“We’ll go back to Mom”: Life with parents becomes a conscious choice

The problem with forty-year-old “mums” and old “daddy” daughters is international. Let’s remember how often such men are complained about in Italy. Or take the American film Love and Other Troubles (2006) with Matthew McConaughey, who plays a 30-year-old successful guy living with his mom and dad. His parents were so desperate to find freedom that they hired him a tempting “bride” (played by Sarah Jessica Parker). However, now the “ancestors” can take a hard breath. In the West, the term “boomerang kids” appeared – young adults who return to live with their parents after trying to live independently.

According to the British Sociological Institute, 23% of parents experienced an adult child returning home, and the average age of such returns is 26 years. In the UK, at the 2021 census, 4.9 million adult children were living with their parents - a 14.7 per cent increase from a decade earlier. In South Korea, the proportion of adults 19-49 years old living with their parents reached 29.9%, and among 35-year-olds – 41.1% (data from the Seoul Institute, 2025). In the United States, about a third of young adults also live with their parents (Pew Research Center, 2024).

But there is a difference: returning to parents is more often perceived as an economic necessity than the norm. Professor Cecile Van de Veld notes that in France, where the average age of separation from parents is 23.4 years, returning home can be experienced as "social failure, even shame.".

Studies show that living with parents is associated with a higher number of depressive symptoms in young adults. A qualitative study from 2024 (England) found that the “boomerang effect” blurs personal boundaries, creating tension in relationships.

But in general, foreign experience shows that economic difficulties and the “return to the nest” are a global trend. However, in Russia, traditionally high expectations of a man as an independent partner remain. The researchers documented a social paradox: “A man is severely required to undergo early financial and psychological separation, and his inability to meet these expectations is severely condemned.” But this desire for separation is certainly a move toward a more mature model of living together.