Parasite Singles

Posted on March 7, 2010 | Category: Social Trivia

While there are all different names for single young people living at home, in Japanese the word used to describe them is parasite single.  This comes from a book published in 1999 that used the word to describe the growing trend.  The year before this was released, a study came out showing that in Japan sixty percent of single men and eighty percent of single women between the ages of twenty and thirty four still lived at home with their parents.

In addition to more single people living at home with their parents, couples are beginning to stay home more often after marriage.  The expenses of a wedding be hard enough to deal with, but add on the cost of moving into an apartment or purchasing a home and it becomes unbearable.

Saving money is definitely a big part of these decisions, but it also gives more time to stay at home as a big family.  Living all together under one roof gives parents the ability to spend more time with their children.  Sometimes they look at this time as an investment in their future because their children might decide to return the favor later in life.  An interesting fact related to this is that it is actually more common in Japan for elderly family members to remain at home with other family members instead of moving into a home for the elderly.

Considering the incredibly high cost of living in many parts of Japan, it isn’t hard to understand why this trend would be rising.  Fortunately, being together as a family has been shown to improve happiness compared to time spent at work or alone.  Despite this fact, the parasite singles in Japan are being blamed for things from a decrease in the birth rate to increased crime levels.  This could just be due to resistance to change, but either way it seems like a harsh label to be assigned to single people still living at home.

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