Conclusion: Twenty-somethings and Household Change

Abstract

This book has explored the ongoing destandardisation of patterns of household formation amongst young people in Northern Europe, Australia and the United States, with a particular focus on the United Kingdom. As such, the transitional experiences of contemporary twenty-somethings tend to be markedly different to those of their parents. We have noted that contemporary young adults are now more likely to leave home in order to continue into higher education, to return to the parental home for extended periods once having left, to experience periods of shared household and solo living arrangements alongside periods of cohabitation with opposite sex and same sex partners, and to marry and have children, if at all, at a later age and after first cohabiting with their eventual spouse. As a consequence of these developments, there is little consciousness amongst many young adults of an automatic and linear route from parental dependency to (co)dependency on a partner, even though available evidence suggests that most heterosexual young people continue to aspire to such a trajectory in the longer term.