Large numbers of adult children in Ireland are living with their parents. Some can’t afford not to, and others enjoy the warmth of the parental home, but there are also unhappy cases marked by tensions, rows – even violence
‘IT’S HANDY. The washing’s done,” says Lorcan Mulvey, the Cavan GAA county player, about living at home with his parents. You can take a few knocks on the pitch, and, with “people on your back” elsewhere, home is a soothing place, he believes. He spends most of his time out of the house, between his full-time job as a foreman, four nights’ training a week and football and rugby every weekend. And the key to being an independent adult while mammy still cooks for you? His parents “don’t ask too many questions”, he says.
Mulvey is typical of many young Irishmen enjoying the comfort of home: 33 per cent of 25- to 35-year-olds and 84 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds still live with their parents. For 25- to 35-year-old women the figure is lower, at 18 per cent; for female 18-24s it is 78 per cent.
These latest Eurostat figures delight the psychiatrist Prof Patricia Casey. “I have two sons and thought maybe I’ll be able to hold on to them a little longer,” she says. With more young adults having to return home out of financial necessity, there’s nothing wrong with them living with their parents, she adds, as long as they contribute financially and practically to the running of the family home.
There’s nothing peculiarly Irish about these Eurostats, measured on the cusp of recession in 2008, as they’re on a par with the European average.
So is the Irish mammy’s reputation for being clingier than others justified? The psychologist and family therapist Rosaleen McElvaney doesn’t think so. “It’s parents’ job to take care of their children,” she says. “It’s the adult child’s job to move out.”
Sara Stokes, who is working on a PhD in sociology at NUI Galway, says that carefree youth has been extended into the 20s and beyond. With most Irish people holding off marriage until their early 30s, youth may amount to more than a third of a lifetime.
Conor Doyle, who is 24, has moved back to his parents’ house in Waterford after three independent years at Dublin City University. “My mammy is still looking after me,” he says. “But my parents don’t impose on me and I don’t take them for granted.”
Doyle moved back home when he was offered a job in Waterford. Also a part-time model and radio promoter, he socialises most nights during the week and travels most weekends with the money he’d otherwise spend on rent and household bills.
Some young men feel embarrassed to be living at home, but for Doyle “there’s no issue there”, he says. “It never bothered me. give me a free run. We have a very good relationship.” He contributes financially, though his parents handle the bills.
Prof Casey believes that living at home as a young adult is usually a happy transition into independent adulthood, but it can go wrong if young adults are afraid to separate or have psychological problems that prevent them leaving.
In Ireland there have been extreme cases of young adults with psychiatric problems murdering their parents. That’s thankfully rare, but parents being bullied and physically threatened by adult offspring is a phenomenon that is increasingly apparent to Parentline, which reports that 8 per cent of its calls are from parents of adults aged 24 and older who are usually living with them.
Many of these young adults have returned home after losing jobs, homes or partners, says Rita Reilly, Parentline co-ordinator. Their parents’ complaints range from fights over the remote to unreasonable financial requests and wanting the parents’ car on demand. Mothers complain that their adult offspring expect everything to be done for them – cooking, cleaning, ironing – even though they don’t contribute financially.
In general, though, Reilly believes these cases are exceptions and that most young adults living at home are genuinely trying to launch themselves into independence in difficult times.
Shane Canning, a 24-year-old, is making a pot of healthy vegetable soup for his parents as he talks about the path his life has taken since he got a degree in sport and health in Liverpool. In November 2008 he returned home to Co Donegal knowing that finding a job as a personal trainer would be difficult, but he was still surprised at how bad the jobs market really was. “I had independence, living away from home for three years, so coming back to live at home was tough,” he says.
From his parents’ home he is launching his own business, while helping around the house and occasionally doing babysitting work for an older sister who has her own home and three children. Two other older siblings are also independent. “I’m the youngest, so I think my mother was glad to see me coming home,” Canning says. Many of his friends are living with their parents, some having lost good jobs and homes. “It’s now more acceptable . If you are struggling financially you can always fall back on your family,” he says.
Fearghal Hughes, who for the past six months has been living independently in rented accommodation, having “got to the stage in my life where I needed to branch out”, is not keen to move back home but may have to. He has a degree in environmental science from Trinity College Dublin but, 120 CVs later, he can’t find any sort of a job. “It’s so frustrating,” he says.
According to Sara Stokes, using home as a waystation has become the norm for some, with many gap-year world travellers returning to the nest. Geraldine Deach, who is 27, is employed but living at home because she is paying off a loan she took out in 2008 for a six-month trip to Australia and Thailand.
Her mother is delighted to have her home, and cooks for her, but even though Geraldine gets on well with her “easy-going” parents she doesn’t want to impose on them by having friends around or choosing the TV viewing in the evenings. She feels lucky to have her family, because she sees that the alternative is to be like her cash-strapped friends who have mortgaged apartments and can’t afford social lives.
'Sharing the house is 100 per cent natural'
A master’s degree in archaeology from Trinity College Dublin didn’t set up 23-year-old Niall Murphy for a secure career. After graduation he lived independently and worked as a commercial archaeologist for several months, but work dried up because of the downturn and he found himself back with his parents in the family home in Termonfeckin, Co Louth.
His mother, Betty, is “a typical Irish mammy – she’ll look after you”, says Niall, whose two brothers have emigrated. Even though he lives at home, “there’s no sense of controlling . . . Sharing the house with my parents is 100 per cent natural and organic. There are no rules or negotiations, no fighting over the remote”.
He misses having his own home, “standing on your own two feet”, taking responsibility and budgeting, and is looking forward to doing so again. “It was disappointing to have to go home,” he says. “You feel you’ve taken a backward step.” Niall is studying acting and is in a local band, The Rockafellas.
Betty has always been full-time in the home, looking after her children and her parents. “Caring? I do it for everyone,” she says. She enjoys having Niall back home, and if he were to move out again she would miss the music. “It’s no problem having him at home. He’s brilliant, to be quite honest.”
Niall helped Betty care for her own mother, who died recently of Alzheimer’s, patiently taking his grandmother for walks in the village. Betty says that Niall never gave her a moment’s bother and today does a lot of the cooking and chores around the house.
“I think the silent majority of families just get on with life, putting first things first, and everything else follows through . . . Niall is very, very caring, a brilliant guy. You’d be lost without him,”she says.
'I'm a typical Irish mammy'
“It had a big effect on Mom when my sister left home. We are all very close,” says Eoghan Rogers a 27-year-old VAT analyst who likes living in Co Wicklow with his mother, Mary O’Reilly, and her partner, Gilbert White, so much that when they moved from Bray to Ashford two years ago he went with them. “I realised that it would have a big negative effect on Mom . . . I don’t want to move out for that reason . . . Mom would encourage me to move out for my own personal development.”
He has friends living with their parents who feel they are still treated like children, though he himself feels “independent completely”. At weekends he tends to stay in friends’ houses and would move nearer to Dublin for the geographical convenience.
Mary says: “I’m a typical Irish mammy, absolutely – cooking, washing, ironing. I like to have things my own way.” She loves having her “easy-going” son at home. “It’s not a strain, or stressful or odd . . . I’m not parenting him any more. He comes and goes as he pleases. It’s just three adult people who have respect for each other’s space.” Eoghan will text on his way home to ask if there’s dinner going, but if Mary’s out he’ll get a takeaway.
Mary’s 28-year-old daughter Sheenagh lives in Leopardstown, though they talk and text every day and she visits for weekends.
Several of Eoghan’s friends still live at home. Mary says Irish boys are less well-organised than girls about finding living space and housemates, and more relaxed about living with their mothers.
“I don’t feel I’m parenting him now,” she says. “Eoghan is very respectful. It matters to him what I think, but he knows enough now to lead a normal adult life . . . He’ll be gone soon enough.”
'If they live here forever it's not healthy'
“Out the door by 24” is the tradition her father grew up with, but, at 25, Rebecca Lee is itching to get out the door at an age when her parents were getting married and starting a family. Living at home in Glenageary, Co Dublin, along with her sisters Rachel, who is 27, and Ruth, who is 22 – both are nurses – Rebecca, a radio traffic and news presenter on Q102, says the lack of privacy is the main drawback. The sisters argue over who gets the shower, what to watch on TV and the etiquette of “borrowing” clothes and make-up.
On the plus side, her family is close-knit and her parents “very, very supportive”. Her mother, Zuilmah, who works part-time for Fáilte Ireland, always has a hot dinner waiting, lays out Rebecca’s clothes and helps her manage a hectic lifestyle as a freelance broadcaster who has to be at work to do the early-morning traffic report six days a week. Her dad, Linden, a lecturer at UCD’s Smurfit business school, is always on hand with financial advice and practical help.
“It’s much more difficult now than it was in our time, the last recession in the 1980s,” says Linden, who enjoys impromptu lunches and late-night conversations with his daughters. Rebecca knows she’s fortunate but still tells herself: “Face it, at your age you should be independent.” It annoys her that Linden and Zuilmah expect her to text them her whereabouts when she goes out at night. Linden says he tells his daughters that if they don’t text it would be their fault if they were assaulted and nobody found them lying in the street until it was too late.
Zuilmah is reluctant to see her daughters leave. “I would feel very sad,” she says. “Home would be really quiet. I’d miss the music blaring, the doorbell ringing and the exciting atmosphere at the weekends when they’re getting ready to go out. My daughters are great company. It’s a gradual process of going out the door – but not until they’re ready.” Linden agrees but says: “I’ve told them that if they live here forever it’s not healthy.”
The sisters have long-term plans to get a place together once the family have decided a move is feasible.
