Today, in a bit of synchronicity, I heard two totally unrelated references to the proverbial “slacker who lives in his mother’s basement” (in one, he spends every waking hour playing WoW; in the other, tweeting insane conspuracy theories).
Is this something that actually happens? It seems to me that if a child never leaves home, or returns home after graduation or whatever, he’d be in his old bedroom. Kinda rude to banish him into the basement, innit?
Comics I Don't Understand 
You know. I’ve always wondered that too. But I guess the implication is that the guy is *such* a loser the family wants minimal contact. The idea of renting out a basement or letting someone stay in the basement implies, I think, they will not interact with the main house. I guess….
Maybe some kids do have their rooms in the basement growing up, or maybe in later years their old bedroom was re-purposed by the parents and the only unoccupied space was the basement. Is the trend these days to finish to the standard of the rest of the house? Growing up, I’ve known a lot of unfinished basements. and sometimes they flooded.
Incidentally, the TV Tropes entry on the subject has an interesting discussion of the trope, both in fiction (which stereotypes the slacker male) and in real life, where in some cultures the family stays together.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BasementDweller
[…”However, the “move out when you are an adult” is a (relatively) recent phenomenon of post WWII America where everyone had four complete years of constant work, savings i.e. rationing, and GI Bill bonuses to boot. Prior to that most people lived in family units and only moved away when there wasn’t enough room in the current dwelling. …”]
I think it makes a difference whether the returning ‘child’ is a man or a woman.
I just finished reading Ragnar Jonasson’s Dark Iceland series, and in every book, at least ONE of the characters (male) is living in his parents’ basement, the benefit being that each basement has a separate entrance so the parents have no idea if their adult child is home. Or not.
You’re assuming the old bedroom is still available.
It’s not even necessarily the same house.
Empty nest = sell the big house and buy a smaller one.
The Parent’s Basement is like the flip side of the Mother in Law Apartment
Might as well accept it.
Multigenerational housing is back, & it’s not going away
There was a romcom a few years back, “Failure to Launch”, that posited the adult male living in his parents’ basement was enough of a thing to create a demand for the heroine’s business: Romancing said men so they’d be motivated to Get A Life and move out. The title summarizes the idea of basement dwellers as arrested adolescents.
For a very long time before that the adult male living in the parental home was often typed as a sad sack: the priggish rival for the girl’s affections, the big talker who never quite acts, the guy who peaked in high school. Cliff, the mailman on “Cheers”, lived with his mom most of the time. Likewise Robert DeNiro’s creepy wannabe in “King of Comedy”. Victor Bueno’s character in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” was a less than dutiful son sponging off an elderly mom.
There was a bit less stigma for an adult female, since she was usually typed as a caregiver rather than a sponge. And the parent or grandparent occupying the younger’s home (“Frasier” had a father moving in with his incompatible son) is a different power dynamic.
The newest incarnation of the type is the young adult who may be capable and motivated, but is nonetheless screwed by housing prices and/or employment prospects. This is emerging as a real phenomenon as opposing to a mere type. A standard modern sitcom premise is the kid who moves out, but is forced to return — often with a child or two in tow.
I know of a couple of cases personally. In one, the man dropped out of college (3 times now), and got more space/privacy to play his video games at all hours by setting up shop in the basement. His room still has his childhood stuff in it.
In the other, the man in his thirties moved back home after a divorce and job loss and his room had already been converted into other family uses.
My brother lived in the basement for a number of years before he moved out. I don’t really remember exactly why the move happened, but I am sure in his case was because of the added space. He went from a small bedroom to an area that was close to half the size of the main floor of the house.
What Sue and zbicyclist said. I know of a few cases like this too. Basement = more private, more room, has a TV, can come and go at odd hours without having to sneak down the hallway, etc. What’s not to like, especially if old room and stuff also still there?
They used to be, and still sometimes are, called mother-in-law apartments. You fix up the basement to be a small apartment of its own, with its own bathroom, kitchenette, and so forth. At least a studio apartment. It allows a certain amount of independence and freedom; it’s not EXACTLY “living with your parents”, because you DO have your own place, kinda, and are normally paying rent to them, but it’s still dodgy, because your parents are charging you under-market rents, letting you slide on rent sometimes, and, possibly, still doing your laundry and feeding you, even if, technically, you’ve got the facilities to do those things yourself.
I’ve had friends who’ve done it. It’s a thing. It’s a desperation move, mostly, but less of a desperation move than actually moving into your childhood room.
There is a comic strip I see once in a while with a title expressing just this situation; tho I think it’s a female protagonist.
I think basement just sounds creepier. It completes the image they’re trying to sell.
One of my brothers took up residence in the basement (he didn’t go to college and never left home, just sort of expanded his space). His low-life friends could come and hang out too. I think my mother didn’t mind because she’d have been alone otherwise (parents having divorced a few years before).
Last Tuesday Jeff Stahler had a comic that would have been perfect as the introduction to this thread:
Earlier, I said: There is a comic strip I see once in a while with a title expressing just this situation; tho I think it’s a female protagonist.
Turns out the title is “Boomerangs”, and it is indeed meant to have this sense, though that may not be so transparent as I was thinking.
https://www.gocomics.com/boomerangs/about
MinorAnnoyance – yet one of the jokes that gets repeated during Frasier is negative comments about people who still live with their parents and he reacts as if he lives with his father – not that his father lives with him, which is a totally different situation.
In “Mall Rats” Jason Lee’s character lives in his mom’s basement and has his girlfriend in to visit. Girl friend has to come in and leave by the window.
For the basement part of the question, depends on original family size and the house. As a child/teen, I always had a sibling or myself whose bedroom was in the basement. But it was a nicely finished basement, with no water issues.
Mine was a semi-finished attic — but it was my bedroom all along.
I had an acquaintance in my early teens (sixth grade thru high school) whose bedroom was in his parents’ 9nicely done up) basement. I’ve recently become re-acquainted with him via emails, and he is an avowed flat-earther, space and gravity don’t exist, we never went to the moon, earth is covered by a dome, JIK, jr. will be the next vice president, there IS a basement in the pizza parlor, etc., etc. I sometimes wonder if spending his formative years in a basement had something to do with his fanaticism and beliefs. Only ’cause I think he was unstable to begin with . . .
I, too, had the entire finished attic for my ‘bedroom suite’ . . . felt so luxurious and privileged; a real hideaway for the introvert that I am.
erratum correctum: (nicely done up)
Hubby tells me that when his parents bought their own home, his Dad spent time and money to fix up the basement as a ‘family/rec room’. Finally, it was completed and the family trooped downstairs to do whatever it is folks do in rec rooms. After a few days of this, his Dad said, ‘We’re living like MOLES,’ marched back upstairs, and they never used that room for its intended purpose again.
Do castles have basements? Oh, I s’pose that’s what dungeons are . . .
