'Everyone's Life Is so Different': The Experiences of Young Australian Adults Who Return Home

Young adults in modern society are pursuing a range of pathways into independence, pathways that often include returning home. Research around returning home often relies on survey data that was collected in the 1980s and 1990s. This data has contributed to the often negative perception of "returning" that has dominated our understanding. This article instead draws on recent qualitative interviews with 22- to 30-year-olds in Melbourne to explore their diverse experiences of returning to the parental home. Positioning these experiences within the wider context of literature on patterns of returning home reveals that our negative perceptions of this process may need to be reconsidered.