Homing Instincts

This could mean that either Sarah is either an extraordinarily considerate daughter, who feels that she has to inform her mother of her every move. Or, as is the increasingly common – and in this case accurate – explanation, she is one of a growing number of young-ish people who for one reason or another find themselves living back at home with their parents.

In Sarah's case, being sick of living alone in a studio flat – which was leaving her struggling to make ends meet – combined with the chance to save a bit of money for a deposit, lured her back home.

She had concerns. Would she have to account for her every move? Would she be able to come and go as she pleased? But a few minutes with a calculator and her bank statements easily assuaged any worries.

"And anyway," she reasoned, "it's not for long. I'm only staying until I've got enough money to get a better place of my own."

When the Office for National Statistics released figures showing that at the end of 2008, almost a third of men and a fifth of women between the ages of 20 and 34 were living at home with parents, eyebrows were raised. The ONS suggested that higher property prices, unemployment and people choosing to continue their studies were likely to be behind the trend. Others hinted that it might be because parents were being too soft or young people too lazy.

Whatever the causes, there is little doubt that when 1.8 million men and 1.1 million women are living with their parents – many of whom are in their late twenties and early thirties – what we once understood as the process of growing up and becoming independent has changed significantly. The question, though, is whether that is good or bad?

According to Shiv Malik, a 29-year-old journalist who has co-written Jilted Generation: How Britain has Bankrupted its Youth, which comes out next month, the implications of people being stuck at home for longer are serious.

"Of course it's a bad thing," says Malik. "Ultimately the phenomenon that we discovered is that people of our age are postponing adulthood.

Staying at home is just one of the ways that they do it." Malik agrees with the ONS suggestions that financial reasons are the main reasons that people stay at home, but for him the concerns it raises are social.

"Living at home causes a lot of frustrations in terms of forming relationships and having a partner and actually getting on with starting your life. Settling down, getting married, having children – none of these things can start if you can't even move out."

Andrew Macfarlane, 25, lives at home with his parents in Bearsden, Glasgow. He's lived away from home twice already, once in Hong Kong for a year and then for five months in Japan. But while he was at university studying for both his undergraduate degree and his Masters he lived at home. So does he like it?

"Not hugely, no," he says. "It's purely financial. I went to Glasgow University and because I lived so close, only half an hour away, there was no chance of getting into halls, and my parents didn't want to pay for me to rent a flat. So it was either get a full-time job and pay for it myself or stay at home. That's the option I chose."

Macfarlane says that although he's always got on with his parents and it has got easier to be at home as he's got older, there are still tensions. "When I was doing my undergrad degree everyone else lived with friends or in halls and they had much more freedom than I did. I had to account for my whereabouts – send texts saying where I was going and who I was with. I don't have to do that any more but there's still an expectation, 'Are you coming home for dinner? If not where are you going?' Even at 25 that hasn't got better."

That said, Macfarlane acknowledges that there are also positive aspects to living with his parents.

"I've lived with friends and with strangers and the good things about living at home are not the things that you might expect, like laundry and food," he says. "Not having to worry about bills is a good thing.

Not having to divvy up chores and tasks with flatmates and worrying about if people are doing their share is good too. I'm very clear about what I'm expected to do and what mum does and what dad does – I've had 25 years practice at it. Everything gets done and nobody whinges about it."

Ask Macfarlane if he's felt a stigma about still being at home in his mid-twenties and he says no. But then he offers a qualification. "I guess with friends who know me I get to say I'm back at home rather than I'm still at home, which makes it sound slightly better," he says. "I think had it been still living at home I might have been less confident in saying it."

For Alan Hogarth, 24, the situation is different. He has never lived away from home and as a PhD student at Strathclyde University studying part-time, he knows it could well be a long time until he does. Sharing a home with his mum and dad and his younger sister, who is also at university, doesn't worry him, he says. Even if, had he the money, he'd quite like his own place.