‘Generation boomerang’ in Germany? Returning to the parental home in young adulthood

Abstract

Leaving the parental home is not always a one-off event in the course of a person's life. Young adults can return one or more times before leaving home permanently. The aim of this article is to analyse the social and economic transition markers and socio-demographic factors which play a role in the return to the parental home of young adults in Germany. The analysis is based on the survey AID:A, conducted by the German Youth Institute in 2009. Data from 4300 young adults, aged 18–32 years, who left the parental home at least once, are used. Young adults are differentiated by their current residential status: living with at least one parent again (returners) or living outside the parental home (leavers). The results show that, the more financially and socially independent a young person is, the less likely they are to return to the family of origin. Furthermore, growing up in a two-parent family in West Germany as well as a strong relationship between fathers and sons increases the likelihood of returning to the parental home after leaving. Notably, it was also found that young adults of Turkish and Eastern European origin are more likely to return than those of German origin.

Keywords:

• leaving home
• reversible
• transition marker
• young adulthood
• Germany

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Andy Furlong for his helpful feedback on earlier drafts of the paper. I also thank the anonymous referees for their constructive comments. I appreciate the proofreading of Jane Eskdale. I am also indebted to the young adults who attended AID:A and invested their time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Please note that additional interactions between social transition markers and gender as well as economic transitions and educational level were tested before, but no statistically significant effect was found. For testing the interaction between starting vocational training respectively studies and educational level, contentual reasons are addressed here, so that this effect is shown in Table 4.

2. It must be noted that due to the interaction of gender and importance of the father the coefficient for gender cannot be easily interpreted on its own. Therefore, the model based predicted probabilities for returning home for men and women were calculated to be 19.6 and 17.6 respectively, but do not differ significantly.

3. The coefficient for the separation of the parents in East Germany is –0.101 (not shown in the table) and is statistically not significant (for method see Jaccard and Turrisi 2003).

4. The coefficient for the positive importance of the father is 0.098 for women (not shown in the table) and is statistically not significant.