With her third child about to leave the nest, our writer asks why cohabiting with our adult offspring is so looked down upon by modern society
Next week, my third child, Jerry, aged 18, is going off to university, and although he is not the first of my four children to leave home, I am, quite frankly, dreading it. As for many other parents, it’s a difficult time. We have got used to living together during lockdown, and now this unity is being dismantled as a new cohort of young adults heads off to study away from home.
I am aware that I am finding the idea of Jerry leaving pretty difficult. This is not just because I have lived with him and looked after him for nearly two decades, but also because it is a fracture in the stability of my family, a small nick out of the papier-mache model I have created, a little break in the carefully constructed family unit. For I have lived with my children – Raymond, 25, Leonard, 19, Jerry, 18 and Ottoline, 15 – for over a quarter of a century.
