In certain situations, it can be beneficial for adults to live with their ageing parents. For example, this can be a financial benefit when adults go through phases of unemployment, and having a separate home is becoming less affordable. However, from a mental health perspective, living with one's parents in phases of unemployment can become an issue, as a new study shows.
Previous research had already shown how parental distress affects children’s opportunities for a happy and healthy life. Now a recently published article by researchers from the Centre for Demographic and Ageing Research (CEDAR) at Umeå University and the Centre for Demographic Studies (CED) in Barcelona explores the other direction. The study shows that the mental well-being of parents declines while their adult children undergo phases of unemployment. This effect is especially pronounced when parents co-reside with their children.
This proximity effect is stronger with mothers than fathers. The authors interpret that this pattern is due to traditional gender roles that place a heavier burden on women for caregiving and emotional support within the family. Mothers may be more likely than fathers to shoulder emotional and practical responsibilities when an unemployed child lives at home, which can lead to increased stress and depressive symptoms.
The authors of the study got surprising results regarding fathers as well. The researchers went in with the expectation that when parents live further away from their children, they may not be as much exposed to the emotional strains associated with their child’s unemployment. Instead, relatively larger effects of unemployment could be seen among fathers with adult children who live near enough to have regular interactions, but not close enough to provide direct instrumental support. Or to put it like this: the negative effects of unemployment disappeared in families where children and parents were separated by a distance of over 25 kilometres.
Residential autonomy benefits well-being
These findings have relevance in the context of the current housing crisis in many European cities. A lack of availability and affordability of housing can often result in adult children living with their parents out of necessity. The study shows one possible result of such an “imposed” co-residence. Since policymakers in the EU are now striving to improve European housing policies, one note to be taken from this study is that investing in opportunities for residential autonomy of young people may provide additional benefits in terms of well-being among older adults. Furthermore, the topic of interrelatedness of wellbeing of family members is important for a number of reasons.
Population ageing and longevity prolong the shared lifetimes of parents and their children. This means that older people are increasingly exposed not only to their own adverse experiences, such as the risk of losing of a job, but also to those of their children. Altogether this means that but research and policy need to understand better both the effects of economic and emotional resources of adult children and of the challenges that they face in their working lives have on older generations.
The publication is a part of the project titled “The effects of unemployment on health of family members” (HEALFAM), funded by the The European Research Council (ERC). This project investigates how losing a job affects health outcomes of partners, children and elderly parents and whether the magnitudes of these influences differ across families and societies.
Prof. Anna Baranowska-Rataj will present this research at the Einstein Centre Population Diversity's lecture series. The talk will take place at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center on February 10th, 2026, 1:00 - 2:00 PM.
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