Moving back in with your parents can make you crazy

Young adults who return to live with their parents may experience unforeseen emotional consequences, new research has found.

Jennifer Caputo, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, said the move back home can be detrimental to their mental health.

The findings, slated to be published in the journal Society and Mental Health, “suggest that norms about attaining residential independence in young adulthood remain powerful,” Ms Caputo said.

“These findings are consistent with research indicating that disappointments in other areas of young people’s lives can have mental-health consequences.”

Moving back in with parents can be triggered by losing a job or a relationship ending, the researchers noted.

Still, the study noted that coming home “remained a significant predictor of depression even after accounting for these factors”.

An individual’s ability to get along by themselves was an indicator of a “successful transition to adulthood and residential independence is highly valued,” Caputo said.

“Not achieving these goals might create feelings of failure.”

The study comes at a time when more young adults are living at home.

Pew Research Centre noted that in 2016 in the US, 15 percent of people ages 25 to 35 were living at their parents’ place. That’s a 5 percent jump for millennials, compared with the 10 percent of generation Xers who were at home when they were the same age, Pew found.

The 15 percent rate is almost double the 8 percent rate for members of the Silent Generation, when they were the same age in 1964.

The Pew numbers do not specify just how many of the people living with their parents once lived by themselves. But that research pointed to data saying the median estimated length of time living with their one-time empty-nest parents was three years.

Millennials don’t seem to be deterred. Data released last year found that 27 per cent of young adults from age 20 to 26 wouldn’t have a problem living with mum and dad in their early 30s. Another 11 per cent said they’d be fine with the arrangement even as they hit 35 or older.

In Australia, the number of people per dwelling has been falling again since 2014 after ticking upwards for the first time in a century between 2006 and 2013 — a result of children staying at home longer with their parents.