Source: Telegraph >> Read Full Article and Comment
Government tips on how to treat grown-up children yet to fly the nest are offensive, argues Philip Johnston.
By Philip Johnston
Published: 6:26AM GMT 30 Dec 2009
In The Diary of a Nobody, that most English of novels, the equanimity of Charles Pooter’s household in Holloway, north London, is suddenly disturbed by the return of his son, Lupin. He has lost his first job working for a bank in the north of England. “To our utter amazement he turned up himself in the afternoon, having journeyed all the way from Oldham,” writes Pooter.
There then follows a wonderful series of episodes in which Lupin refuses to get up until the middle of the afternoon, eats and drinks prodigiously, stays out late, brings home unsuitable girlfriends and is constantly nagged by his father about getting a job. Lupin is what we must now learn to call a “boomerang kid”.
This great comic novel was written in 1888; there is nothing new under the sun. Yet so concerned is the Government about such an ancient phenomenon (was the Prodigal Son a boomerang kid?) that it has taken it upon itself to issue a thoroughly patronising set of instructions to the parents of twentysomethings living at home … Continue Reading
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