Why do so many more adult men than adult women still live with their parents?

[Tsort]

Obviously, COVID and CoL have had a severe impact on young people’s ability to leave home, regardless of gender. However, the percentage of young men at home is so much higher. These are the percentages for 2021 (according to Statista), as you’ll see, the difference starts to get quite striking in the mid-20’s.

Age Male Female
34 11% 3%
33 11%. 2%
32 13% 5%
31 14% 6%
30 15% 6%
29 19% 9%
28 25% 12%
27 30% 13%
26 36% 21%
25 43% 25%
24 56% 40%
23 56% 50%
22 65% 54%
21 67% 50%
20 64% 57%
19 81% 76%
18 92% 89%

So, what gives, do you think? Is it the old trope of useless man children who can’t cope on their own? Is it that women more likely to want their independence? Something else?

Fascinating. Could some of the percentage be due to cultural reasons? I believe in some Asian cultures men move their wives into their family homes? So in this statistic the men would be with the parents, but women not (as they're with the in laws)

I was going to say this! Women are much more likely to be carers to elderly parents than men. I have an elderly great aunt whose nieces are much more involved in visiting care than her own sons.

I wondered about the cultural differences too.

Are Young women are keener to start families and to 'homemake' than men?
Whereas males aren't in such a hurry?

Females are more likely to share with older males

I'd like to see the stats on young single mothers and social housing. I had a quick look but couldn't see anything

My ex who is 39 lives at home with mummy and daddy. Any relationship he gets into he moves in with the woman. I owned the house prior to him moving in. He could easily afford to rent somewhere but gets everything done for him by his mummy and as self employed but doesn't pay tax, no one would rent to him. Mummy also does everything when he has my DS.

That's the received wisdom but it's not my experience. I'd say married men are less likely to provide care than their wives but I know more single men who provide care than single women.

I am a lone widowed parent, two sons 17 and 21 and as much as l love then l am looking forward t o having house to myself, so def not encouraging them to stay too long, eldest has had a girlfriend la st four years and they are saving up for a house, l am not in a position to help them.

I think the figures are skewed a bit. Most of the men I know that are still living at home with parents, also have their girlfriends living with them, while they save for a deposit.

This will mean that the figures will show the men as living at home, while the women are shown as not still living at home, although they really are (just somebody else's home).

Looking at those %, at age 21, the percentage of men at home increase a step, where for women at drops significantly.

I think this blip must be to do with the dynamics around university. In the years up to that, the difference may be partially down to higher participation in higher education. Slightly more girls go away to uni.

Then at 21, it looks like more of the male graduates return home afterwards?

Maybe this is down to the typical age gap in relationships. E.g. the women are moving in with the boyfriend who graduated a year or two previously. Where the men are saving for a place, for when their girlfriend graduates in a year or two.

I think there are lots of small factors like this which will be contributing.

Quite a few reasons have been mentioned already.

More women then men are attending uni thus leaving home to study. More women are graduating thus more likely to be in a higher earning bracket enabling independence.

Women still tend to go out with, and marry, men a couple of years older than they are, and are more likely to move in with partners in their twenties. Said older men have probably progressed their careers further/better earnings to enable living together.

Men are also less likely to get married in their twenties, by the age of 29, women are 50 per cent more likely to be married than men.

When couples divorce men are significantly more likely to return to living with their parents as they are way more likely to have to leave the family home to the ex wife.

Single men are pretty much back of the queue when it comes to social or emergency housing. Most homeless are men.

Within BAME communities there is way more multigenerational families living in one home with women again marrying much earlier then men.

Purely anecdotal but I generally see that men get an easier time at the family home then women.

Agreed that this thread is very judgemental.
I know a lot of adults living at home and none of them are lazy, autistic or have anything wrong with them. It's the fact the cost of living is so astronomical especially in certain areas. Even if they could afford it, there are now energy bills to consider. I'm not surprised at all that many stay living at home.
The original post may not be snide but the follow up replies certainly are. I'm just glad I don't judge others on such a minor aspect of life.

The reasons for young people living at home are very clear and acknowledged in the OP. The question is ‘why so many more young men than women?’

Haven' t read the thread.

I suspect a lot of the young woman missing from their parents homes are being supported by older, higher-earning men.

Young men are left at home because slightly older and higher-earning women apparently aren't interested in sex enough to do their bit for equality by supporting a younger man they'd like to fuck.

@SophieIsHereToday My thinking (based on the limited amount I read last night) is that men are diagnosed and receive support, but women are un/misdiagnosed and basically told to get on with it by society and their families. So, they do.

A lifetime of masking. ☹️

If you can google some statistics about how many people are cohabiting with an opposite sex partner, broken down by age, you may be able to prove me right or wrong. (I don't care enough to do it myself.)

I think it's more to do with the complexities of family unit dynamics. Sometimes there's a co dependency where it suits a parent to have the son at home. By brother didn't get his own place til our mum died and was probably ready to move out donkeys years ago but they were dependant on each other. He had nowhere to go and she feared she wouldn't be able to stay in the property on her own be Aude it was too big. She also felt safer having him in the house.

This is interesting! I’ll see if I can find any stats.

Often people don't move out until they find a partner. It's expensive to live alone and not everyone wants to live with friends. Men have always been older than their partners on average.

Actually, we don't need to google statistics, if we know that average age gap in relationships. I think it's about three years?

So in the OP data, just compare woman with men three years older than them. If they're about the same, you have your answer.

For example, 25 year old female is 25%, 28 year-old male is 25%, bang on! Sounds like we have a winner.

One more: 20 year old female 57%, 23 year old male, 56%. Almost identical.

I agree a lot of men have to move back "home" because ex wife has kept the family home with children. Not always but often because he's probably been a shit husband in the first place.

Let's be honest though - a lot of fully grown men are pathetic little man babies who are happy to have their arses wiped and bills paid by another woman, whether it's Mummy or not. Mumsnet has taught me this enormously.

Females in general are more mature and have higher levels of respect for themselves.

I could find anything on social housing, but my search took me to the ONS and I thought the following was interesting (it’s all from 2019, though, so I wonder to what extent things will have changed post lockdown):

Married and civil partner couple families remained the most common family type in 2019, representing two-thirds of all families (12.8 million). Cohabiting couple families were the second-largest family type at 3.5 million (18.4%), followed by 2.9 million (14.9%) lone parent families.

The number of people living alone has increased by a fifth over the last 20 years, driven mainly by increases in men aged 45 to 64 years living alone; Scotland has the highest proportion of one-person households at 35.0%, while London has the lowest (23.9%).

Lone parent mothers remained the most common type of lone parents in 2019, accounting for 86% of this family type. However, from 1999 to 2019 the number of lone parent fathers has grown by 22%, while the number of lone parent mothers also increased but at a slower rate (13.4%). These increases are both statistically significant.

Over the last decade to 2019, the number of lone parents with non-dependent children has increased by 17.5%, while the number of lone parents with dependent children has decreased by 9.8%. These changes are both statistically significant.

Reasons for the decrease in lone parent families with dependents may include:

• more lone parents could be re-partnering
• the number of births has been declining
• more women have been postponing childbearing to later years
• there have been fewer teenage pregnancies

While the increase in lone parents with non-dependent children is likely to be partly driven by the ageing of children who previously were dependents in lone parent families, it could also be as a result of increases in separation at older ages as well as an increasing trend of young adults living with parents.

The adult men that I personally know that live with their parents have been shafted by divorce and cannot afford to rent or buy when ex partner has the home. Maintenance costs etc killed by brother. Ex wife took the lot and threatened to stop him from seeing kids - so many sadly use kids as a weapon to bargain with. He had to move in with parents since she took everything and solicitor costs and her threats meant he didn't pursue any part of the home he had paid for (she worked a few hours a week).

I copied the data into a spreadsheet and compared women with men aged three years older, instead of the same age. Only for pairs where women are aged 29 or over and men 34 or over are there more men in their parents home. At all lower ages the discrepancy vanishes.

Lots of reasons already mentioned but my list is below. Some of these things might not be "woke" or "PC" but reality often doesn't match our expectations or desires. I think the below are true, but that doesn't automatically mean I think it's a good thing they are true.

a) Men have less reason to move out because they either have more freedom than women living with their parents, or at least care less about the restrictions.
b) Parents are more likely to let their son's partner move in with them than they are to let their daughter's partner move in. So the stats reflect the woman moving out rather than the man.
c) In a relationship breakdown the woman is more likely to remain in the previously-shared home and the man move out.
d) At younger ages women earn more than men. Obviously the average man gets paid more than the average woman, but those figures are skewed by high earning older men. In junior roles women earn more, it's only when their career progresses that men catch up and then take the lead.
e) I've always thought there's some truth in George Orwell's idea about why there are more homeless men than women, that most women are able to "attach" themselves to a man if they need to. I think this idea can be transferred to the living at home situation too. A man sees a woman with no way to support herself and seeks to protect her, a woman sees a man with no way to support himself and sees him as a failure. It's a psychological difference/patriarchal view - society sees women needing male support, but not the other way around.
f) Women have always tended to form relationships with older men (and men form relationships with younger women). Therefore a woman's partner is more likely to have their own home which they can move into than a man's partner is.
g) Women have a different view of the status in having their own home, they place more importance on it. Men place more importance on other things like cars and a big shiny new television.

These reasons generally reflect an ingrained view that women are weaker than men therefore need more protection.

Young women are more likely to be given a council house and middle aged and older men are more likely to have to move out of the family home following a separation.

In my experience in the young 20s bracket men are more likely to go into a trade rather than uni and so are earning much less in the early years as an apprentice. Then it takes a year or two to get on their feet enough financially to move out.

Well my ds 28 was at home to save a massive house deposit. He’s going in 2 weeks.

Thats the only reason he was at home. He’s desperate to go!