It feels pathetic to admit this, but I’m still a bit unmoored by my sons leaving after Christmas. There’s a readjustment required every time – back to tidy silence, to my studiedly casual WhatsApps going unread, to imagining their days by checking their weather. With my caretaking impulses thwarted, I’m anxious and unsettled, forever offering unwanted care parcels and unsolicited advice. “Let them live their lives,” I bleat to myself, while doing everything but.

In my defence, I wonder how natural it is to live in a monogenerational pod. My current round of wondering was prompted by reading about the rise of the “stay-at-home hub-son”. This subcategory of boomerang kids was first identified last year, after 28-year-old Brendan Liaw described himself as a professional stay-at-home son on the US quiz show Jeopardy!, prompting a rash of think pieces (and understandable eye-rolling in many communities where intergenerational living is commonplace).

Much of the hub-son discourse is anecdotal, but it’s rooted in demographic fact, both in the US........

© The Guardian