Crowded houses

How can you attain the dream of living comfortably in a big house in a nice suburb and have someone else do all your washing, ironing, shopping and cooking for you?

In past decades, the answer was straightforward: get rich, buy a mansion and employ a butler. Today, it's even more simple: just never leave home in the first place.

We might accuse the younger generation of having no sense but now they're having the last laugh over their long-suffering parents. With already sky-high rents for houses in Sydney surging a further 8 per cent in the three months to June, they're growing up - yet refusing to fly the nest.

Paddington mum Sharon Barclay found herself resorting to desperate measures to turn her 28-year-old daughter, Emma, loose. "I had to give her a one-way ticket to London to get her out of the house," she admits.

"It was the only way I could do it. She just wouldn't move out. It was our fault; we made it too easy for her. But it was the last straw when she began telling us to be quieter at night when we were having parties."

KIPPERS OR WET FISH?

They're known as "kippers" - kids in parents' pockets eroding retirement savings - this generation of youngsters know they've got it made at home with mum and dad, and are reluctant to get out on their own.

The latest research from the Housing Industry Association reveals that the proportion of generation Y - those born between 1976 and 1991 - now living at home reached more than 50 per cent in 2006. That means nearly one in five 25- to 29-year-olds is still at home.

"If you're in your twenties, on a low to middle income and looking to buy a home, it's becoming virtually impossible," says the association's chief economist, Harley Dale.

In bygone days, young people were eager to make their own way in the world as soon as they could escape their parents' watchful gaze. Now, they're increasingly turning their backs on exorbitant rents, ignoring the first-home-owner grant and refusing to take out mortgages. The number of housing finance approvals for first-timers has fallen to 17 per cent of the total market from 26 per cent at its peak in 2001, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Young people are content to stay home and save their money, while cheerfully spending their parents' money.

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Kippers- I love it

I have no doubt my three children will want to live with us and take it easy until they're well in their twenties- however I won't be attaining to the "having mum and dad do the ironing, washing, cooking" brigade. We have a cleanup roster already and the kids know that cooking isn't exactly my forte so they already are proficient at making toasted sandwiches and noodles

When I lived at home, we also paid board and took turns to cook/clean up and did our own ironing from about the age of 14. I feel sorry for those parents who mollycoddle their kids up until they leave (or don't leave!) home until 30ish. I even know of one mother who still makes her son's lunch, picks up his dirty washing from his bedroom floor and irons his shirts and he's 25! Bit sad, really....