To expect my adult children to return home after uni?

[stepmothersknockers]

I can't see how any young people are supposed to live independently these days. All my friends seem to just accept that their children are still living with them in their 20s and even 30s.

Unless we stump up house deposits (not possible) or tell them that they can only 'survive' as a couple, how are they going to live independently?

DH wants us to get a bigger house to accommodate more adults. I sort of want to buy a flat so they can't come back. ;)

I am a bit resentful because we are quite old and still have a large mortgage and will probably have a larger one in order to accommodate the 'children' as adults.

The resentment is largely just resentment of people who are better off .

Under no circumstances would I borrow / remortgage to accommodate older children returning from uni. Feck that !!

a) I'll have done my bit. They are welcome to a childhood bedroom sleeping arrangement provided they go some way to paying their way and not creating additional housework. I'm not having partners move in too though.
b) I'm not about to make life so comfortable that there is no incentive for them to focus on improving their own circumstances and moving out.

DH is a soft touch though - he'd probably propose what your husband is proposing.

I think people don't realise times have changed. I bought my own flat at 22 in my first year of employment after Uni. I had a 100% mortgage and was given a second hand sofa bed. I saved up for a fridge, then a washing machine. Thankfully the previous owners left their cooker! I had received a full student grant, and got the pick of graduate jobs. Only a small percentage of school leavers went to Uni so it was a sellers' market for jobs. I had no debt. It's different now.

People need capital for a sizeable deposit and it's very difficult for them to accrue that capital when there is a shortage of full time permanent guaranteed employment. Graduates will have student debt to repay. Expectations have changed - many young people are horrified at the thought of second hand furniture.

I used to joke that as soon as my two were 17 I was moving to a one bed. That just doesn't seem possible - I feel I have to keep their rooms for them.

I think your own history definitely plays a role in how you feel about the whole idea of kids moving in. Both DH and I left home young and never really went back, but we've felt a bit sad about the lack of family cohesion over the years - no-one is anywhere near anyone else, or shows any inclination to be really. We've tried with visits and so on, but it's not the same as being there week in week out. He's keen to follow them wherever they go, whilst I am happy to keep a small amount of distance

Yes bathtime, I saved £100 or so for a few months for a holiday. I didn't fancy spending my entire 20s indoors or at work thanks.

DD1 left home to house share with her friends in her last year at uni, got a job before finishing her course, came home for a couple of weeks and then left. She is now 25 and lives in a rented flat on her own

DD2 will be starting her last year at uni in September. She is home for the summer. I hope she can get a job as soon as her course is finished, but she will be welcome her until she sorts herself out. I doubt she wants to be here full time.

So I guess I'm saying YANBU

I'm a long way away from this decision but I'd be happy for dd to come home after uni or live independently in a house share or similar. There will always be a home for her with me but I respect her right to forge her own path. For what it's worth I left home at 19 to go to uni and continued living with the friends I had made in a house share post uni. I had the option to return home and did spend a few months at home in my 20s when a relationship broke up but mostly have lived independently.

Age 21 I rented a bedsit with shared bathroom no shower no washing machine no sofa or chairs no wardrobe single bed one fridge one gas ring. I was made up to be in London and independent, so v happy.

But then I had a job with prospects, so I knew it wouldn't be forever. and I don't know what I'd have done with a zero hour contract in an area with no prospect of moving on / earning more.

Didn't buy til I was 35, with help of savings, increased salary, and small inheritance of 8k.

DH wants us to get a bigger house to accommodate more adults. I sort of want to buy a flat so they can't come back. ;)

I think downsizing, and redistributing that value of your house now instead of when you die, is an excellent plan. More parents (and grandparents) should consider this.

Bonus 1 is you will also be forced to deal with all sorts of stored away things NOW. you can tell your children and grandchildren what these odd things wrapped in decades old newspapers are, where they came from, why they are important. All of you can decide which are wanted, which should be kept anyway, and which might be sold or donated. I know too many people who havent the time to sort through their parents or grandparents home in detail and send unopened boxes straight to the charity shop. Or maybe to their own attic, and eventually their children do so.

Bonus 2 is you now have a much easier to maintain home, giving you more time to do more interesting things now, and less space you can't manage when you reach the really old stage of life.

Mine is coming back as he has a job in London where the rent can be absolutely ridiculous. It's basically throwing money away better he saves up.

All that is required is that he looks after the house however all my children know their household duties as they were taught from a young age so it's second nature for them now.

Yabu! So they will be broke for a few years and have to scrape to pay the rent in a dodgy flat share but it's character building. Bailing them out with housing until they are 30 helps nobody.

I think downsizing, and redistributing that value of your house now instead of when you die, is an excellent plan.

Yes, giving away all your money just before you reach old age is a fantastic idea.

Being old is really cheap and there is no way you are going to need that money for anything

I wouldn't move to accommodate grown children. They would be welcome to come back, of course, but I wouldn't take on another big mortgage for them.

I moved out straight after graduating. I had 2 younger siblings still at home, in a small 3 bed house, it seemed the right thing to do. My parents would have welcomed me back, but it would have made everyone's lives that bit more cramped.

I lived in a houseshare for a year or two, then rented a tiny flat with DH - who had also previously been in a houseshare. We eventually managed to buy a small 2 bedroom flat.

My sister also moved straight out after college into a houseshare. She still rents now.
My brother went back home after uni - plenty of space and my parents encouraged him to come back. He stayed for a couple of years, working locally and paying them rent, then moved out. He still rents.

BIL and SIL both lived rent free with their respective parents until they were almost 30. It meant that they had both managed to save a large deposit to buy a house when they moved in together. They are now much more financially independent than me and DH, or my own siblings, and own a huge house, more likely to be able to help their own children with house deposits in the future etc.

It worked for them - certainly financially it was the best move -, but I wouldn't have wanted to live at home that long anyway even if it had been possible, and I think most people would be the same.

Quite a few students don't live in "student type" accommodation now though, by which I mean the Young Ones style shared hovels or the bedsits of my youth. Newer student blocks are visions of en-suite luxury in comparison, and I don't think many young people are prepared to live in the same kind of conditions that were routine for the young and the poor in the 80s and 90s, nor are their parents prepared to let them.

I left at 18 to go to Uni, then did several years in slum shared houses, followed by two years in a very basic flat (damp, no heating, no phone) with my now-husband who was then a mature student. We did go "home" to my Mum and Dad's spare room after his graduation - he was there for three weeks until he started his job 200 miles away and moved into a caravan until I got a job in the same location a couple of months later, at which point we rented a "proper" house (heating! a washing machine! no rats!).

We bought later that year at 28, having taken the best part of a decade to save the deposit between us. We got our first car the same year.

Momagain has a point - downsize and let your kids know the size of a deposit that you're prepared to give them, but that the mortgage/bills are up to them to look after. It means selling the family home, but that will probably have to happen sometime anyway.

My son moved out 4 years ago, at the age of 22. He is buying his own house now, with his partner. We live in the southeast, so it is possible for some people. He didn't go to university.
My 2nd son is hopefully going to uni in september. He will be coming home for holidays (he's informed me) and he's welcome to come back afterwards, but I really hope he doesn't ,for his sake. I think 21 is time to spread your wings, especially after the experience of being at uni. I had to spend a year at home after being at university, and tbh, I hated it.

I'm certainly not resentful - though my own parents were simply to poor to help out in even the most minimal way after I left for university at 18, and with numerous younger siblings in a very small house, returning after university was never an option - more baffled by alterations in expectation from university leavers.

I don't remember any such obsession with 'getting on the property ladder' as being a major goal, and ideas about being entitled to a certain minimum standard of living, or the idea that large numbers of people felt they had no choice other than to return to their parents' house after university. We would have seen it as a defeat or a sign you weren't able for the real world, which just involved being poor and surviving You worked at whatever job you could find and rented a room in a house share close to that job, wherever it was. Or you squatted. Or, for my generation of Irish university leavers, you emigrated because there weren't any jobs.

I lived in house shares for the best part of ten years, and at one point, although I was already working part-time in my first academic job, I was living in a disused London warehouse under one of those Camelot 'this building is occupied' cheap rent schemes. With about eight other people, many also working in professional jobs. I was well into my thirties before we were able to scrape together the deposit on a tiny flat. The same is true for a lot of my friends, who are academics, writers, musicians, lawyers - many still rent.

So the idea that it's all different now because' in the past everyone was able to buy a property by the age of 22' doesn't chime at all with my experience.

What has changed is the expectation that you should be 'getting on the property ladder' and that going back to your parents is normal and expected as a step towards doing this.

I don't want to sound all 'Ooh, in my day we walked barefoot to school through the fields, warming our hands on a shared hot potato and eating worms for lunch', but as someone who has worked for a decade and a half in universities, I have seen the psychological age of the average undergraduate get younger and younger and their parents get more and more involved in their lives in a way that is - for me - infantilising.

I mean 'helicopter parents' coming in to query their children's marks (sometimes with their children, sometimes alone), or phoning to offer excuses why their offspring didn't make it to a lecture. It can't be unrelated.

DH got a job straight after uni in his chosen field (in London) and I graduated a year later and also got a little job via a friend's mum. Our first flat wasn't brilliant at all but it served a purpose until we could afford something better.

I think it did us the world of good to stand on our own two feet from the beginning, neither of us have been home permanently since. We did stay for 3mo at PIL between house sale and house purchase and it was particularly awkward.

If DD was having trouble securing accommodation, DH and I would likely pay her deposit/fees and/or act as guarantor. That would enable her to rent somewhere, which I'd expect to be a house-share or similar.

whiteshirt yes! I'm only 35 but the expectations of graduates these days are a million miles away from where they seem to be now.

Sorry seemed to be then

My oldest got a job pretty much straight after graduation and moved away - but the only way he and his partner manage it is that they houseshare - I think there are 8 of them in a largish flat. They're educated professionals in reasonable jobs, but they have a student lifestyle because that's all that's possible. That would have been pretty unusual when I was in my late 20s.

I haven't read the whole thread but I am an early 30s professional in London and have quite a few colleagues who houseshare with other professionals. No stigma, they have successful careers, it's really very common, and there is a huge improvement in the living space/location /amenities when multiple people are pooling to pay for it. And that's how living is made affordable for (mainly but not all single) people with jobs.

My son went to uni at 19 and never came back. Four year degree and then moved from uni to London. My youngest is taking a PhD which will take him through the next four years. I'm assuming he won't come back after. Both stayed away at uni rather than home.

Mine flat shares. Still cost him £300 a week though.

Haven't read the thread, but why do you expect them to come back home and why on earth would you stretch yourself financially to do that?

Why won't they be house-sharing like hundreds of thousand of other 20 somethings? Why can't they live independently?