Failure to Launch: Notes From the Basement
The move into the parents’ basement is a descent, literally and metaphorically.
Updated January 10, 2026 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Some people are getting concerned. ―Robert De Niro’s Irishman seeking to intimidate Al Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa
I don't want any trouble. —Basil, from Zorba the Greek
Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble. —Alexis Zorba
Years ago, at a New Year’s Eve party on the Portuguese coast, my hosts roped me into what might be called a practical joke. As guests continued to arrive, my job was to say hello to every young woman and inquire, with heavily accented diction: “Vive na casa dos seus pais?” I played along, the women looked astonished and aghast, and my friends laughed uproariously. I knew that my question meant “Do you live in your parents’ house?” I, too, thought the little charade was funny, and a good time was had by all.
Around the world, many emerging adults live with their parents. Globally speaking and historically speaking, such co-residence may well be normative. Contexts and meanings are variable, however. I recall, for example, that back in East Germany, where apartments were scarce, many young people would get married in order to be favored by the state-run housing authority. They felt they had to wed so they could get away from mom and dad.
Before the onset of modernity, multi-generational residences were the norm, and normative expectations were tightly regulated. Many young men learned their father’s craft or trade. Many young women prepared for a life as a wife and mother. There were few old people, and the weight-bearing generation in the middle was, I estimate, between 25 and 45 years old.
Modernity has brought increased individualism, a thawing of social ties, an increase in autonomy, and a will to freedom (von Hippel, 2025). Then came postmodernity, and now, in the era of metamodernity, we see that grand social trends are rarely monotonic. “What goes up must come down,” Newton purportedly said, perhaps when realizing that some things, like apples, can come down without having first gone up. At any rate, it is now clear that in the Western world, many emerging adults—roughly 20 percent—return to live na casa dos seus pais , or they never leave.
Some people are getting concerned—as De Niro memorably said to Pacino—and perhaps people on the political right more so because they may place greater value on individual achievement, independence, and autonomy than people on the left. All, when contemplating the issue, in one way or another, take a normative view, comparing what they, correctly or incorrectly, perceive with how they think things should be.
The literature on young adults who fail to launch or who return home like boomerangs is scant (but there are many blog posts on this topic here on Psychology Today ), which is surprising if indeed there is a societal problem that has been growing for decades. The impressions expressed in this blog post are, therefore, rather personal and open to revision. What is clear to me, however, in part on the basis of my own collaborative research of 30 years ago, is that people judge individuals in light of normative expectations, and normative expectations, like stereotypes, values, and other cultural certitudes, change more slowly than the social and economic realities on the ground (Krueger et al., 1995).
This argument implies that when we look at—and judge—young people today, we do so in light of expectations formed during the high tide of individualism, the era of modernity. These judgments are probably not only the judgments made by older observers, but also the judgments of the young people themselves. It stands to reason that processes of internalized judgment play a role in the rising rates of anxiety and depression among young adults, all the way to raised risks of suicide .
Many individuals who have failed to launch, and who have adopted a perspective of failure, may struggle psychologically not only because of the lack of attractive job offers but also because they know how they are being perceived and how they have come to perceive themselves (Haidt, 2024; reviewed in Krueger, 2025). This socio-psychological situation easily sets in motion a vicious cycle. How can such a cycle be broken?
Compassion is important, but if compassion is not amended with constructive behavior strategies and interventions, it is liable to devolve into an enabling attitude. Young people living at home may, for a while, find reassurance in their parents’ understanding, in having their bills paid, meals cooked, and clothes laundered, but over time, what will this do to their self-respect? At worst, an attitude of compassion will encourage the growth of a victim’s perception and narrative, which will blind the person to opportunities to make efforts in order to achieve growth.
When I came to the U.S. from Germany as an exchange student, one of the cultural concepts I learned was the idea of “tough love.” How intriguing and paradoxical this idea seemed to me! In Germany, I had encountered toughness and love, mostly the former, and never the combination. In the U.S., I found that many parents deliberately left some obstacles in the youths’ path, noting that the young had to “figure it out” on their road towards self-sufficiency. One anecdote may serve to illustrate this. A young man I knew had to accept a bit of debt so he could buy his fiancée a somewhat extravagant engagement ring. His grandfather, whom I also knew, said in conversation: “I could help him, but I won’t. Let him struggle a little. It will be good for him.”
The concept of tough love is subtle. Those who understand it well know just how much aid to give and when to withhold it. One of the characteristics of our metamodern era is that, along with their ideology of “safetyism,” many parents are paralyzed by the idea that their children might struggle. The pain of struggle is a powerful and salient stimulus. The long-term benefits of a struggle well-fought are harder to see. Some parents and their at-home adult children have entered a cabal of dysfunction. Who will tell them to wake up from their dream of compassion before it becomes a nightmare? A blog post on Psychology Today is my nano contribution. Share it with your friends, please, to turn the nano into a micro, and a mini, and more.
Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation . Penguin.
Krueger, J. I. (2025). Gen dread. Review of ‘The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness’ by J. Haidt. American Journal of Psychology, 138, 377-340.
Krueger, J., Heckhausen, J., & Hundertmark, J. (1995). Perceiving middle-aged adults: Effects of stereotype-congruent and incongruent information. Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences, 50 , 82–93.
von Hippel, W. (2025). The social paradox . Harper.
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Joachim I. Krueger, Ph.D. , is a social psychologist at Brown University who believes that rational thinking and socially responsible behavior are attainable goals.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.