Home Hobbiting: Why Students Can't Seem to Leave The Nest

Take a quick scan of your friends. How many still live under the comfort of Mum’s meals and SpongeBob duvet covers? How many are proud of it? More to the point, are you still your parents’ pantry pirate, stumbling in at all hours of the morning with a phone call or two beforehand; your reward an onslaught of the Nag-O-Saurus rapping on your childhood door? I believe, because face-reddening research has told me so, that many of you still are home-hobbits, whether you want to admit to it or not.

We all love the perks: the home-made cuisine, the freshly-ironed laundry, the thoughtful taping-of-shows,  and the Oprah-endorsed talks of ‘how was your day honey’ (although perhaps not the cutesy names that follow after them). After all, as known by those who have left home and made the cowardly crawl back, who would prefer 2-minute noodles and toilet-scrubbing duties to Hotel Home? Yet, the shame lingers.

Excuses are made by all of us. “Well, I was flatting/ on O.E/ am now too poor to afford to live elsewhere”. “My boyfriend/girlfriend dumped me/ my parents live in a nicer suburb/ I can’t stand my smelly flatmates” are also some less plausible choices. But we must own up to it, my fellow slothful scavengers. We stay at home because we are just too damn lazy to do anything about it.

We know, in our deepest, most embarrassed hearts, that the other generations loathe our idyllic idleness. Sometimes we loathe our freedom too, but in a glorious, KFC munching, emo-Jeremy Kyle-exaggerated fantasy world of knowing we have the world at our feet. Let them be jealous: why wouldn’t they be? We’re going to be richer, more tech-savvy, less frown-lined versions of them. It’s easy to hate your betters, especially when they’re better looking. They might try it on with the cougar-pants, lie about their age, get hideous Joan Rivers facelifts just to deny their ageing abyss of envy, but they know, too. We’re just that little bit cooler and, as they hate to hear being told, more ‘chilled out’.

In fact, the main explanation for our lovable birthplace lounging is the fact that we are Generation Y, or the ‘Millennials’ (just to prove the above point, those who are in Gen Y but don’t want to be even remotely affiliated with Generation X, our predecessors). So, the question remains, what makes us so cool? In a bit of Millennial Wiki–esque research, I am told it is because we are discerning consumers with high disposable incomes, think of ourselves as unique, and are more confident and neo-liberal. Damn. It’s no wonder many of us spend a bit too much time in front of the mirror with the GHD (hopefully minus the often-accompanied tragic photo posted on Facebook, your arm artfully holding the camera on the side).

But really. Do you want to know the real reason why we’re still molly-coddled by mother’s minions? It’s actually because of our parents. This really should come as no surprise: we have had enough psychologically demanding TV shows, celebrity figures and colloquial advice to want to get into those Barney onesies. Who makes you who you are, according to our neo-liberal philosophy? Half nature, half nurture. Who nurtures you? Your mother, the version not quite as celestial as the religious version after her weed-infused days at Woodstock.

The facts stand: you might want to take a deep breath and put your big-kid panties on. Millennials are confident because they were very much wanted by their parents. Millennials are confident because they were sheltered and protected. Millennials are confident because (can you take any more?) they have ‘helicopter’ parents who organize and help them in anything (helicopters because they ‘hover’ over their children). Remember those seemingly silly games where you didn’t have to win, you just had to participate? This PC filth has made  us believe we are invincible. A confident and actually quite conventional generation, we are so because Mum and Dad (or one of the two and a big, annoying step-parent) held out the lollies while we performed the way they wanted us to. Ah, just when we thought we were the ones who had it going on.

Despite the apparent theft of a superb identity, you might be thinking: “I actually really love Mum and Dad”. You know, you’re really not alone. One of the things that makes our generation Millennials is that we are the first generation to truly like our parents. In a recent university-conducted survey, students who were asked who they most admired in the world were the first to answer “Mum or Dad”. Aw. Aren’t you proud. Dr Phil’s advice, blankly stared at on your sick days off, has finally been put to some use.

For all that we love them and admire their good works, our parents really are very good at getting blamed. We’re, as Jerry Springer and Co proclaim, screwed up because Mum didn’t give us enough attention, Dad cheated on Mum, we missed that special Karate class or didn’t get an egg that Easter. Turns out, though, that we’re really the eggs. Either values have changed dramatically over the past twenty years, or we’re avoiding becoming adults. We, as a Brigham Young University study found, are more likely to define ourselves as adults based on our personal abilities and characteristics rather than things we have actually been through. But weren’t we taught that experience equals knowledge? Is saying we are ‘mature’ and able to work a part-time job enough to say that we live at home, but are not still children?

My home-hobbiter friends, it is time to say who we are. We rely on our parents. We cannot blame them for our luxurious lazing, but they do support it. Money’s not really the issue: otherwise where would all the I-pods and laptops come from? We can’t seem to leave home because they, hell-awful propagators of ourselves, are part of so much of where our confidence and happiness comes from: the haven called home. As one classmate puts it, “there’s just less responsibility”. Shove that in your SpongeBob and cuddle it.