thinking or talking about. To many Europeans, it means “that” is a highly relevant fact that probably predisposed what is happening today, and should therefore be studied in detail by historians, politicians and the general public. Pi hereby reminds itself to one day compile a catalog of the myriad cultural differences that keep the Old World and the New World in a permanent state of mutual puzzlement. Sources: The Economist, Pi.

Parents of twenty-to-thirtysomethings are worried about their kids. Specifically, they’re worried that they are never going to leave the family home. Whose nest is it, anyway? Mum and Dad’s? Or the “Come-Back Kid’s”?

Ah, the joys of parenthood! The poor old dears have put behind them the mess, noise, turbulence and confrontations of having their teenage children at home. Now, all over Europe, the same mothers and fathers are reaching their 50s or 60s. However, ask them if the advancing years have brought them the quiet joys of being ‘empty-nesters’. They are just as likely to roll their eyes and murmur “I wish! They’re still here!”.

The number of “adultescents” still living at home is not trivial. Six out of ten British 20-to-25-year-old men are still shacking up at their parents’ place, according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics. For women in their young 20s the figure is four out of ten.

Significant numbers of Italians stay single and continue living in the parental home well into their 30s and even 40s, according to TGI’s international office in Geneva. The majority pronounce themselves perfectly happy with the arrangement. The French even have a name for such people. Stay-at-home young adults are called “Tanguys”, after a 28-year-old character in a movie who flatly refuses to leave home even when formally thrown out by his despairing parents. Bizarrely, young Frenchmen have even sued those who gave them life for “failing to maintain them”.

Whether they get called Papa and Maman, Vati and Mutti, Babbo and Mamma or Papi and Mami, the parents of a grown-up son still living at home are often pitied for being stuck with a “Mummy’s Boy”, or, worse, a cynical sponger who simply wants home cooking and a rent-free lifestyle. On the other hand, some mothers cannot bear to be parted from their “darling boy”, while some older fathers seem to like having someone to watch the football with. The come-back road carries emotional traffic in both directions.

Part of what keeps the no-longer-young at home is the growing difficulty of buying a home of their own. Since today’s 30-year-olds were born, house prices in Germany have doubled, those in France have risen ten times over, and British housing prices have multiplied by an astonishing factor of 15. Only the highest-paid youngsters can buy a first home and get onto the property ladder, unless Mumsy and Dadsy are willing to step in. Well-heeled parents who want the guest bedroom reserved for their guests have therefore been contributing to their offspring’s mortgages. Britain’s Council of Mortgage Lenders reveals that 40% of UK first-time home-buyers are getting parental help with the payments.

House prices are being pushed upwards by another new demographic phenomenon, the incredible shrinking household. British government projections show that in the next 20 years the number of individual UK households rises from 21 million to 26 million, with singletons a major driving force. As with the laws of physics, against the stay-at-home-with-Mum trend there is an equal and opposite Newtonian force at work; the rise of the one-person household. The actress Greta Garbo famously said “I vant to be aloooone”, and plenty of young people are picking up her theme.

Interestingly, young unmarried European men who live by themselves seem happy with their lot, though lone single males in America appear to have doubts about it; (TGI data again). The same source suggests that divorcees under 45 are quite content to go it alone, at least they are in Germany, Italy and the UK. Divorced American women appear generally content with their decision to “wash that man right out of my hair”. In France and Spain, by contrast, young divorced and separated people profess to be unhappier about life. Splitting up with a partner can be a big reason for deciding to move back into the parental home.

One of the big questions facing the parents of a “come-back kid” is how to treat their offspring’s boyfriend/girlfriend, who often wants to move in too. Suggesting they sleep in separate bedrooms is not only logistically difficult – average dwelling sizes are shrinking – but is also likely to be a source of inter-generational friction. Some parents have adopted a “don’t let them do it at home” policy, as one of their last available negotiating tools for avoiding their children moving back home. More parents appear to expect celibate behaviour of their girl children than they do of the men, which might explain why girls are often keener to leave home than their boyfriends are.

In general, however, the parental attitude to “nookie in the nest” is a tolerant shrug of the shoulders. One explanation for this is that post-WW2 ‘baby-boomer’ parents grew up in the inter-generational battleground of the 1960s and ’70s, and remember their own parents’ disapproval of their pursuing any kind of intimacy at home. Though they are now in middle-age, ‘boomer’ Mums’ and Dads’ attitudes have stayed significantly more permissive than the starchiness of their own parents. In some cases this is because they didn’t personally benefit much from the liberality of the Swinging Sixties, and have a sneaking feeling they should have done. Either way, their children are perhaps the first twentyish generation that doesn’t necessarily have to leave home in order to have a sex life.

It is clear that these changes are not only demographic. They have powerful resonance for culture, values and attitudes. For many young people, their primal urge towards success, go-getting and independence is being weakened by a growing addiction to stability, comfort, parental cosseting and low-cost living. The longer they stay home, the harder it is to escape the enveloping nest. Some evidence suggests that parents’ concern for their children actually increases with age.

All over Western society, a significant demographic group faces an uncomfortable question: isn’t it time you grew up?

UK census figures from thirty years ago show that, back then, only half of British mothers with dependent children were in the workforce. That figure has now grown to two-thirds, making “working mother syndrome” the norm, no longer the exception. 55% are working while bringing up children under five, up from 25% in their mothers’ day. Given the wholesale need for day-care in order to keep this many mums in the workforce, government has had to step in in a big way, giving new meaning to the phrase “Nanny State”. Further out, look for shifts towards more part-time work and “flexi-jobs”, with the menfolk filling in more at times when their partners rally have to be away at work. Sources, The Sunday Times, Pi.

Since 1975, house prices in the UK have risen twice as fast as homes in France, Germany, Japan and he USA. Britons have gone for home-ownership with the same zeal that Americans have brought to the buying of stocks and shares. The rising value of bricks and mortar has fueled a British epidemic of borrowing and self-indulgence. The casualties are first-time purchasers. Young couples (and increasingly young singles) find it well-nigh impossible to get their feet on the first rung of the property-ownership ladder. As a result, they are turning to their parents. Britain’s Council of Mortgage Lenders now say that over 40% of first-time buyers are depending on financial help from their mothers and fathers. When the family can’t – or won’t –help out, the kids simply get left behind. Skinflint parents are now being called “SKINS”, for “Spending the Kids’ Inheritance”. Source: The Economist, Pi.