In this paper we explore the relationship between financial and residential
independence of young people and some aspects of their psychological
separation from parents. Namely, the adequate psychological separation of the
youth from their parents is affected by the characteristics of family
dynamics as a whole, by family narratives, and also by the ecosystem
conditions (opportunities) for the financial and housing independence from
parents. In order to examine these findings, which have been confirmed almost
without exception in the foreign literature, we bring young people who live
with their parents into the focus of this study, comparing them with their
peers who have become independent in this respect. The analysis included a
total of 1627 respondents aged 19-35 years, 909 of whom lived with their
parents. We were interested in whether there were any significant differences
in terms of statistics between these two diverse housing categories of
respondents, considering material possibilities of the physical separation
and some aspects of psychological separation from parents. These are:
emotional, conflicting, and functional independence, and lack of privacy in
the family. We obtained the following findings: there are clear differences
in some aspects of psychological separation among those young people who
continue living at their parents' home and those who chose (had a possibility
of) physical separation. These findings must be interpreted from a broader,
ecosystem perspective, in anticipation of the possible implications of the
overall (non)independence of young people for their life outcomes.
Between children and parents: Housing (in)dependence and “growing up”
