THAT'S MEN:Young men living with their parents are more likely to be violent, to binge drink, to take drugs and sexual risks
ONCE UPON a time, young men who wanted to have a good time had to contrive a way to get out of the family home and into a dingy bedsitter – not any longer, it seems.
Drink, drugs and bedtime romps were ruled out by sharp-eyed parents. Smuggling a girl in for the night and back out again was, frankly, impossible.
Nothing for it but to decamp to bedsit-land. Sometimes the supply of girls wanting to be smuggled in and out was less than expected but hope springs eternal.
A suggestion that this may no longer be so comes in a fascinating piece of research from the UK which found that young men living with their parents are more violent than those who are living independently. When it comes to violence, living at home with parents seems to be the major risk factor for young men.
Taking responsibility for your own living arrangements, having dependent children or living with a woman all tend to reduce the propensity for violence.
Violence was just the headline issue for these young men. Binge drinking, drug abuse, taking sexual risks and being generally obnoxious all seem to be more characteristic of the young man living with mammy and daddy than of the other groups. Mammy and daddy, it appears, no longer keep a sharp eye on what’s going on with junior and no longer lay down the law.
The research was done by Prof Jeremy Coid and Dr Ming Yang, University of London and published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.
I have a theory about this: I bet that if you looked into these guys’ lives you would find they spend their time in their room, coming down for meals at best, perhaps entering and leaving the house without much more than a grunt.
In the old days your bedroom was a bedroom, nothing more, you ate in the kitchen and watched television with your infuriating parents in the sitting room. No wonder you had to get out.
Today, the bedroom is a multimedia entertainment and communications centre. Your phone keeps you in constant text contact with all your friends. Your computer connects you to the world and enables you to do things you couldn’t have done before, heh heh.
With your Xbox or your PlayStation you enjoy thrilling adventures. By training your parents to stay out of the bedroom ("Stay the f*** out of my room" should do it), you can enjoy your hash and your drinks in peace. And during your rare moments of clarity you can read the latest in fiction and poetry on your Sony Reader or you can pass an hour with The Irish Timesonline. If you don't want to interact with the old folk, you can have your pizzas delivered.
And there’s the money. According to the researchers, the income from work or benefits of young men who move out and live independently is not greater than that of their counterparts who loll about at home.
But the “stay at home” brigade don’t have rent, mortgages or child support to pay and I suspect many of them think €20 a week is a more-than-
adequate contribution towards the accommodation, laundry, electricity, landline, piped TV, heating, valeting and butlering provided by their parents.
So they have more disposable income than the ones who are out fending for themselves. And here’s the beauty of it: according to the research, their parents actually subsidise them. Therefore, they have even more money to spend on drink, drugs, risky sex and being obnoxious.
There is actually little difference between these guys and the more indolent Roman emperors except that indolent Roman emperors could have people executed when they got bored.
You might be saying to yourself that this isn’t a life and you might be right. I suspect that a huge frustration and anger must be building in these guys as they go through their self-centred, anti-social existences.
They have built a trap for themselves but it’s very hard to leave the trap of cossetted self-indulgence and take your chances in the offline world.
Do they need therapy?
No, their parents do.
pomorain@ireland.com
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, That's Men, the best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times, is published by Veritas