ABSTRACT
In the past few decades, young adults living in Europe, North America and Australia leaving the parental home has attracted considerable research attention from sociologists, demographers and geographers. This is not surprising given the great importance of leaving the parental home in the lives of young people and their parents. First of all, leaving home is an important marker in the transition to adulthood. It usually coincides with taking up major adult roles: running one’s own household, making one’s own financial and consumption decisions, and more generally taking responsibility for one’s own life without regular parental supervision. Second, leaving home marks the start of the independent household career. It is usually seen as a prerequisite for living with a partner, marriage and having children. Third, leaving home marks the young adult’s entry into the housing market. From the moment of leaving home, the young adult exerts a demand for independent accommodation. Finally, leaving home is an important event in the parent-child relationship: in the long and gradual process from dependence of children on parents to a more equal relationship, leaving home is the clearest and best datable step. Apart from a small minority who stay in the parental home until the parents die or
move out, most young adults in Western societies leave home and the vast majority of them do so before the age of 35 (in most countries: before the age of 30). For most research purposes it is convenient – and not too far from reality – to consider
leaving the parental home as an event that takes place in the life courses of individuals and that can be dated at one point in time. It should be acknowledged, though, that this is not an uncontested view. Some scholars have argued that leaving home should be regarded as a fluid process rather than a single event (e.g. Cherlin et al. 1997); that there are situations between living in the parental home and residential independence (‘semiautonomy’; Goldscheider and Goldscheider 1999); or that the process of leaving home is only completed after the young adult has reached not only residential but also financial independence (Whittington and Peters 1996). Furthermore, some of those leaving home return one or more times before leaving definitely: mainly students, but also those experiencing financial or social problems (Goldscheider and Goldscheider 1999).
