This summer, when Marthe’s owner (all witnesses requested anonymity) announced to her that he was getting her apartment back, the 25-year-old young woman only had a few weeks to return the keys to the 15 square meters she had previously occupied in Paris. In a hurry, the cinematographer packed up and returned to live with her parents. “I was between two shoots and I had a lot of workshe explains. I didn’t have time to look for another apartment and I figured this would be the simplest solution. »
Without knowing it, the young woman then joined the ranks of those called “boomerang children”, these adults who return to live with their parents after an initial departure. Their situation is not exceptional. Between 2002 and 2013, non-student adults over the age of 25 forced to return to live at home increased from 282,000 to 338,000, figures the Abbé Pierre Foundation in its latest annual report on poor housing. Young people who graduated in 2010 would have a 40% greater chance than those who graduated in 1998 of returning to live with their parents, INSEE establishes.
These returns can be explained in different ways. “There is not one and the same reason that pushes boomerang children to return to their parentsexplains sociologist Sandra Gaviria. Their motivations are often intertwined, even if certain situations recur frequently. » The author of Come back to live with family. Becoming an adult differently (Le Bord de l’eau, 2020) lists the end of a professional contract, a change of direction in studies or even the occurrence of a romantic breakup, which happened for Antoine. Originally from Seine-et-Marne, the young man, just thirty years old, has just become a father when he sees his daily life change. “With my partner, it became very difficult at homehe remembers. One day, I took my things and knocked at my mother’s house. » Without asking any questions, the latter then reopens the doors of the home.
In the family apartment in Champs-sur-Marne, made up of two bedrooms and a living room, Antoine, then unemployed, finds his teenage bedroom. On the walls, he hangs a painting of a Cambodian temple and his grandfather’s medals. Next to his bed and his desk, he sets up a travel cot for his daughter, only a few months old, and stores a few toys. “When we separated, with his mother, I immediately asked for joint custody, he said. My mother’s house is small and I knew that my daughter and I would have to sleep in the same room, but I did everything to make her feel comfortable there… »
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