Young men who get stuck doing nothing...

[Bunny890]

My younger brother is living at home with my parents and I know several other young men who also get 'stuck' at home - endlessly online, alienate friends, not able to even look for employment or engage with healthcare. I realise that there is a mental health element to this, but I can't help but feel frustrated - Mu

Also and this may be an unpopular thought...there has been a modern wave of demonising young men, particularly white men. It started from a place where it made sense but seems to have just become about bashing males and boys and there needs. Perhaps this is causing many to pull back and head into echo chambers.

@gotelltheoldmandowntheroad You're wrong but it's okay.

I also think boys need to be pushed to grow up in a way that girls don't. Perhaps this is how we are socialised and I know it isn't universally true, but women seem to want to grow up. Boys seem to need to be encouraged. A bit like Peter Pan. I read something yesterday about men passing skills to boys and boys learning 'man to boy' - i wonder if something in this old approach is missing?

When I was young in the 60s lads first action was to buy a clapped out car which they souped up and maintained / polished or played footie or had motorbikes.

it gave them a hobby and shared interest - also went to the pub.
Such a shame the world seems to need no skills other than commenting online, gaming or vlogging. Which you do in the house.

Sadly I know a few around mid 40s, 50s. Don't think it's new. They are now living with elderly parents. In a couple of cases, mum thinks the parents have stopped socialising from sheer embarrassment. I dunno.

the fact your brother is violent makes me wonder if he's taking drugs. Also, your mum giving up work, none of the cases I know have done that.

the two (of 3) women I know who did it - interestingly their parents handled it differently. They paid for them to leave the home and effectively told them to get on with it. Seems to have worked.

the third is an still an addict and doesn't recognise me in the street but she took heroin at school. She sleeps at her parents but doesn't really talk to them.

Sorry, I should add - your brother must have been very ill for your mum to give up work so does he have a pyschiatrist etc?

Could he be encouraged to get into some sort of social activity as a start? Perhaps something like a ‘Men’s Shed’ group or a Warhammer group, where mainly men do something crafty/productive together and chat side by side. the Men’s Shed founder says something about how men chat ‘shoulder to shoulder’ whereas women tend to chat face to face, so getting him involved in some sort of activity could be a good way to get him out of his room.

I do think a pp is correct that your mum is probably enabling him, and that’s going to take some work on your mum’s part to step back and allow him to falter while he finds his way. Helping her acknowledge her anxiety about the situation might help.

Mental health problems always seem exacerbated or seem to come out because of environment, so the best thing you can each do as a family is to work on yourselves and your ability to sit back, sit with your anxiety, and let him fail. Learning to pick yourself up after failure is important for success and only he can go on that journey for himself.

Me again sorry!

I also think people often grew up out of necessity and a sense of reward...access to sex, own home etc.

If you can watch porn and can't afford a place etc, there seems little reward to growing up which instead just feels full of scary responsibility.

Definitely know girls and young women in this situation and I'm talking circa 20-15 years ago so before internet got this good where now, you hardly need to leave your home. You could work, see a doctor, socialise, have a relationship, work out, order food, bank, shop and study all online. I know the young man in the op is not working but it's very easy to be someone else online, have a completely separate identity and share as much or as little as you want. Typing things instead of interacting over the phone or face to face you could go through things, delete them and really more control over the interaction. I can see the appeal and how easy it is to slip into being an online hermit.
The violence thing though isn't the case for all of those online hermits like PPs said.

My son is heading this way, he's on the spectrum.
Life can be overwhelming for some people and they need extra support, it's not what I would choose but I will deal with it as compassionately as I can.

Hardly surprising - they are all in their bedrooms. You aren’t going to come across them!

I'm gonna get slammed for this but I think that gaming has a huge part to play in this.
They immerse themselves in a world that is extreme and not real to the point they cannot deal with anything in real life.
Parents need to aware of this and not allow it to get to a point where their child cannot function in real life.

It’s called “failure to launch”. While a minority of people are truly hermitic, it’s usually because someone hasn’t been pushed to fend for themselves.

Gaming, social media and pornography alienating people from real relationships. It’s endemic everywhere I think but does seem to affect men more.

There are links to porn addiction making real life sex and relationships less appealing. There are school counsellors dealing with this at a younge age. I think a huge reason men wanted to grow up is for sex and women. But those things are accessible online and thus the need to grow up diminished.

I’m sure if their enablers stopped providing food and cut the internet connection off they would find a way out of their rooms.

Men (and people in general) have hugely extended youths now - 20s are basically seen as an extension of your teens, for ‘having fun’ and doing what you want. Some people will use those years usefully and build a career and life. Others will just sit about playing computer games, not doing much and living at home.

The problem is that responsibility is a good driver, if you have to work to pay for your food and roof over your head, then you have no choice and you just do it. If parents are offering these things for free there’s no incentive. And too much is excused through ‘mental health’.

I would just kick him out.

I watched a documentary on that situation in Japan where apparently it's a bit of a phenomenon.

This is probably not going to be a popular view but I also think that the balance of power, if that is the right term, has swung somewhat from parents towards their DC of late. Once upon a time parents were firmly in control of the household. Nowadays we parent in a more collaborative way, which in many ways can be a very good thing, but it can end up where the DC being a bit entitled or living in a way where they take from their parents but are not expected to give back. I am not judging anyone here as I have a tendency to give my DC far more leeway than I was allowed and it's a very tricky balance to maintain.

I have a different angle on this - I don’t think it’s ‘demonising’ but I do think the playing field has shifted and white men have a slightly higher barrier to the traditional idea of ‘success’. We’re not too far along from the era when women weren’t expected to take ‘serious’ careers or be the breadwinner - a job, sure, but not one that threatens mens traditional spheres. I’m only 40 but I remember men being ‘head of the household’ was still quite a real thing when I was young.

It’s good that things are balancing out in this way, but power is not infinite and so more power for women does mean less for men and I wonder if there’s a feeling of lostness in a generation of white men who will likely have to try a lot harder than their dads did.

I agree. You see it on here all the time, parents taking their 7 year old’s opinions seriously and placing far too much values on their whims and what they think. I don’t think my parents listened to a single word I said until I left home, I had very little choice in life (wasn’t allowed to choose own clothes, was never asked my opinion on anything, was just told what was going to happen). I wouldn’t endorse that necessarily but the ‘modern’ approach is worse in my view. It actually makes kids more anxious by making them feel like they hold more responsibility than they should.

My brothers( now 40yo) friendship group was like this back in the 1990s. They seemed to have no ambition or motivation about them. They were content in picking up dole money for weed and staying in their room gaming.

They eventually got fairly entry level jobs and most moved out. They weren't in the popular group, didn't have girlfriends/ weren't sporty. Their friends were in similar situation so they were reinforcing it as a norm. They were also socially awkward and still are as 40yos.

I agree with the poster who said about the passing on of skills from older men and projects like doing up cars. Cars are now more complicated with electrics. They are not the sort of cars you could tinker with like back in the 70s/ 80s.

I imagine it's quite hard to find your place in society.

Interestingly my cousin ( female 30yo) is the only female I can think of like this. Still living with parents, inconsistent employment. She is open about her mental health issues. I've never heard men in this situation openly talk about their mental health.

He is hiding from his insecurities and fears. ''Men' see it as a weakness and what they really need is a kick up the arse.
It's all bottled up inside him, and the only emotion which comes out is anger. He won't seek help, because he's not even aware of the problem. He just wants to hide away.

Oddly, I'd say the best way to help, is for him to be forced to take any old job, if he refuses, he gets kicked out of the house. He doesn't mean to be angry, he doesn't mean to mis-understand, it's just that he doesn't know which way to turn.
If he is autistic (properly, not just 'on the spectrum') then that's different, but I'd suggest he's got a cushy life, and so why change it...

Having a job really does help with both Mental Health and getting you back into society. A Part time job shelf stacking in your local asda / B&Q etc... would probably do wonders for him, (in the long term). Your mum should try to push him a bit into just doing 10 hrs a week or whatever the minimum is.

The only person I've heard of like this had bad mental health issues. It was awful, his mum took care of him and his two sisters tried their best to get him therapy and once to get doctors to see him when he had an injury that got very badly infected. Such a worry for the parents.

The ones I know of are all somewhere on the ASD spectrum, which is not to say that is the only cause. I do think that many young people are extremely anxious these days, whether that's just because society recognises it more or it's an effect of modern life, internet access, social media or whatever.

I think parenting comes into it in the sense that once it has taken hold, it's very hard to overcome the comfort of just opting out, and facing the world becomes entirely overwhelming. I doubt it relates to earlier parenting but maybe to parents who cosset their teen / young adult and hope it will get better eventually.

My DC have gone through periods of anxiety and depression - I always encourage them to get out and do things, however small, and support them to overcome self doubts, and it has definitely paid off. (They are girls though, not boys).

I think the fact your mother has given up her job is actually a very bad sign. She is over invested in her son and his life to the detriment of her own, and that does say 'enabler' to me. I could understand if he was suicidal, but you don't mention that.

It would be useful to understand why your mum had to give up her job. What care does he need? Is it a physical disability? Or serious mental health issues?