Stop vilifying adults that live with their parents.
Weāre still deep in one of the worst economic recessions of modern times. For many of us its not a choice but a requirement in order to survive. For many of us we have disabilities that make finding accommodation that suit our needs a lot harder and a lot more expensive.
Many of us pay into the household. Many of us are trapped in abusive households because we donāt have the means to leave. We arenāt moochers or afraid to leave the nest. The world simply isnāt built to support us anymore.
This is actually an incredibly western (and specifically American) thing. In a lot of other countries and cultures itās NOT AT ALL uncommon for an adult to still live with their parents. As a second generation immigrant, itās BEWILDERING to me. My cousin still lives with our grandmother; itās important. She needs someone to watch after her, and she has the spaceā¦ why wouldnāt he?
This obsession with āadultsā being āfully independentā of their parents is a fully American, bizarrely capitalist notion and it needs to be stomped into the ground.
Reminder that in the U.S., multigenerational households were very common (if not the outright norm) until the 1950s. Young people living at homeāand being raised in large households that included grandparents and cousinsāwas pretty damn normal until around then.
You know what happened in the U.S. in the 1950s?
A HUGE boom in consumerism.
Massive conservative backlash against the progress made by womenās rights, and by progressivism in general
After WWII (which the U.S. managed to make an enormous profit on), suddenly the country was full of people* with creditāwhich meant it was up to corporations to give them a place to spend it. Throw in the Baby Boom (lots of new couples getting married & having kids), the rise of highways & automobile culture, and the desire that a lot of powerful parties had to see a return to ātraditionalā gender roles, and you get the uniquely American product:
The Suburban Nuclear Family
It was brilliant, from a marketing and white male conservative perspective. What better way to convince all these newly lucrative consumers to part with their money than by selling them a houseāand a complete set of household accoutrements to go inside it? Everything about 1950s media was aimed at convincing young couples to buy a house, buy a car, buy furniture, buy a sewing machine, buy a garage full of toolsāand above all, donāt live with your parents & adult siblings, who probably already own many of these things. Donāt share resourcesāthatās Communism! And worse, itās unAmerican.
Coincidentally, did Suburban Nuclear Family Culture also reenforce patriarchal power structures within the home, by isolating women in their own families & marriages (which drastically enables abuse), and giving children fewer adults (grandparents, aunts and uncles) to supervise their wellbeing? Did it cut off people who werenāt the āheadā of the household from community resources? Did it enable domineering family men to control their families away from prying eyesāor encourage that sort of behavior in men who otherwise could have ended up being decent enough parents & spouses, with better cultural influences? Did it train generations of us to grow up into perfect little consumers, overworked and underpaid and struggling to afford independent households we canāt mantain? Did it permanently alter our definition of family & community in a way that decades later we have not recovered from?
Yes, but it also made a lot of businessmen very very wealthy. Whatās more American than that.
Tags:Ā #not a shitpost#long post#serious post#and when that model didnāt end up being sustainableāguess what?#many of us DID go back to living with other people.#except now itās often with roommate and even complete strangers#or with parents with who we have an unhealthy relationship#(which is in many ways a direct inheritance of the shift to ātraditionalā family values)#and now even those of us who of lucky enough to be living with family members we love and get along with#are constantly told to feel guilty about that bc how ālazyā. bc you arenāt 'contributingā.#in a society where 'contributingā is very suspiciously synonymous with consuming andoverworking
I think the reason I like to sit in front of my mirror so often is because it makes me feel like Iām just sitting there vibing with someone in silence instead of acknowledging Iām actually physically so alone
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