The findings of the first study in the UK to look at the mental health impact of moving home on adult children surprised demographers at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), who were expecting to find it had the opposite effect on well-being. According to the research, moving back into the parental home as an adult was once seen by many youngsters as a retrograde step and even something to be ashamed of. Now, a new study suggests that such a move actually improves the mental health of these “boomerang adults”, thanks in no small part to a stressful and increasingly expensive rental market.
While previous research found that parents experience a dip in mental health when their adult children return to live at the family home, the new study by ISER, part of the University of Essex, found that for their children it was associated with an improvement in mental health scores – despite losing independence.
Nearly 5 million adults live with their parents, according to the 2021 UK census, a 14.7% increase from 2011.
‘Boomerang’ Moves and Young Adults’ Mental Well-being in the United Kingdom, published in Advances in Life Course Research, suggests that the so-called “boomerang generation” may find parental support beneficial – especially if it enables them to escape the stress of the private rental sector.
Between 2009 and 2020, it found, 15% of the 9,714 British adults aged between 21 and 35 they studied moved back in with their parents at least once.
Psychologist Mamta Saha told the newsweekly, “There are many benefits for Asian children and adults moving in with their parents. Obviously, there's financial saving. Secondly, it's an opportunity to heal relationships. A lot of my clients come to me with childhood trauma, with a very orthodox upbringing that forced them to be a doctor or a certain way or have a social standing in society. This has left a lot of trauma and scars in people in Asian adult children, and I've certainly seen people moving in with their parents being with their parents enables an opportunity to heal that trauma by speaking by sharing by getting the parents to understand the impact and just talking things out.
“What happens is if you don't move back in with your parents, often people can really harbour negative feelings towards their upbringing and create a distance a detachment from their parents, which I think parents can find quite confusing because they've done a good job raising their kids, the kids are standing on their own two feet successful, and then they actually don't maintain a relationship with their own biological parents. This doesn't make sense.
“So moving in, helps people to reform relationships, reconnect really in fresh ways. There's also financial saving. It’s an opportunity to value and appreciate parents as well and actually just spend time with them because once you've got your career under your belt, you're an adult. You've got your job, you've got your career qualifications, then you can actually get to know your parents and you can they can get to know you for who you are as an adult. And you can also support them and help them out and also just repay all the care that they gave you forward. So there are loads of loads of benefits.
“I think that at the end of the day, if we can create safety in our homes and that feeling of safety, which often comes with being with your biological parents when the relationship is healthy, then it's very good for our emotional and psychological well-being. It really is.”
