How the ‘Lost Twenty Years’ Have Changed the Relationship between Parents and Their Children in Middle Adulthood

Abstract

    It was not until the early twenty first century that Japanese society became aware of the disintegration of the traditional process that young people followed as they became independent adult. The stagnation of the national economy at the time led to the disappearance of many jobs by which young people used to build their lives. This in turn deprived them, especially young men, of marriage and establishing their own families. Unmarried and economically unstable, these young people continued to live at their parental homes. Twenty years on they are still living with their parents, and are now entering middle age. Whilst there are advantages in parents and their adult children living together, this new relationship is likely to have created various unprecedented problems. In order to gain a better understanding of the relationship as well as the inequality known to exist within the cohort, this paper examines various aspects including employment status, gender, and the areas of habitation, in the lives of the current generation in this particular situation. The study also reviews the government's youth policies in the last twenty years and argues that the lack of accountability in the means of support for young people and in securing their social and financial status is one of the prime causes of the current phenomenon. Young people in the early 2000s were thus unable to become independent and have been forced to depend on their parents or to live alone under a precarious financial status ever since. The increasing inequality found amongst the current generation of people in their middle adulthood can be seen as the result of the insufficient social and youth policies in the past twenty years.