The boomerang generation

Won't it be just great to have the kids back home again?

OK. You don't really need to answer that. After all, one of them might be listening in! And you wouldn't want them to feel unwanted now, would you? Never mind how you feel...

Pretty soon, lots of unemployed graduates will be leaving university and moving back into their old rooms. Back to the bosom of the family where they are loved and wanted. Well, loved anyway because what they have forgotten is that while they were away bettering themselves with higher education, Mum and Dad were enjoying some much earned freedom for the first time in years.

And now that's all gone. The parents can no longer run around the house in their underwear in case someone appears from their offsprings bedroom and demands breakfast...

But what really pisses me off is the attitudes of this boomerang generation. Attitudes like 'I don't need to clean my room because Mum will do it.' Like 'Mum will do my washing and ironing, Dad will pay the phone bill, my parents will put food on my plate' Attitudes like 'This is my home and I have a god given right to live here.'

Lots of the younger generation that I know seem to think that it is an unalienable human right that they can afford a house in their home town. We never had that expectation. We saved for years with our prospective spouses to scrimp together a deposit so we could get a mortgage on a crummy little one bed flat and even then we had to move further from town to be able to afford it. I was raised in south London, but I moved out to afford my first home. My wife was raised in Surrey, but her first home was in Reading.

A reality check is needed. You need to stand on your own two feet and assert your independence. You need a job you can do - you can get the one you want later, if ever. You can't afford a house on one income. It's not fair to live off your parents and contribute little or nothing.

Our generation lived with these realities. You selfish little buggers need to do the same...