Rise of the full nesters: what life is like with adult children who just can’t leave home

If life had worked out differently, Serena would by now be coming to terms with an empty nest. Having brought up seven children, she and her husband might even have been enjoying a little more money and time for themselves. But as it is, three of their adult children are now at home: the 23-year-old finishing his degree; the 28-year-old, a teacher, saving for a house deposit; and the 34-year-old, after a mental health crisis. At 63, Serena comes home from her job as a social worker to a mountain of laundry, and a spare downstairs room requisitioned as a bedroom.

Having a houseful is “really good fun”, she says, and makes life richer and more interesting. But it took a while to get used to partners staying over – “I’m not a prude, but you don’t necessarily want to be part of that life for your children, do you?” – and lately, she has felt the lack of an important rite of passage. “I’ve become old and I never really felt it, because I’ve been in that parent mode for such a long time,” she says. “It’s suddenly hit me that I didn’t have that transition that often happens, with kids who leave when you’re in your 40s and 50s – that just hasn’t happened. It’s odd.”

And she isn’t alone. Robert and his wife were planning to go travelling next year, once they had retired, to “try to remember who we each are” in this new child-free phase of life. But their eldest is now back home having left university this summer without a job in a tough year for graduate recruitment, and his parents are reluctant to leave him ploughing through demoralising job interviews alone. It’s hard, says Robert, to know where responsibility for an adult child begins and ends. “If he was 18 I’d be much more involved, but I’m trying not to be – I’m trying to be interested in what he does, but to draw that line. He doesn’t like being told what to do.”

View image in fullscreen Boundaries between gen Z and their often remarkably accommodating gen X parents seem to be blurring.