Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Communal living in my opinion, be it with friends in a group house, or by having granny and mum and dad in the home is much more fun. I have never lived alone in my life - from childhood with three generations in the house plys a few stangers as well, to nurses homes, to student hostels, to working girls hostels, to group houses, finally to marry a package deal. I simply could not imagine living alone as a single at any age. If I am ever alone in my old age, then lead me to the community centred villa.

As I said on another thread, a caravan in the yard with dad and mum nearby could help ease the housing crisis, or just share the McMansion for as long as possible with the kids. Of course these days a lot of kids not only leave home, they go and work thousands of miles away, often overseas, finally settling there. I know quite a few parents whose whole brood has done that. They won't have much support around in their old age it seems.

I remember a pop song that seemed to be on every local pub jukebox in the area when I was a young bloke - the title was "You can take this job and shove it" which constituted a rousing hook/chorus.  You could quit a labouring job or a skilled job on Friday because you didn't like the cut of the foreman and walk into another job on Monday morning. 

Ah, how I love the smell of full employment in the morning.

What has happened of course is that globalisation has turned third world labor into an international "reserve army of labor" which functions to create chronic unemployment in Australia at the same time as driving a "race to the bottom" in terms of wages, occupational health and safety and environmental safety.

Marx was right. 

Happily the third contradiction of capitalism, which is that it has eroded the very ecological conditions of production and social reproduction, along with peak oil, will bring global capitalist production to a shuddering halt.  National capitalism will be an acceptable compromise but the bosses and share holders are going to have to do with less as others get a fairer share.

Hopefully Eliot will be alive to rue the day. 

All those things and remember, when I went for a job it was for me to choose out of 100 jobs-not for the employer to choose from a 100 applicants !

Moving out of your parents house then was an excuse to do all those naughty things one felt uncomfortable doing in front of parents. It was a unique time. I've also found particulary in Asian countries ( but not so much the very Catholic Phillipines) that the different generations have for more understanding of the needs of young people and make exceptions for them.

It is too because what you younger ones need to understand is that the baby boomers had the best of the economic post war boom, cheap international travel, organic ganja, an ecologically beautiful world and herpes free sex. 

Just kidding.

As a frequent traveller to Asia the one thing that always strikes me is that households are often made up of at least 3 generations and this is the norm.

In fact I think this idea of seperate households for each generation is almost a purely British, US & Australian phenomena. It's not the norm in Europe- Italy for example., but perhaps in the wealthy societies like Germany.

Obviously the more wealthy a family becomes, property ownership will become important but my experience has been, with a Czech mother and a Scots father ( the most gentle of Scotsmen who was a 'feminist" which meant mother ruled) we always had a house that had at the very least , 2 generations living there. Not just the children, as in my brothers, but grandparents as well.

It was pure joy for me as a child. And those generations would tip over into Aunts and Uncles for perhaps 2 years at a time.,usually financially challenged- but what fun we all had !.

I tried to keep my kids at home for as long as possible but trends have effects and they now own their own homes. My vision-they will all come back to a huge combined household. It worked for thousands of years and the alternative ?. Fannie Mac !

Perhaps I'm a hopeless hippie at heart.

Frankly, I'm getting sick of being categorised by generations and "bashed" by sociologists (and the public), who believe that Gen Ys are all short-sighted, self-indulged parasites who will never move out of the family home - I believe these people exist in all generations.

A lot of media reports and studies paint the image that Gen Y are remaining at home because they are comfortable and are financially inept, however I'm sure many are working full time and paying rent to their parents.

Unfortunately I do fall into the Gen Y category Jingjing describes (born between '82 and '00 - I swear 80s kids were Gen X a few years back!) and yes, I do still live at home. However I'm not leeching my parents for financial support and on the contrary supporting them.

I'm not convinced that a "shrinking generation gap" and the fact that "50-something mothers are happy to listen to their 20-something daughter's love life (Salt, 2008)" contributes to Gen Y housing situation, but it is nice to think that parent-child relationships are evolving.

I thought this story was good, but maybe more comments from Gen Y would give it more depth and help relate research findings to examples in the real world.

I think the structure and flow of the story was good but would be easier to read if the paragraphs were a little shorter (or add another paragraph break, particularly pars 2, 3 and 5).

This bizarre notion that young people should move out and purchase their own house is some hokey 1950's fanatasy. It's an example of a John Howard picket fence vision of the world which has never existed. Generations of families have always lived together-seperate households for each generation is some Madison Avenue advertising scam dreamt up to keep property developers happy.

It all ends in a Fannie Mac disaster. Manipulators of society always create havoc.