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I had a neighbor who never moved out of his parents home, Basically took care of them until he passed then inherited the home and he seemed like a rather normal/healthy guy.
My grandma never moved out of her mother's home ( apartment). At some point in time, before my time, the story changed from living with her mother to her mother living with my grandma.
I am aware of many similar and current situations like this. What they seem to most often have in common is a foreign born less than assimilating parent which crosses nationalities. It's far more common in the rest of the world for multiple adult generations to continue to live under one roof.
This was once very common, regardless of ethnicity, in the US too.
Didn't all those cheesy folks on the Dallas TV show, live in the ranch McMansion?
I have known quite a few people like this. My Aunt Betty, for one. She was a delightful person and the youngest daughter in a family of 8 children. She lived at home with my widowed grandmother till she got married in her 40's. Betty always worked, but in a pay nothing retail job at Kaufmanns in Pittsburgh. She never drove a car and always took the bus. She had flaming red hair and owned an ocelot! She was very attractive and dated lots of men. I was a kid so I'm not really sure if she lived at home to keep grandma company or because her job paid so poorly.
Most of the people I know who lived at home well into their 40's or 50's lived in NYC. Mom and Dad had cheap rent controlled apartments or their own home. The kids simply couldn't afford to move out on their own. The kids, cousins, Aunts, and Uncles did trade apartments quite often when they changed jobs or another location became more convenient for them. As the older members of the family died, the kids kept the apartments/homes. I think this still happens today and it's very common!
I think jobs and TV and wars--moved people away from those family knit communities. The glamour of the big city and college, military... In our sheep days- everybody stayed inside the walls. Maybe leaving Europe- people left home, and that tradition or way of life changed the pattern, and that's why we have evolved that way. WE have to leave home to be successful adults- not sure if is all that good.
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Originally Posted by thriftylefty
I have known of several from a man in the neighborhood that I grew up in, a guy who lived near me when I was in college to a few people I know today. All seemed to be single, sane and well employed nice people but I can't help but to think there is something weird beneath the surface because it is so unconventional to not want to leave the nest and live life on your own. Many of them seem bookish and cheap, sitting on a pile of money all the while they still live with a mother who takes care of their every need.
Even if I myself were open to living perennially in my parents' household with them for the entirety of my life (and then even if I was working and earning income at whatever level while living with them perennially), I would surmise that the very great majority of the female half of humanity (especially those females who are well-enough established in their own life, career, accomplishments, et al and have an active social life, social network, et al) would look at me as being kind of "off" or "weird" or outright gravitate away from me if I had perennially lived with my parents all through my 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s and so on. It would strike the great majority of them as a rather perplexing and disconcerting aspect of me. And this isn't just personal opinion . . . for there have been various C-D threads over the course of time (even recently) where the great majority of the women contributing postings to said threads expressed this very sentiment (i.e., that they are less-incllned-- if even not even outright ruling it out --to take on a man who never ever left the original nest to live on his own and who makes a way-of-life of living with his parents).
In summary: So even if I myself saw nothing "off" or "unappealing" about perennially living with my parents as a way-of-life all through the span of my natural life, if I am a man who wants to be looked upon in a favorable way by the great majority of the female population in our culture (speaking as a U.S. or North American resident), I have to take into account how the great majority of women view men who match this description (in terms of considering them as a potential male significant other or life partner). It is what it is . . . whether I personally like it or not that the great majority of females in our culture are most inclined to think this way about this issue. They are the way they are and I have to adapt to and accommodate it if I wish to be a man who is connected to the world of women and embraced by them.
"I get that in some cultures that it is customary for people to live in a parental home until they get married and have kids. I also get that some people are the caretakers for their parents. But, having said that, taking steps toward independence is character-and -esteem building. I lived on my own in an apartment for 16 years and bought my own home almost four years ago. And no, there is no husband to speak of. I did this myself. And this gave me the confidence and strength that I probably wouldn't have if my parents would have enabled me."
You can be a mature, self-sufficient adult who just happens to live with your parents (or other people) or else be a dependent, overgrown child living seemingly independently in a subsidized apartment with parents (or other people) completely paying your sorry way. Only supporting yourself builds character, regardless of where you live. I've known plenty of grown women living supposedly autonomously who still call their fathers to come kill a spider. When it comes to this, you can't judge by the arrangement.
When I was a kid in the 70s there were neighbors who were an elderly couple and their two adult daughters who were kind of old. I was a kid, so it's hard to say how old they were (to me they were ancient--I'd have guessed they were the age of my grandmothers). But they both had completely grey hair, and wore reading glasses on a chain around their necks, so they were probably at least in their 50s. By the time I grew up and moved away, I think the parents had died and the two old sisters still lived in the house.
They were not disabled. They were both very active in my church--Sunday school teachers, piano players. They were always out there doing gardening and entering gardening contests. They always bought what ever cookies or candy I was selling. They seemed to know lots of people in town and seemed to have a decent social life, visiting people, etc.
I remember it being weird because as a kid, I was supposed to call all adults "Mr. ___" or "Mrs. ____." Then one of the daughters I used to talk to used to tell me to call her by her first name, and I remember telling her I wasn't allowed. But all our parents in the neighborhood used to call the old couple Mr. and Mrs. XYZ, but they always referred to the daughters by their first names, even in front of us kids, and even referred to them as "the girls" sometimes, as In "I went over to visit Mr. and Mrs. XYZ and the girls to see their rose bushes." Our parents were mostly younger than "the girls."
To my knowledge, they never married, and lived out their lives as "old maids."
A cousin who's now about 50. Not an old maid, but rather an old bachelor. He looks after his widowed mother. He works, and he owns some rental property. Never did look for a place of his own, though. I have no idea what the reason would be.
I have a cousin (aged 51), college graduate, who has moved out once (for about 13 years), had a great job , then lost it during the Great Recession and was never able to find another position. After losing his job, he moved back in with his elderly mother (father has been deceased for nearly 20 years) and has become attached to living at home with his mother. He takes care of his mother and she takes care of him (cooks, cleans, etc.).
Everyone in the family (including his brother, sister and our other cousins) think the situation is strange. He won't go back out to find another job (lost his confidence, we think) and basically does nothing during the week except watch TV, play games on his computer and surf the internet.
Never married, no friends or girlfriends. A strange loner type of person.
He thinks he's normal, so does his mother. We all know the situation is not normal. He's been back home since 2008.
I used to date a guy whose older brother had never left the family home. They were a religious Italian-American Catholic family of two kids with Mom who was a teacher and Dad a public school principal. My boyfriend and his brother were both VERY intelligent. Their mother died of breast cancer when her sons were still in high school. The older son enrolled in college locally and lived at home. My friend got a scholarship to Notre Dame and never moved back home permanently after that.
For some reason his brother just never got a life. He never even got a decently paying job, just a string of local things and he spent a lot of time helping the elderly grandmother who had outlived her daughter. After Grandma died and Dad retired, he still remained at home. Then my former boyfriend died, too, when he was only in his forties. The father owned the family home and left a bit of money, so I assume the recluse is still living there having been the only one left to inherit. He does have a lot of cousins and other relatives who live nearby, so I would hope someone is keeping an eye on this lost soul.
I once bought a house from some people who had inherited it from a maiden aunt. Same situation as Northern Maine mentioned. She and her sister never married and remained in the lovely craftsman-style house their father built in a close-in suburb of Pittsburgh in 1927. Neither one of the sisters ever married or had a job. They cared for the parents into old age then stayed there living reclusively on their small inheritance. Eventually one sister died and then the second one shortly thereafter. A niece of theirs inherited and put the house up for sale. I bought it. It needed a lot of work like modern wiring (it had knob and tube), insulation, closets big enough to put normal hangers in, a modern kitchen (a sink, a Hoosier cabinet and an ancient stove and fridge was all it had), etc. But in general it was in good shape. Hardwood floors, great woodwork, a gorgeous covered porch, even the roof had been taken care of. I guess the spinster thing wasn't as weird in their day as it is now, but everyone in the neighborhood considered the sisters to be strange.
As for more current times, I have neighbors whose adult daughter moved back into her childhood home with a husband, two children, and two dogs five years ago. She just showed up on the doorstep one day saying they were broke and needed help. Both she and her husband have menial jobs, so they don't earn enough even to pay rent on an apartment, let alone buy a house. Mostly they hang around the house watching TV, even though they are college-educated and could have normal careers. The woman's parents are old enough to retire but they don't because they foot almost the whole bill for the slackers who are in their mid-thirties now. It's hard to feel sorry for them since they raised this "kid" who is taking advantage of them so egregiously. The home is far too small to house this many people comfortably, too. I think they're nuts to put up with being used like this, but it's their life.
I have a cousin (aged 51), college graduate, who has moved out once (for about 13 years), had a great job , then lost it during the Great Recession and was never able to find another position. After losing his job, he moved back in with his elderly mother (father has been deceased for nearly 20 years) and has become attached to living at home with his mother. He takes care of his mother and she takes care of him (cooks, cleans, etc.).
Everyone in the family (including his brother, sister and our other cousins) think the situation is strange. He won't go back out to find another job (lost his confidence, we think) and basically does nothing during the week except watch TV, play games on his computer and surf the internet.
Never married, no friends or girlfriends. A strange loner type of person.
He thinks he's normal, so does his mother. We all know the situation is not normal. He's been back home since 2008.
A person like that is probably suffering from clinical depression. I have that illness myself and I can attest that if there had been someone around to put a roof over my head and pay my way, I'd probably have enjoyed indulging my illness rather than getting treatment and fighting to live a more normal life. Many depressed people can put up with the symptoms of their illness as long as they are sheltered from the stresses of daily living. But having to deal with going to work every day, interacting with other people, paying bills, etc., pushes many depressed people over their limits.
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