It’s no surprise that a generation of mummy’s boys won’t leave home

A good friend of mine told his mother he was leaving home, aged six. She promptly handed him a suitcase and said, “OK, what do you want to pack?” This was the early 1970s, when well-heeled mums thought you shouldn’t mollycoddle your sons, because they might be needed for traditional British endeavours like armed combat, motor racing, climbing Everest and building suspension bridges. A year later, my friend was sent off to board at a brutal prep school, so he was only running a year early in terms of domestic exile.

A wonderful children’s book by Irish author Mary Lavin (illustrated by Edward Ardizzone) titled The Second-Best Children in the World set the tone. Three thoughtful youngsters travelled around the world in their parents’ open-top car, which is a ringer for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, so that their parents can have a proper rest.

How different things are nowadays, when it feels almost impossible to dislodge male offspring. My elder son went off to university last autumn but, to his dad’s and my amazement, he reappeared a couple of weeks later to do some laundry, eat and “chill”. Which has pretty much been the pattern ever since. So dread swelled in my bosom as I learnt the ONS has just revealed that a third of men under the age of 35 are still living at home (a record figure, apart from lockdown). Young women, however, are far more likely to decamp.

I love my two boys but I don’t want to wander downstairs aged 71 and find I can’t use my own sitting room because they’re sprawled on the sofa surrounded by pizza boxes playing FIFA 2039. And yet it seems a terrifyingly plausible scenario. We all know only those with very well-paid jobs or wealthy parents can get on to the housing ladder and rents are exorbitant, particularly in the South.

The other part of the equation is my generation’s wholesale move to child-centred parenting. Everything revolves around them, for fear that they’ll end up telling the counsellors they all have for their ADHD, ADD, OCD, dyslexia or sky-high IQ, that we ruined their lives. No mum in her right mind wants to go to Diggerland or soft play centres, but equally we’re terrified of being labelled neglectful . Fathers who once would have retreated to studies and sheds are now making muffins and pushing buggies to the park. So, of course children want to carry on living in The Magic Faraway Tree land of Parental Largesse.

No one should be surprised that the lazier of the two sexes is even more inclined to snuggle under their Postman Pat duvet and snore to midday. In fact, I think most of my friends and I have somehow raised those dreaded creatures, mammoni – Italian-style mamas’ boys.

Perhaps because so many of our husbands had emotionally-cauterised childhoods, where they were trained to suffer cold showers and bullying and all crying was “blubbing”. Observing that this can result in later-life depression, we’ve taken a different line with our sons, heeding every miniscule utterance of discomfort. We’re constantly worried that they’re living on McDonalds and Pot Noodles. A dear friend’s engineer son has landed a great job, but stays at home for his mother’s delectable cuisine. I observe a growing tendency for such sons to move their partners and children in with granny and her seemingly self-replenishing larder.

It seems to me we should take a leaf from Lavin’s book, buy an old banger and schedule a gap year. But instead of sending our children, let’s go ourselves. Second-best parenting is, perhaps, the answer.