Living with parents after university

It was a turbulent take-off when Tobi Adekola flew her parental nest. She spent most of the journey to university crying. From the driving seat, her father remarked that passing cars might think she was en route to prison, not Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State. But to her petrified teenage self, the two didn’t seem so different. Luckily, the melodrama didn’t last long as she quickly began to love her independence – from weekends spent slobbing in pyjamas to nights out clubbing when it didn’t matter how late she got back. But best of all was the freedom to have a grown-up relationship.

Henry, her boyfriend, was at another university. They met on holiday and started dating and during his frequent visits Tobi took a childish pleasure in “keeping house.” “We would wander around the supermarket together, planning meals, then prepare them together in the sticky kitchen of my student house. We made last-minute trips to visit nearby friends, coming and going as we pleased. And we could enjoy all the privacy we wanted,” she recalls, nostalgically.

Henry and Tobi loved co-existing in this adult world, until one day, the real world intervened. It was graduation day in June 2008, when the global economy was imploding. Jobless and reliant on the parental bank for funds, Tobi and her friends packed out of their student house and headed back home.

“When I returned home, moving the last of my boxes into a corner of the hallway, I re-hung my clothes in my childhood bedroom. I was once again sleeping in my single bed, walls adorned with posters of my teenage crush. This was where I’d practised kissing a pillow – now it was my base as I started life as a grown-up, looking for a job, and trying to sustain my four-year relationship,” she says.

Long after their parents launched them from the nest, some young adults end up moving back home even after graduating from higher institutions. But it is enough to give any empty nester a pause. How does this even work? How long will they stay? Do you charge rent? Are questions that come to mind.

“Many families are delighted to welcome back an adult child and temporarily “re-fill” their empty nest, particularly when it coincides with a difficult transition in their children’s lives,” says Bola Adesoun, a researcher at the University of Lagos. “But there are some caveats. Happy “re-filled” families tend to have several things in common, they always want to look after their children by restricting their movements and poke nosing into their affairs, which most young adults detest. It is unrealistic to set curfews for a fully-grown, independent adult, but it’s important to discuss and agree on a set of household rules, particularly when it comes to hot-button issues such as late night or overnight guests, relationships, and alcohol or other substance issues.”

In addition, Adeosun says one of the ways to make living together for parents and grown ups easier is for mothers to include them in household chores – making dinner twice a week, for example, buying groceries, doing laundry in some of the children’s activities. Otherwise, it is too easy to slip back into mom-takes-care-of-everything mode, which does nothing to foster independence and much to breed resentment.