Coresidence and Leaving Home: Young Adults and Their Parents

This review pulls together research on home leaving, home returning, parent-child coresidence, and the launching process and integrates it with theoretical perspectives related to the life course. Material is included from Australia, Canada, and Britain as well as the United States. Because the nuclear family form specifies that children leave the parental home when they marry and few married persons live with their parents, the focus is on relationships between unmarried children and their parents. The review concentrates on the young adult years while recognizing coresidence experiences over the life course. The nature of the link between residence patterns, family relationships, and dependence is an empirical question that, for the most part, has not been answered.