Alexandra Lamy forced to return to live with Josiane Balasko, this is the subject of the comedy “Return to my mother”, which also evokes a much less pleasant reality. Those who are called the “boomerang generation”.
You will certainly remember the comedy Tanguy, directed by Étienne Chatiliez and released in 2001, a big success in theaters, in which the son of a couple, aged 28, was in no particular hurry to leave the family home and the benefits that come with it.
The film has also become so cult that its title – and by extension the first name – have even entered everyday language, precisely to characterize a young adult who takes longer than average to leave the family cocoon.
More than a decade later after this “Tanguy generation”we talked about the “boomerang generation”the very subject of the film Back to my mother, the comedy signed by Eric Lavaine, carried by Alexandra Lamy and Josiane Balasko, broadcast this evening on TF1.
The director had the idea for his film, released in 2016, by watching a TV report on this subject. What are we talking about ? The term actually refers to those adults forced to return to their parents because, generally, of job loss.
The “Boomerang” generation
This concept was actually born in 2005, invented by a Canadian sociologist named Barbara Mitchell, who then spoke of “boomerang children”, after finding that 40% of young Americans returned to their parents. In 2009, the BBC devoted an article on the subjectciting the figure of 111,000 people, aged 16 to 29, forced to return to live with their parents, in the wake of the 2008 crisis.
Whether Back to my mother prefers to dig a comic vein, the reality is much less playful… According to a study published in 2015 by the Abbé Pierre Foundation, entitled “The hidden face of the Tanguy“, out of 4.5 million adults living with their parents in 2013, 925,000 had lived alone before returning to the family home.
Nathalie Mazeas
Half of these people had lived for more than three months in independent accommodation before returning to the family home, more than a year for two thirds of them. The number of young people over 25 in this situation jumped 20% between 2002 and 2013, rising from 282,000 to 339,000.
A phenomenon far from being only French, but international. “In recent years, this phenomenon has further amplified in Great Britain, France, Spain but also in the United States or Japan” explained sociologist Sandra Gaviria, from the University of Le Havre, in an article published in 2016 in the journal SociologySentitled “The boomerang generation: becoming an adult differently”. “This is how between 1950 and 2003, the rate of returns to Great Britain rose from 25% to 46%” she wrote.
A phenomenon that has grown with the pandemic
Precariousness, the difficulty of finding a job, the explosion in the cost of rents… And now the devastating impact of the pandemic linked to Covid-19: there is no shortage of arguments to explain this phenomenon which does not has since ceased to grow.
According to figures provided in June 2020 by the DREES (Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics), which depends on the Ministry of Health, this return often occurs at the end of studies or to look for a job (26%), during studies ( 24%) or following a breakup or bereavement (20%).
Although students are the most numerous (42% of adults living with their parents), 58% no longer live with their parents. Nearly a third are employed, and 19% are unemployed. Add to this that 60% of them have a baccalaureate or higher. In addition to this category of the population, there are 3.8 million other adults who have never left the family cocoon, often for financial reasons.