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LAST UPDATE | 19 Nov 2024
COULD WE COPE with a nation of teenagers? It’s what Ireland might be facing, given that our lack of affordable housing is forcing young people to stay in their childhood homes long after their teenage years should have ended.
The raging hormonal adolescent has become such a notorious stereotype that we might expect it has always been an accepted stage of development, but the concept was only introduced in Western countries at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, researchers believe that the length of adolescence has been increasing due to societal changes. The housing crisis could be a critical factor contributing to prolonged adolescence in young Irish people, creating a generation who are forced to remain stuck in their childhood environment and cannot fully transition into adulthood.
We’re all watching the pre-election promises of political parties ahead of the General Election at the end of this month. The polling tells us that it’s a fait accompli, that the same parties will be back in, and that we can expect very little to change. Regardless of what outcome we may expect, it doesn’t change the frustration that young people feel witnessing political inaction when it comes to the housing crisis.
For the thousands of homeless in this country and the many of us trapped in the reality of never affording our own homes, it feels like housing hasn’t been discussed enough yet in this election. This housing crisis disempowers so many of us across society. It is a crisis, but we’ve perhaps heard the word for so long that it means nothing anymore.
We feel like this for many reasons; we fear the prospect of endless renting, fighting roommates for milk well into our 30s and using our wages to pay someone else’s mortgage. It may seem like those who have the option to live with their parents are in a superior position – they can save on rent and don’t have to worry about living at the mercy of a stranger’s whims. But what are the effects of staying in one’s childhood bedroom, or returning to the scene of adolescence after you’ve supposedly grown up?
I was lucky to return to the sanctuary of my family home during the first Covid-19 lockdown; I had a roof over my head, food in the fridge, and a room of my own. However, being back in this environment – one I curated for myself first as a child, and then as a teenager – made me feel like I was turning back the clock.
An incoherent collection of items from my life live in my room, from stuffed animals with worn-down ears, to tap dancing shoes that would only fit a nine-year-old. Makeup that I wouldn’t dare wear now sits untouched in a drawer, and my Transition Year hoodie haunts the wardrobe. Nothing about the room feels adult and, living in it, neither did I.
Returning to this familiar environment made me revert to old behaviours and routines I had long forgotten.
Despite being vegetarian for years, the only lunch option I could think of was a plain chicken sandwich on O’Hara’s sliced pan. Even though I didn’t have a pair in my Dublin home, I reached for black leggings daily like my hand was guided by teenage insecurity.
It’s well documented that our environment can influence our behaviour, and that returning to a familiar space can reignite old habits and mental states. For this reason, you may find yourself acting like a teenager again just by inhabiting the environment where you grew up. This regression is something I’ve discussed with friends, who say they must fight to get back into their adult headspace when returning to their childhood home. They related to feeling restrained by the choices they used to make as a teenager, and said they even fell into old argumentative patterns with parents and siblings, which never happened in their adult life.
If we feel this regression when we return home for Christmas or visit for the weekend, what must it do to those forced to live in their childhood homes because it’s the only option they have?
Staying in this environment could possibly create a prolonged adolescence. And what, really, is the difference between being a teenager and feeling as though you have no choice but to act like one? While we might consider adolescence to be a defined period from about 12 to 18, research defines adolescence as a period of developmental maturation which starts with biological changes and ends with social maturity.
This idea of adolescence is relatively modern, only entering the Western zeitgeist at the turn of the 20th century, with G. Stanley Hall characterising this “new” developmental stage as the period before full maturity. The Industrial Revolution and the advent of compulsory education allowed children to avoid labour, thereby prolonging their dependence on their families and offering them a slower transition into full adulthood.
Adolescence does not take place during a strict set of years but, rather, is an expanding period impacted by one’s environment. Children seem to reach biological maturation significantly quicker nowadays, and the age of social maturation is being pushed further into one’s 20s. Researchers believe that adolescence may be stretched out due to social factors such as labour and lifestyle, and it’s possible that the housing crisis could play a role in extending it even further.
Due to rising housing costs and stagnant wages, many young adults cannot afford to move out and live independently. While affordable housing is incredibly difficult to find for those who move to Irish cities to work or study, people who live within a commutable distance of their occupation are not necessarily better off in the long run. Students who live at home while attending college, for instance, relinquish the opportunity to step fully into adulthood after their teenage years. If they stay in the same city for work, sky-high rent prices will have them hard-pressed to find an excuse to give up the affordability of life at home.
By making staying at home the best option for young people, the housing crisis is preventing them from transitioning into fully autonomous adulthood, keeping them in a psychological adolescence.
Forcing young people to delay their adulthood also affects Irish society on a larger scale. Data from the Central Statistics Office shows that birth rates have declined in the past decade, while the age of first-time mothers has increased, suggesting that Irish young people are delaying starting families or opting not to. After all, how can you be expected to raise a child when your environment prompts you to still behave like one?
The housing crisis is keeping a generation of Irish young adults in a state of prolonged adolescence, physically stuck in their childhood homes and psychologically trapped in teenage mindsets. While there are countless reasons the government should be motivated to improve the accessibility of affordable housing, perhaps facing a generation of moody, teenage adults will be the push they need to take critical action.
But it’s clear on Friday, 29 November those of us over 18 can do one thing that younger adolescents cannot, we can vote. All parties, whether government or not, will make tantalising promises around housing. The housing crisis cannot be turned around overnight, but policy does make a difference. So do the research, speak to the candidates at the door and tell them your story. Then listen to the debates, weed through the waffle, and exercise your democratic right to vote. It’s all we have left.
Sarah Moran is a writer, editor and researcher. She graduated from English literature and psychology at Trinity College in 2022 and has since worked as a news verification journalist and communications associate.
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All the properties sold off by NAMA for pennies to investors would come in handy now why aren’t people held to account for this
@Will: Accountability is not something any irish politician has ever had to have. Calling to vote them out is not enough anymore. Where’s varadker now. Enjoying his rich life safe in the knowledge he will never face any responsibility for the many failings he had.
@Fat Bear: Pay rates for those working in house construction need to be higher than in politics.
@thomas molloy: Expect the opposite. They’ll bring in cheap, untrained foreign labour to build shoddy houses and give themselves bonuses and pay rises
@Will: NAMA made us money. Facts matter :)
@Will: We wouldn’t have needed NAMA if Fianna Fáil hadn’t bankrupted the country.
Politicians claim credit for some aspects of their time in power and completely erase other aspects, the FG/Lab govt of 2011 claim great credit for ‘getting us out of the clutches of the IMF’ but the truth is they accelerated that process by sever austerity and the shelving of house building as a priority of Govt when we would have exited the IMF in any case sometime later but they wouldn’t have been able to take credit for it in the lifetime of that Government. The roots of the crisis rest with that particular Government and it’s leaders who have since departed the scene to their holiday home or their holiday homes.
@Gerry Ryan: house building was shelved because the country was bankrupt thanks to FF, that’s why the IMF were here in the first place, you mong
@Fintan Pox: listen Pox, the IMF had money we could have accessed but chose not to, I outlined the reasons but maybe you’re challenged
@Gerry Ryan: the IMF were going to pump money into a property bubble? lol
Dont vote ff or fg is the answer. 100 years is enough
@martin finnegan: 100 years of prosperity, they definitely have my vote :)
@martin finnegan: FG definitely have my votes 1,2 and 3
Feel sorry for any young adults living at home with their parents, we are all living it at the moment, young people working & paying Tax, living at home unable to afford extortionate rents & knowing they won’t get a mortgage for extortionately priced Housing & will never own their own home. They watch them as Thousands enter the State weekly & once granted Status are put on a Housing list immediately. They also have to watch Roderic O Gorman promise those arriving own door accommodation within months, young working people have been shat on & abandoned by this three ring circus Coalition. Vote radically & get these duds out of Govt.
@SV3tN8M4: division, that’s all you offer. Pitting people off one another. Shame on you
@Kevin Kerr: He’s not pitting anyone against anyone you little clown. John always speaks the cold hard truth. Get a life you wimp.
@Marvin Dollery: of course he is. He is suggesting that migrants are treated better than the Irish population. So it is an attempt to demonise and isolate the migrant population. Classic playbook, you clown
@Kevin Kerr: he is speaking truth Kevin, on rte the other night was a woman who was working caring for her disabled child. She was unable to keep up the rent was evicted. Sat next to her was an immigrant who said she is the country 6 months and now has a 3 bed house off the state. It’s facts not the immigrants faults but the cabbages who run the country and force emigration it’s backward.
I lived at home all during college & then for the first 3 years working afterwards for varying reasons. It didn’t “delay my move into adulthood” at all. I paid rent to my parents, albeit a lot less than market but still something. I didn’t live in my teenage room but rather used my own money to redecorate it to suit my taste as young adult. I had a social life & went out. The only restriction was just letting my mam know via a text if I wasn’t going to be home at all. When I did move out, I could cook, clean & look after myself as well as any other 24 year old I knew. I think a lot of the time the problem lies where an adult moves back to their childhood room but does not change anything in that room from being a teen. And reverts to that behaviour at home.
@Susan Walsh: oh ffs…where to begin with that spiel!
@Susan Walsh: That’s a poor attempt at trying to justify the housing catastrophe. The lack of housing is an issue that government policies are responsible for. They’re running the Country into the ground bit by bit.
@Susan Walsh: Not everyone has a happy and supportive home environment. They have to get out and can’t.
We won’t be able to decorate our way out of this one, Susan
@Darth O’Leary: I wasn’t saying that there isn’t a housing crisis. Jaysus. I was literally just commenting on the piece that seemed to imply if you don’t move out at 18, you’re stunted as an adult which isn’t true.
@damien leen: how about the beginning. What is your problem with what I wrote?
@Marvin Dollery: eh I’m not justifying anything at all. I’m literally just saying that if you are living at home as an adult, then it is possible to not revert to behaving like a teen but requires effort. I didn’t say anything about the lack of housing or that people should live in their parents. I agree completely that there is a major lack of appropriate housing and affordable housing in the country and something needs to be done on that front.
@Susan Walsh: Ok Susan, thanks for clarifying.
@Ronan Mc: show me where I said anything suggesting that the lack of affordable housing isn’t a real or growing problem? No. I just made the point about how if you’re in your teenage room as an adult & reverting to acting like a teen, maybe do something about your behaviour and environment. Because unfortunately that might be all you have control over with the upwards cost of housing. I get that people need to get out and can’t but my comment wasn’t aimed at that or suggesting papering over the cracks. It was literally just saying that if you are in the situation of living at home as an adult, you do not have to resort to behaving like a teen or using that as an excuse to behave as such.
@Susan Walsh: Your comment is both sensible and reasonable. Don’t worry if it triggers a few dependent snowflakes, waiting for the government to maintain the umbilical chord through adulthood.
@Susan Walsh: Susan, can I ask you how your parents and yourself managed dinner times? I’m soon to face the bleak prospect of adult children stuck at home (a small one with that) and I wholeheartedly agree with your view that adult children living with their parents need to behave like adults. We have already discussed a token rent and bill share, minimal but enough to ensure that they start practicing paying their own bills. They are very good teens and help around so I’m not worried about this. Did you work out a planner for says you’d be home for dinner or not? Did you cook for yourself and if so did your own shopping with maybe a little dip in mammy’s cupboards? Thanks
@Susan Walsh: And that’s your idea of getting along and creating an independent life and family for yourself!
Pathetic
@Susan Walsh: I get ya. Only messing really. Didn’t mean to join a pile on. Have a nice evening
@Susan Walsh: When you’re in a hole, stop digging….
You might as well have commented ‘Well, I’m alright Jack.’ Don’t be surprised then that people didn’t like your comment.
@Susan Walsh: Yeah and if you were there long after those 3 years. Say another 10. What then?
@Susan Walsh: very well said. This article is just a whinge from people who have failed at life through being lazy and having too much of an ego.
@Susan Walsh: you have triggered the losers still living with their mom at 40 lol
@Susan Walsh: so what job did you have that would cover a 400,000 mortgage,or did mummy and daddy help with that as well .
Smacks of the Robert Troy school of bs
@sean weir: good God!! @susan walsh was only making a sensible point that IF people are in the situation of living at home for a while, it’s up to them to make an effort until the situation improves, and not regressing to teenage traits or expecting mammy to do the stuff
@Anne WG: So my rent amount included contribution to the overall household running so bills & food. If I wanted anything that was not the normal shopping my mam did, I’d buy it myself. We had 2 small fridges in the kitchen so I kept all my stuff on one shelf in one. In terms of being included for dinner. My mam would tell me what she was planning to make & ask if I wanted some. If I did, grand. If not, I’d just either make myself something before or after my parents had gotten theirs. If I wasn’t going to be home for dinner, I’d just drop a text saying such.
@sean weir: no my Mam didn’t help & my dad passed away when I was in my early 20′s. I’m the daughter of a primary school teacher & a nurse so no extra money from them growing up. I’m an accountant by profession & the only way I got a mortgage was by saving like a dog & having a partner on a similar salary. And being lucky enough to buy pre-kids. I recognise I was lucky to get a mortgage & to have a home to call my own so less of the nasty please. And no I didn’t buy until I was in my early 30′s so not like I walked out of home into a house of my own – I rented for the intervening years.
@Ronan Mc: I’m not in a hole. My comment had nothing to do with people stuck at home. It was literally about the idea that if you don’t move out at 18 you’re stunted as an adult which I fundamentally disagree with.
@Paul M Doe: Ah no I don’t think that at all. I have friends who had to move back home to have any chance of saving with the way rents have gone & all of them would have good jobs. When rent is taking circa 50% of your take home pay it can be tough as hell to get savings to a level needed considering the house prices too. My only issue with the article is the idea that not moving out at 18 somehow stunts your growth as an adult.
@Thomas Sheridan: Explain how it is pathetic? I have a fully independent life & family now so yes I did create that. But did I make the most of a situation where I couldn’t afford to move out & rent? Yes I did. What’s pathetic is name calling people on the internet because you have a different experience to someone else.
@John Moore: I probably would have kept going the way I had. At the time I moved out, it was just myself & my mam in the house as my dad had passed away. It wouldn’t have been ideal by any stretch & I’m not saying it would have but my mam respected me as an adult at that point so we would have lived as 2 adults in the house together. I did have my own life totally outside my parents home between work, friends, dates & studying so that probably would have continued. I know I was lucky when I moved out as rents were lower by a lot than what they are now so I was able to. I recognise that luck. And I know people who lived similar to me with a parent until they’re mid-30′s & again it was almost like a shared house arrangement than a parent-child one. But that does take work.
@Susan Walsh: don’t waste your time on the hate filled clowns on here
Who are all these young peoples parents voting for ?
@Bertie: whoever they want to vote for.
What do you expect from this incompetent government when you have the FF leader stating there was no bank bailout and the FG leader saying he didn’t sign off on children’s hospital and that there was 18 other covid viruses. Wake up ppl!!
Wrong you’re stuck in your adolescence because of your sense of entitlement that you are owed everything and it should be handed to you.
@Ger Whelan: it seems like to concept of personal responsibility is lost on an increasing portion of society
@Ger Whelan: agree. If you want something bad enough you got to work for it, there’s no short cuts. Go where the money is.
@Ger Whelan: And there it is… there’s always a Ger Whelan type in the comments coming out with drivel like “back in my day yada yada yada” and “young people these days don’t know how to work etc. etc.” Ger, I’m guessing you came from a generation where 1 income per household was enough to buy a house, and you didn’t need a Masters degree as a minimum to get a good job, so you haven’t a clue.
@Les Whinin: Oh les I do have a clue. For example I interviewed 4 lads aged 18-20 for an apprenticeship. Not one of them came prepared. 3 didn’t even know what kind of apprenticeship it was for. None had any questions about the job or what we do as a company. The only questions they asked was how much does the job pay, the working hours, time off etc etc etc. one brought his mother into the interview for moral support and asked would i be willing to pay her for driving him to work and wait outside to help him. One wanted me to pay for his driving lessons and driving test and help with his insurance as he’ll need a car to get to work. All 4 interviews were a complete waste of my time. All they wanted was to know what was in it for them.
@Ger Whelan: one example, Ger of 4 lads that you didn’t employ. What about the ones that you do employ? Do they all have a sense of entitlement too? You do agree that there is a housing crisis, and that the cost of housing is unaffordable for many, right? Advocating for government and policy makers to fix this does not equate to a sense of entitlement
@Les Whinin: good post, councillor!
@Ger Whelan: I always make sure to interview a millennial when filling a position. I do it as a means to justify why I will never employ people from generation lazy
But I guess the country will end up with the same old same old!! Very sad that it is now unrecognisable from when I was growing up.
It may or may not be politicians fault that there is a housing crisis. Blaming them for everything only puts us in their debt so to speak. We’ll never be strong as a people with this behaviour.
@JP: you can’t blame politicians for the laziness and entitlement of useless millennials
I’m 86 ,we all had to spread our wings,go to England,come back and buy whatever we could afford in houses and build them over the years and we didn’t resort to the bank of ” Mum & Dad.”
We need endless refugees so they can build houses for all the new refugees
Get roderic out at the least might have some hope the greens are running this country into the ground
Demand a Referendum to amend the Constitution like France, Germany, Holland, Sweden …
No one incl. Sinn Fein can solve the housing emergency unless the Referendum is passed:::
This is not a problem for young people its all age groups
@UNA NI MHATHUNA:
Demand a Referendum to amend the Constitution like France, Germany, Holland, Sweden …
No one incl. Sinn Fein can solve the housing emergency unless the Referendum is passed:::
have your say