More young adults in 20s and 30s living with parents than in past 20 years | Society | The Guardian

Now, I don’t want to get too judge-y here, because I am sure if my parents lived in London (they don’t) and were happy to have me live with them (we love each other a lot, but treasure our independence, so this seems somewhat unlikely) I might well want to stay there rather than in my mediocre rented flat. But non-judging aside, that, my friends, is a major sex discrepancy. And I want to know why.

I suspect that men stay at home longer because movements towards equality in terms of domestic duties remain slow - not just in terms of who does them (in married/cohabiting couples, women still take on the largest share) but in terms of who we expect to do them. For all that we are encouraged to pursue careers other than homemaking, pressure on young women to run their own households remains high, while young men who live alone and fend for themselves are often slightly pitied in their ‘bachelor pads’, unless they’re amongst the cohort who subscribes strongly to the trend which I identify in my book as ‘domistericism’.

Men, in my experience, also seem to feel less compunction about hiring a cleaner if they have full-time jobs that prevent them from doing the amount of hoovering that they would like; by contrast, many of my female friends seem ashamed to even consider such a thing, no matter how many hours that they’re working.

What’s the solution? Well, the bottom line is that living independent will always make you a more appealing prospect to the opposite sex, whether you’re male or female - very few people these days are looking for a partner whose dwelling they will be required to attend to in a semi-parental way. And finding a partner means that you’ll have a better chance to get on the property ladder, since splitting the rent or mortgage will substantially increase your available funds. In other words? Quite often, I think, you have to move out of home in order, well, to move out of home.