Swedes typically stop living with their parents earlier than anywhere else in Europe. But can leaving home at a young age have a dark side?
By Maddy Savage
Fleeing the family nest is a rite of passage many teenagers dream of, yet it’s a luxury millennials and Generation Z across much of the Western world are having to wait much longer for.
In the US, more young people are living with their parents than at any time since 1940, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of census data. A 2019 study by British think tank Civitas found that the proportion of 23-year-olds living with their parents in the UK had risen from 37% in 1998 to 49% a decade later.
In Sweden it’s a different story. The most common age to leave home is between 18 and 19, compared to the EU average of 26, according to Eurostat figures. And a significant proportion of these young Swedes aren’t moving into cramped house shares or student dorms. They are living alone.
“I’d always wanted to move out of home and I’d always felt ready,” says Ida Staberg, who has been renting an apartment by herself in Vällingby, a suburb north-west of Stockholm, for two years, since she was 19.
Read more at https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190821
