As Aussie terms go, one of my favourites is bludger. It’s an evocative word to describe the lazy, as it is layered with imagery. For my parents, the Norm type would spring to mind, a man with a big gut lying on a lounge watching cricket with a tinny in hand instead of mowing the lawn, or workmen sitting on the job at the side of the road with ciggies dangling from lips on yet another smoko.
For my generation however, there is a new image of bludger and it is just as lazy – only this definition of indolence is living under the same roof.
We’re talking young adults who are still living at home. They are twentysomethings who bring their mates home for dinner they expect their parents to supply and cook. They are the kids who still expect mum to do their washing despite having mastered the art of button pushing years prior. They are the monosyllabic couch covers who grunt hello and only rise of the smell of food, if it’s not brought directly to them, as they would prefer. They are the kids who feel there is nothing wrong expecting their parents to drop them off at the pub and pick them up again when done.
Academics have dubbed these young adults as “Boomerang,” kids — young adults who return home after leaving and “failure to launchers” i.e. kids who never leave in the first place. I reckon its just best to call them what they are – failures to get a life. Oh, and a great big slab of today’s population.
Associate Professor and lead researcher Katherine Burn Cassandra Szoeke of the University of Melbourne reviewed 15 years’ worth of academic studies of Boomerang and Failure to Launch children and their parents, a sample size was more than 2 million people.
Talking to the ABC this week, she revealed these stay at home adults are the “normal” in Australia and other Western societies, with young adult children living with their parents much later than they were 20years ago, a trend that shows no sigh of abating.