Young men living at home with parents

[Michael]

Young men living at home with parents are more violent

Young men who stay at home with their parents are more violent than those who live independently, according to new research at Queen Mary, University of London. The new study* indicates that men still living at home in their early twenties have fewer responsibilities and more disposable income to spend on alcohol.

This group makes up only four percent of the UK's male population but they are responsible for 16 per cent of all violent injuries in the last five years.

Delaying social independence and remaining in the parental home have become more common over the past 40 years in both the UK and the USA.

Professor Jeremy Coid and Dr Ming Yang surveyed over 8000 men and women. Participants answered questions about violent behaviour over the past 5 years and mental health problems.

Their results showed for the first time that staying in the parental home is a stronger risk factor for young men's violence than any other factor.

Source (http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/07/20/young.men.living.home.with.parents.are.more.violen t)

Nothing too surprising here - though it is nice to see some statistical confirmation of this trend.

Just another 'unintended consequence' of suburban living in my opinion. The suburban housing style is very expensive and mostly out of reach for younger people (which is the trend that is driving the trend of young men living at home in their 20's).

Combine that with the sterility of the suburban neighborhoods and you've got a powderkeg. We've long observed that suburban teens are more violent than rural or urban teens, no suprise that the same pattern shows up with young men in their 20's living at home with parents.

[Daktoria]

From the article:
"Violence outside of the home, mainly involving strangers, is the most common scenario and just one of a series of hedonistic and negative social behaviours such as hazardous drinking, drug misuse, sexual risk taking, and non-violent antisocial behaviour.


"And these are more common among young men who do not have responsibilities of providing their own accommodation, supporting dependent children, or experiencing beneficial effects on their behaviour from living with a female partner.


"Young men who live at home are also more likely to receive financial support from their parents than in the past when the pattern was reversed. However, in this study their earnings or benefits were the same as those who had left home and taken on greater social responsibility. They therefore had more disposable income which may have partly explained why they had more problems with alcohol."

Hmm. Besides supporting children and living with women, this sounds like the guys I grew up with before going to college, but the guys I've met at school who do go home and live with their 'rents during breaks don't sound like this at all.

Perhaps the incentive to pursue higher degrees of education has to do something with it since optimistic ambition discourages excessive risk taking. Who knows.

What I don't buy though is how you're saying suburban living is expensive. Sure, buying and maintaining a house or condo costs a lot, but I have friends that live throughout the Atlantic seaboard, and we definitely agree that downtown city living is more expensive than living out of town. Yeah, there are Bohemian Bourgeois exceptions of neighborhoods (Pleasantville, the Hamptons, etc), but they're the outliers, not the norm.

Probably depends on what you consider the difference between rural and suburban though. Long Islanders and fellas from the Bronx call where I live "upstate" even though it's only an hour away from Manhattan and closer to the city than to Albany (upstate meaning the boonies, heh).

Anyway, I think causality here is reversed regarding social integration. For example, consider the Japanese Hikikomori who are going through similar quarter life crises as well as troubled men in the developing global south. While the Japanese happen to feel coerced as a result of rigid institutional expectations, developing nations don't have such established institutions despite how young men are still frustrated and unruly. America and Britain (as distinguished from continental Europe and Canada) are somewhere in the middle of the two where we do have institutions but individualism still bears an informal sense of societal demands where even if it's not your fault, you're still held accountable for the results of what happen around you (as if we have some sort of control over luck, fortune, and auspiciousness that's supposed to be portrayed through charismatic salesmanship).

Inevitable, as with any other culture, failures will arise. Without benevolence and goodwill though, failures get left alone as outcasts since it's deemed irresponsible and naive to offer a hand to strangers who might be lazy or conspiring with other to either waste your time or stab you in the back.

It's not something that can be resolved through macroscopic policies though. We can setup all the welfare programs we want, yet it just won't make a difference unless there are mutually interested individuals to synthesize the supply and demand of goodwill. Without that direct approach, all that we can do is romanticize in vain about fairy tales that could have been.

[Michael]

Hmm. Besides supporting children and living with women, this sounds like the guys I grew up with before going to college, but the guys I've met at school who do go home and live with their 'rents during breaks don't sound like this at all.
I don't think the article is suggesting that college/university students coming home to live with parents for the summer are becoming violent.

I think the article is in reference to the fact that surprisingly large numbers of young males (usually without any post-secondary education at all - which means working class males, not middle-class males) do in fact live at home with their parents through their twenties. This is the group the article is discussing.

Perhaps the incentive to pursue higher degrees of education has to do something with it since optimistic ambition discourages excessive risk taking. Who knows.
Yes, this is part of it. I'd suggest that this is mostly a social class phenomena. Upper middle class young men are generally busy going to school at that age, thinking of starting a career and marriage. They generally have good prospects.

What I don't buy though is how you're saying suburban living is expensive. Sure, buying and maintaining a house or condo costs a lot, but I have friends that live throughout the Atlantic seaboard, and we definitely agree that downtown city living is more expensive than living out of town. Yeah, there are Bohemian Bourgeois exceptions of neighborhoods (Pleasantville, the Hamptons, etc), but they're the outliers, not the norm.
The economics of housing is a very complex topic that needs its own thread discussion! :D

Suffice it to say that suburban lifestyle living is not expensive if you have a middle-class education and therefore decent job prospects.

Problem is that 75% of the US population doesn't have that. For them, suburban living is defined as the only 'socially' acceptable one, but also the one they can't really afford (despite the massive amounts of tax subsidies that are used to reduce the overall cost of suburban living). Without public subsidies, suburban living would be considerably more expensive than it is. The cost is cross-subsidized by urban dwellers, primarily through the tax code, but also through direct government spending.

And as always, one must be careful of generalities in housing issues since there is a very wide range of variety out there. Suburban housing can be an almost perfect paradise if it is one of those rare ones that that is nestled close by an old town main street with storefront shops and some local light industrial employment. But these are fairly rare and usually only found in the outskirts of the larger urban zones and benefit from commuting to weathy jobs there.

Probably depends on what you consider the difference between rural and suburban though. Long Islanders and fellas from the Bronx call where I live "upstate" even though it's only an hour away from Manhattan and closer to the city than to Albany (upstate meaning the boonies, heh).
NYC is not the only model of urban housing. It is the most expensive urban housing in the whole of the USA. It is not typical, normal or average.

Suburban is no longer defined by 'location' or distance from city centers. It is a general land-use type defined by a uniformity of single-unit-residential housing with very low population density and no commercial operations other than a corner store and a gas station, and usually located in primary proximity to multi-lane highways. It is these 'monotypes' of identical built row houses sitting out surrounded by farm-fields that are the nasty ones.

Thus, suburbs are generally expensive (energy inefficient houses, big sprawling properties and an implicit requirement of an automobile for each adult-aged resident) and at the same time subsidized due to tax-subsidized mortgages, cross-subsidized highways and cross-subsidized public service distributions (though this last is less common in US than in other western countries).

Anyway, I think causality here is reversed regarding social integration. For example, consider the Japanese Hikikomori who are going through similar quarter life crises as well as troubled men in the developing global south. While the Japanese happen to feel coerced as a result of rigid institutional expectations, developing nations don't have such established institutions despite how young men are still frustrated and unruly. America and Britain (as distinguished from continental Europe and Canada) are somewhere in the middle of the two where we do have institutions but individualism still bears an informal sense of societal demands where even if it's not your fault, you're still held accountable for the results of what happen around you (as if we have some sort of control over luck, fortune, and auspiciousness that's supposed to be portrayed through charismatic salesmanship).
Yes, USA and UK seem to be the two nations where 'poverty and misfortune' tend to be blamed upon individuals, while inherited wealth and privilege is claimed to be somehow evidential of superior merit, effort and achievement.

It is to be noted that these two nations also show the greatest level of economic inequalities in the western world - proportionally speaking, they have richer rich people and more of them, as well as poorer poor people and more of them. Oddly enough, USA & UK thus have proportionally the least in the middle, though they both claim to be 'middle-class' nations. ;)

With regard to the developing and/or the third world, I'd expect the exact same phenomena to be present. A surfeit of idle young men is dangerous for any and all societies - it is a guarenteed marker of a rising crime rate.

Indeed, one only has to look at the demographic data of the Middle East (or Pakistan or even Africa) to see why these places are particularly violent and unstable at this time. They all have big bumper crops of single young men in their teens and twenties right now and with free educations these young men have a sense of job entitlement that their local economies have no ability to provide for. This is a veritable powder-keg as they often tend to turn to crime, the military, religious extremism and/or political agitation for redress.

Inevitable, as with any other culture, failures will arise. Without benevolence and goodwill though, failures get left alone as outcasts since it's deemed irresponsible and naive to offer a hand to strangers who might be lazy or conspiring with other to either waste your time or stab you in the back.

It's not something that can be resolved through macroscopic policies though. We can setup all the welfare programs we want, yet it just won't make a difference unless there are mutually interested individuals to synthesize the supply and demand of goodwill. Without that direct approach, all that we can do is romanticize in vain about fairy tales that could have been.
I think you are drawing a bit too much into this study-report!

First of all, its not just USA and UK where the trend of young males living at home with parents well into their twenties and even thirties is occuring.

Secondly, information about the socio-cultural patterns of violence is always helpful in order to inform better public policy decisions. We already know that demographics is the very best predictor of relative rises and falls in the crime rate in any given region or locality. Any study-report involving the cultural-housing patterns of young males (who are the primary engine of social violence) is useful information and well worthy studying.

[drgoodtrips]

Source (http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/07/20/young.men.living.home.with.parents.are.more.violen t)

Nothing too surprising here - though it is nice to see some statistical confirmation of this trend.

Just another 'unintended consequence' of suburban living in my opinion. The suburban housing style is very expensive and mostly out of reach for younger people (which is the trend that is driving the trend of young men living at home in their 20's).

Combine that with the sterility of the suburban neighborhoods and you've got a powderkeg. We've long observed that suburban teens are more violent than rural or urban teens, no suprise that the same pattern shows up with young men in their 20's living at home with parents.

Well, I can't comment on what I'll call extended suburbia, but I can say that the overwhelming majority of my peers (from a wealthy suburb that we couldn't afford to live in after college) moved into Chicago proper following college and are only now spreading back out to the suburbs. Around here, the trend seems to be that the suburbs are for people who are married and having children, and the city for people who are young and single.

[Michael]

Well, I can't comment on what I'll call extended suburbia, but I can say that the overwhelming majority of my peers (from a wealthy suburb that we couldn't afford to live in after college) moved into Chicago proper following college and are only now spreading back out to the suburbs. Around here, the trend seems to be that the suburbs are for people who are married and having children, and the city for people who are young and single.
Yes, the suburbs are designed for 'married with small children' ONLY. That's part of the problem.

If you throw in a demographic curveball like adult males in their 20s living at home with mom, you get a big spike in crime rates in the suburbs. They just don't 'belong there'. ;)

Same problem with teenagers. The suburbs aren't designed for them either so they are a problem. They also ensure that our suburbs now have some of the highest crime rates.

[drgoodtrips]

Yes, the suburbs are designed for 'married with small children' ONLY. That's part of the problem.

If you throw in a demographic curveball like adult males in their 20s living at home with mom, you get a big spike in crime rates in the suburbs. They just don't 'belong there'. ;)

That does make sense. And, I refer to my own compatriots, who tend to average some graduate school and high paying jobs. I'm really can't speak to any subset of kids from my area that didn't attend college and opted instead to loaf around and work from time to time.

That group of people probably feels embittered in the first place and would tend to lack the sense of vested interest in the community that would keep an area nice. I've experienced this firsthand, in a sense. I've bought a townhouse in the suburbs and, while I find the condo association and its "community spirit" rather annoying and invasive, I do have some interest in not wanting hoodlums to be running around the streets or what-have-you (property values, you see - they'd be fucking with my wallet). I'd have less interest if I were living in a rental and no interest if I were crashing with someone who was paying the bills. In that scenario, why would I care?

Same problem with teenagers. The suburbs aren't designed for them either so they are a problem. They also ensure that our suburbs now have some of the highest crime rates.

I can certainly speak to that. As a teenager, suburban life is extremely boring. Your options are basically cheesy youth center type places, parking lots, and the local Denny's. It seems a matter of course to me that teenagers would drink and do drugs to alleviate the crushing boredom of suburban life. After all, involving themselves in the adult community is usually not an option during the time when they are trying psychologically to establish a separate identity from their parents and the group of people they associate with the parents.

[Lily]

I can certainly speak to that. As a teenager, suburban life is extremely boring. Your options are basically cheesy youth center type places, parking lots, and the local Denny's. It seems a matter of course to me that teenagers would drink and do drugs to alleviate the crushing boredom of suburban life. After all, involving themselves in the adult community is usually not an option during the time when they are trying psychologically to establish a separate identity from their parents and the group of people they associate with the parents.

Luckily, we had the beach. In the mid- to late-60's, the beach was the chosen teenage hang-out spot. We had people playing music. We had pot, acid. We had passion under the pier. We had passionate discussions. We had flowers in our hair. We had fashion. It was a great time!

Unfortunately, as more and more youth turned hippie, the town decided to construct a huge police tower right on the pier. That's when the trouble started. At one point, we experienced what the newspaper called a "riot" when the jocks of the town got liquored up and decided to come down to the beach with scissors to cut some hippie hair. Some punches and some trashcans were thrown and the whole thing lasted maybe 20 minutes. The beach scene was never the same.

[Michael]

Luckily, we had the beach. In the mid- to late-60's, the beach was the chosen teenage hang-out spot. We had people playing music. We had pot, acid. We had passion under the pier. We had passionate discussions. We had flowers in our hair. We had fashion. It was a great time!

Unfortunately, as more and more youth turned hippie, the town decided to construct a huge police tower right on the pier. That's when the trouble started. At one point, we experienced what the newspaper called a "riot" when the jocks of the town got liquored up and decided to come down to the beach with scissors to cut some hippie hair. Some punches and some trashcans were thrown and the whole thing lasted maybe 20 minutes. The beach scene was never the same.
Or so your 'older sister' told you. We all know you were in still in diapers back then... ;)

As for my teenaged years, coming from a neighborhood where everyone had backyard swimming pools and summer homes (and even vacation homes), we had a steady cycle of 'parents out of town for a week' situations so we always partied at those houses. :D

I must say though, we never had huge parties or ever got into much trouble doing this. My own parents were heavy travellers and I had the place lots of times with many small (and very decadent) parties. Even had the house to myself for six weeks the summer I was 17. Silly amounts of sex, booze and drugs though...