The headlines proclaim it with breathless horror: ‘I’m back at home after uni’. The BBC, the Guardian, the very pillars of our cultural establishment have discovered what millions of young Britons already know. They act as though this is a crisis, a generational tragedy.
But I say: finally, the scales have fallen from our eyes. This so-called ‘Boomerang Generation’ is not a symptom of decline; it is a rational response to a housing market that has become a casino for the wealthy and a prison for the young. Let us compare this to the late Victorian era, when multigenerational households were the norm, not the exception.
Then, as now, the economy was undergoing a seismic shift, and the family unit served as a buffer against the chaos of industrial capitalism. The Victorians, for all their prudishness, understood something we have forgotten: that home is not just an asset to be flipped, but a sanctuary. The current housing model, which fetishises homeownership at any cost, has created a generation of young people shackled to debt and fearful of the future.
To return home after university is not to admit defeat; it is to reject the perverse incentives of a system that values a mortgage over human flourishing. We should be celebrating this trend, not wringing our hands. It signals a return to the extended family, to shared resources, and to a more sustainable way of living.
The real scandal is that we ever thought living alone in a studio flat with a crippling rent was a mark of adulthood. So let us retire the term ‘Boomerang Generation’. Call it instead the ‘Sensible Generation’.
They have seen the chaos we have wrought and have chosen a different path. God save the King, and God save the British family.
