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Young stay in family nest

NOT all baby boomers are empty nesters downsizing to trendy apartments. Some are defying present property trend forecasts by hanging on to their large suburban home or building a new one with separate quarters for their adult children.

This is because 36 per cent of Generation Y, the 18 to 29-year-old children of baby boomers, are not leaving home.

More than half of the entire generation have no desire to commit to a mortgage, a partner or have children in the near future, as Quantum Market Research's AustraliaScan survey has found.

They are called the "uncommitteds" or "adultescents", who have a high discretionary income, contribute little or nothing to the family budget and describe themselves as fashion-conscious, assertive and educated.

They want to stay at home, live it up and delay taking on responsibility. And parents are willing to let them do this while still living under their roof.

Survey consultant David Chalke warns this population trend was splitting the generation into two tribes - those more traditional 18 to 29-year-olds who were committed to mortgages, were married and having children, which meant they had heavy responsibilities and little personal freedom, and those Gen Yers who had all the adult freedoms but no responsibility.

It was a new social order, a "new divide", set to shape society in dramatic ways, Mr Chalke said.

"The two groups don't meet or mix and live in different places - they are not able to talk to one another. There's a further divide between what will be the inner-city elites and the rest," he said.

"The uncommitteds are usually the better educated, while the committeds are the traditional blue-colour workers. The adultescents don't have any deep and personal beliefs in anything other than novelty. Nothing is permanent, careers are just jobs they have been in for too long. There's an increased emphasis on the cohorts to set what's right and wrong and desirable - if my mates do it, why can't I?

"The political scene as we knew it is dead. The left and right make no sense any more."

He says the trend will continue as average marriage, and child-bearing ages move back one year every four years due to more Gen Yers delaying commitment.

Queensland University of Technology psychology and counselling associate professor Kathryn Gow said parents might think they were doing the right thing by allowing their children to live at home indefinitely, but they risked turning out young adults with poor values.

"The parents have not only their (adult) children living with them, but their children's children that they have to look after, and also pay for," Dr Gow said.

"This is a one-way-give system that starts when the child is little and continues until they are 20 or 30 or even older, and it's not healthy at all. Parents may think they are doing the right thing, but it's not a healthy way to teach core values of responsibility in a person.

"If the children are like that with their parents, they are going to be like that with everybody."