Are there any cultures that encourage children to continue to live at home after they've become adults?

I don’t know.
On Roots, they cut Kunta’s footoh, handed him a bedroll, and told him to go to his new hut.

One of my fluther friends is a young woman in her early twenties living with her parents. She has employment.

I think in China after graduation might be when kids finally get to come home. Don’t most kids there live in dorms?
I feel surprised at myself that I don’t know more on the subject.
It seems like by now I’d have seen enough pbs specials to know more.

Sounds to like you’re conflating, in a typical American way, a typical American stigma against “living at home” with “lack of responsibility” and “not contributing in a meaningful way to society”. Those are three different notions, and collapsing them together is a typical American prejudice and stigma.

So one part of distinguishing that is to notice that in many countries, adults do often continue to live with their families, for a variety of reasons. In many places if Europe, for example, it’s not abnormal to have fairly large family homes that stay in the family for generations, and the relatively high expense of buying or renting a place to live makes it a matter of great practicality for adult children to continue to live with their families. The absence of shaming social stigmas about it (e.g. “every adult needs their own home” social qualifications for perceived adulthood, or the conflation of it with “you must be an irresponsible freeloader contributing nothing and causing the demise of your parents”) also has various advantages (e.g. keeping families connected and reduced waste and inefficiency).

Some of the most impressive people I’ve known are Europeans who lived with their families as a matter of great practicality until it made sense to them to move away.

Not all Americans, of course, are burdened with such toxic ideas around living with family. I know quite a few healthy happy productive wonderful Americans who have lived with their parents as adults despite the social stigmas many people have about it.

@Zaku: “Sounds to like you’re conflating, in a typical American way, a typical American stigma against “living at home” with “lack of responsibility” and “not contributing in a meaningful way to society”. Those are three different notions, and collapsing them together is a typical American prejudice and stigma.”

^ This!

Additionally, the economic reality younger people are now facing (obscene debt due to college, housing costs, etc) mean that many families I know expect their children to likely need to return home or not leave.

I also have worked with people from India who describe how amazing it is to have large houses filled with many generations of relatives who come and go as needed. Childcare is far easier, and honestly it sounds pretty good in many ways.

Japan?

@Zaku, if you have more information I would like you to share that. I as m certain that is the purpose of this question. I have heard of some European families keeping a home for generations, and extended family living together, but I would like to know more of the dynamic.

@Patty_Melt It varies from country to country and from family to family, of course. Greece and Italy in particular are noted for very high rates of adult children at home, and one typical cause often mentioned in both cases tends to be strong family bonds – i.e. they like each other, like being together, get along well enough, etc. The other major reason as I mentioned before tends to be about expenses and practicality.

It has struck me too that if my family had a fabulous big house (as at least some do, especially if you appreciate old European buildings) in a fabulous European city and I felt very welcome to stay there, and there were no stigma about doing so (and in fact a positive popular idea were there, e.g. that “it only makes sense” and “why spend lots of money on some apartment?”), and it wasn’t bothering me to live with them, then I imagine that would be a highly attractive option.

I’ve heard too that Hong Kong has a huge rate of adults living with adult family (again expense of not doing so being an issue), but that South Korea has as negative stigmas about it as the US (they call adults at home “kangaroos”).

@Patty_Melt ”On Roots, they cut Kunta’s footoh….” did you mean they cut his foot off? His slave master cut half his foot off when he ran away and got caught.

@Zaku You can interpret it any way you want. If kids continue to live with their parents, it’s fine as long as they’re contributing their 100%. In fact, it’s only recently that we haven’t had kids continuing on as part of the nuclear family, but they worked and contributed their adult share. They worked the farms, the fields and the woman worked the households.

IF you’re an adult, and IF you are living at home, and IF you sit in your room playing video games all day, expecting Mom to cook your dinner and clean up your messes like she always has, you’re a loser, and it’s the parent’s fault.

My question is, are there any societies where the adult children continue to live at home but ARE NOT EXPECTED TO contribute to the household or contribute to society in some meaningful way? Can you shake your righteous assumptions and prejudice long enough to see the question as I am actually asking it?

My oldest lived at home while she went to college. She was eager to move out as soon as she graduated and got a job.

Lol, no, that is how it was pronounced. I don’t know how to spell it. I was comparing how traditions vary away from the US. Slavery in this country would have nothing to do with that.
I was talking about his manhood ceremony. He was told to go to his new hut, and consider a good gift for his little brother.

EDIT : and the tool looked dull.

Lots if not most Filipino parents prefer at least one child if not all of them to stay at home. Partly because Filipino parents expect their kids to be their support system at old age. In the past two decades things may have changed but chances are no.

@mazingerz88 My Filipina daughter in law came to the States on her own when she was 22 and her siblings now work in New Zealand but her family has remained very close. When her parents come to the States, they will stay with my son and DIL for months at a time.

^^This Filipino tradition of an adult child living with the parents in the home where he or she grew up extending it by raising his own family there makes sense since a nursing or retirement home system, if I’m not mistaken, doesn’t exist there.

And that’s a fine system. The way our country is going, we’re going to have to go back to that soon. However, if I had to move in with any of my kids, you can bet I’d do whatever it took to pull my weight….house cleaning, cooking, watching the kids.

^^But…inevitably in life things don’t always work out as well as expected when it comes practicing tradition. I met a few Filipino seniors in LA who left their married children’s home because they didn’t get along with their daughters and sons in law. Lol

@mazingerz88 I hope that my son and DIL don’t move back to the Philippines because my Plan C is moving in with them! :=)

^^Well I hope so too! But hey, I have no idea how well they’re doing in life but if they have the means to welcome everybody in the family to live with them, maybe it’s time to explore that part of the world? : )

Yes, it is common in Italian and Mexican culture to continue to live at home until you are married. In many cultures, multiple generations live together. “18 and get out” is in many ways an American phenomenon and it isn’t necessarily the best model.

I told my kids that they could live at home as long as they were going to school, to save on dorm costs. I didn’t have the “18 and you’re out” mentality. I did have the mentality that if you decided not to go to college or a trade school, then it’s time for you to try and make in on your own. I told them if they changed their mind and wanted to go back to school after all, then they could move back home. As long as they were working toward some goal I was more than happy to help out.

”My question is, are there any societies where the adult children continue to live at home but ARE NOT EXPECTED TO contribute to the household or contribute to society in some meaningful way? Can you shake your righteous assumptions and prejudice long enough to see the question as I am actually asking it?”
Different cultures and different families and different people do have different ideas about the sorts of things you seem very attached to framing in one very judgemental way.

For example, what people value as counting as contributing to a household and/or society in a meaningful way, depends entirely as what people define as being a valuable/meaningful contribution.

Many cultures have a history (including some of the USA within living memory) of expecting female children to remain at home until married, with their contribution being making themselves attractive marriage partners and doing housework, but not being expected to support themselves (in fact, that might be seen as unrespectable).

Also, many people are not preoccupied with the worry you mention, and have other frameworks of ideas about their children and other family members, for example where they would love to continue living near them and for them to do what they want with their lives, and take joy in providing helpful circumstances that contribute to that.

I know quite a few parents and grandparents even in the USA who have expressed welcome to their children and grandchildren to stay with them if/when they need/want, without shaming them if they aren’t actively pursuing jobs or paying/earning “their keep”, or even concerning themselves with any such notions.

And certainly there are conditions where even “pull yer weight” Americans relent in their shaming of non-working house guests (e.g. disabilities, illness, divorce recovery). So why would no one tolerate other less obvious causes of lack of will to work at McDonalds?

Some cultures, families and people even respect non-financially-abundant choices of profession, even art, music, writing, philosophy, or mysticism. Some respect those far more than earning money.

Surely there are many examples (especially in the USA) that match your pattern… but many of them may also tend to be at least partly caused and perpetuated by that pattern. What you resist, persists. A parent who expects and/or fears that their child may become a stay-at-home mooching deadbeat, may tend to load those children with stress and resentment and regenerate those stories and that behavior and that type of relationship for the next generation.

”For example, what people value as counting as contributing to a household and/or society in a meaningful way, depends entirely as what people define as being a valuable/meaningful contribution.” I agree with that.

“Many cultures have a history (including some of the USA within living memory) of expecting female children to remain at home until married, with their contribution being making themselves attractive marriage partners and doing housework, but not being expected to support themselves. But they are expected to help with the housework and the children, unless they’re rich. Then I guess they can lay abed all day while the servants take care of them.

They would love to continue living near them and for them to do what they want with their lives, and take joy in providing helpful circumstances that contribute to that. I agree. I am really super happy that I live within 15 minutes of all of my kids and grandkids, and we all help each other out. In fact, I asked if I could watch one of my grandsons for a while tomorrow so we can just hang out and Mom can have a break. My other daughter will be coming over too.

I am not shaming people who can’t work for medical reasons. I’m shaming any adult who refuses to work just because they’re lazy and rides on the backs of those who DO work. I stepped in to help my single mother daughter 2 summers ago when she had a hysterectomy and couldn’t go back to work for a month.

If a child does become a stay-at-home mooching deadbeat, then the parents are to blame. They allow it to happen.

Here’s the thing, and shame on anybody calling Americans asshole for the traditions which worked for us, we are still a young country. Even though it has already become overpopulated, not many generations could call themselves Americans. We don’t have family estates with large many chambered homes.

It was recent history that there was still unclaimed land. Land owners would gain as much land as possible. It would be parceled off to sons when they became of marrying age. Large families would parcel to oldest two or three sons, the other were expected to go forth and find their own.
People knew parcels were disappearing, and before long there would be none for settlers to claim.
There was a huge difference in how to look at things.
The great depression changed things further. Some families attempted to pool their resources, some split, and went in search of work.

We are not asshole for having our own traditions. Traditions come from all sorts of circumstances.

I also agree that the “leave at 18” model is not as easy to implement as it once was. The days when you could get a factory job out of high school and be making enough to support a family and own a suburban home with a white picket fence (slight exaggeration perhaps) are over. Nowadays you need an expensive four-year degree to do practically anything and if you live in a place like the Bay Area, even then you need to making well into the six-figures to afford anything decent. Americans have always been more independent as a people, we’ve always been big on “making it” on your own and owning land, but there are factors hampering that independence.

@Dutchess_III About the actual people who do really refuse to work and “ride on” others… Some of them might possibly benefit from being yelled at. (Mainly if they reach a “rock bottom” point. But in general, I don’t think that shaming them tends to help. I think almost all such people are probably that way because they are stuck in toxic shame patterns (and often related addiction problems), and adding shame tends to just deepen the hole they are in.

@Patty_Melt Is someone calling Americans assholes for having a tradition?
As for some tradition having worked for someone, what that mainly reminds me of is the people who were poor, or lost everything in the Depression, and then worked very hard and earned a good amount for themselves and/or their family, and think that’s a great formula for everyone else. And it is a great thing, and great advice for the people who it works for. But when it becomes part of a shame attack on people who it’s inappropriate for, it’s not so helpful.

It also seems to me like a misrepresentation of the actual history and tradition, to try to use it in the context of justifying shaming people who are having a hard time in some way that shows up as being unmotivated to “get a job” (especially when there’s heavy shame context around it).

Most of fluther members are American, and will advise according to that, unless an OP specifies they are located somewhere else.

@Dutchess_III – It sounds like you are really propping up work (as in official – getting paid for work) as the mechanism that provides humans with value. Additionally, who are these imaginary people? I have never seen or met anyone who fits this description.

@Patty_Melt: “We are not asshole for having our own traditions.”

But we can be assholes for having asshole traditions.

An interesting take on the concept of “laziness”:
https://medium.com/@devonprice/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01

@canidmajor That’s a great article. We can all always work on the ways we are judgmental of others.

There are any number of things that give us value, not just one thing. Not sponging off of other people is just one of those things, @hmmmmmm.

Like @hmmmmmm, I have never met anyone whom I would describe as a “mooching deadbeat”. Every single person whom I have known that others would describe that way had some issues that caused them to present as others would call “lazy” or “moochers”. They had problems with depression or subtle mental health issues or medical issues that were invisible to an untrained eye.

We all have different perceptions of how people should behave, but judging and/or blaming others for certain behaviors, without knowing their stories (and none of us can really know the whole story unless we live it) is harsh and unfair.

For a look at the issue of staying a group or not, there is a movie I’d forgotten I have. It is called Marty, and stars a very young Ernest Borgnine.
It fits this topic perfectly.

^^Best Picture winner I think.

There are advantages and benefits to staying in a group. Also some potential disadvantages.