at what age should you stop living with your parents?

we are all living in the same situation, cant afford to move out cause of student debt, and yes in answer to the question there are times that even our parents lie to our grandparents so in short, i guess you never stop lying to them.

is harmer your real surname by the way? i hope you take good care of yourself.

somewhat mirroring george best only without the fallen glittering career - so not a real tradgedy....

that said, i'm as susceptible to the prejudice against living with one's parents as anyone else. but i don't think there's a particular age one "needs" to move out. i've moved back home for a few months here and there since college, but i haven't lived at "home" for more than a few months at any time since i was 17 1/2.

or as soon as you're fed up with not having a normal sex life.

in general, i think i think people should leave home once they've got a job and are capable of supporting themselves. (or are getting married and being supported i guess.)

"Including many subcultures in America" is right. Basically, any sort of culture that still bases its ideas on traditionalist ways of thinking would sort of frown upon the idea of moving away from your parents. I know that right now, even though I'm paying half of the total household expenses at the moment and could repeat this behavior on the outside with someone else sharing a house with me, I would find it VERY tricky to move out. Even if my mom were healthy and could live on her own. Why? Because parents in the ethnic subculture I belong to consider it an insult if their children want to move away. Well, maybe not so much if the move is only to a neighboring house, but if there would be no way parents could involve themselves on a daily basis with their children's lives (and not just via phone), it's as if those parents have failed.

I really don't mind. I'm not in a relationship and don't really go out all that much. But I do sometimes think of what's going to happen five years from now, and I would like it if Mom and I could end up living separately (maybe Mom could live with a financially comfortable gentleman friend... ?) by the time I'm around 30. Not that the continuance of shared cohabitation would be impossible; I have a fifty-year-old aunt who's a doctor, who's never been married before, who's had her eighty-year-old mother living with her for as long as she's been here, which is about 25 years.

And -- you know, I think really the stigma shouldn't be that of living in the same household as your parents! I think it's fine to be 30 and under the same roof as Mom and Dad, as long as that 30-year-old is providing for the parents financially. I think the problem lies in the 30-year-old who's either unemployed or underemployed, who lives with their parents (and off their parents' incomes) because that's just the easiest thing to do. Thankfully, that's not the case with everyone who "lives with parents".

Heh. "Rough patch." I thought that my life was hard, but that's BEFORE I moved in with my mother. I turned a rough patch into a patch of hot slippery hell. She ended up getting divorced WHILE I was living with her. (Hey, not the first time!) I got to come home again, at age 24, to the warmth of listening to people drunkenly scream at each other until all hours of the night. Strangely, it *was* kinda comforting.

See, here's the thing. My mother is an inexcusable, abusive alcoholic, an even before she became that, she was always kind of a crazy bitch. My mother beat me when my father wasn't looking. And THEN my father left her, she got the kids, and THEN she started drinking. If you can even imagine. I've had more things thrown at me than an Olympic discus field. I've had to get my mother out of jail more than once. "Honey, I'm in jail. You know the money I have in my dresser? Get it and come to the police station..." Drunk, violent, horrible person. I hate her more than I will ever hate anyone. It's just not possible to hate anyone more. I blame her for more than I should, but it's kinda hard to separate out the blameworthy from the not -- there's a whole whole lot that I have every right to blame her for.

So at what should I have stopped living with my mother? Probably around ten. I'd have ended up less damaged if I'd been a hobo. I'm not a good measuring stick for most people, though.

I'm a very angry person inside.

Sadly of course, people end up in situations like Kenans, neccesitating other measures. Makes me sad.

Me, I moved out at 19 simply because my parents live in an area not pratical for getting about if one doesn't drive (as I dont), so I moved into the city and then wanted more excitement so moved to the Big City. If my parents lived in inner melbourne, who knows, I might have stayed around longer. But I somehow doubt it - I felt my way of life rubbing up against theirs and now I'm so totally independant and opposite to their lifestyle it just wouldnt work.

PS - Hi Kelly, please please for your own good don't get hooked on ILX - it's worse than smoking.

I don't think a woman so much as went near me for the entire time between graduating and moving out. It was a weird one.

I can't remember when I moved out, maybe 24? Much too late, I realize, should have moved out years before.

Let's just say the day I moved out and went to college, even if it was just an hour south driving, was the best day of my life. I've had to move back one summer after, but since then (when i was 18), I've never had to move back. I still love them.

If my grandmother or mother passes away in the future, I might have to move back to L.A. temporarily just to deal with helping get everyone's future settled in my immediate family.. and it's one of those things I can't just ignore, though it's something I honestly REALLY do NOT want to think about dealing with ever (which is why I'm really starting to grow away from the idea of wanting kids) When that will happen, I have no idea.

to the people who moved out the folks' home at 18.. were you still financially dependent by then? It's one thing to move out of your folks' place. It's another to be able to sustain that early on without any financial aid from the folks... (and I think this factor does make in difference in personal growing up, if that's the overriding reason for starting this thread, even though I think that reason, given the economy these days, is pretty much B.S. at this point.)

Given how determined I thought I was to get away from awful-terrible-oppressive-etc-etc Here when I was 18, this is a bit unexpected. The plan now is to use recently-completed qualification + supposed leverage as now-Mature Student to start a degree course (somewhere that isn't here) in 2006 (my advanced age by then will alter the whole process of means-testing i.e. my parents will no longer be part of the equation, although top up fees by then etc oh god), with the result that I will finally spring forth from this place several years later than I really should have done. So until next September I will remain here, working and saving very diligently. This may be some kind of penance for sitting on my arse during what should have been Golden Years but, y'know, better late than never, possibly.

I was a terrible unindependent nervous shambling wreck when I was 18 though, and totally ill-prepared to exit the womb. It's just a bit of a shame that I allowed myself to be preoccupied by this notion for several years afterwards. How Not To Do It, you see.

Dude! You live with your frickin' granny?

I remember having a teacher in high school who would tell us how great living at home was (he was 28 I think) because he saved lots of money. I thought he was the biggest loser ever.