We all have the same 24 hours in the day. Only the way we arrange and use them can be totally different.

Last week, Reddit user Better Arachnid submitted their personal story to the subreddit “Am I the A***ole?“, asking its members to help her figure out if she’s causing her family unnecessary trouble.

You see, the woman lives with her parents and works nights. However, they still want her to live according to their schedule and spend time together, insisting that their daughter has to adapt to the household.

But Better Arachnid isn’t willing to compromise her sleep and prioritizes it over enjoying the mornings together.

Unable to find common ground, the woman and her parents started fighting over her daily routine and eventually the situation got a little out of hand. Now, she is torn. On one hand, she needs sleep to function but on the other, she isn’t sure if she’s handling the conflict right.

This 24-year-old is working nights to support herself but her parents—who she is still living with—aren’t supporting her

Image credits: Liza Summe (not the actual photo)

They want their daughter to function just on a few hours of sleep so the family could spend time together

Image credits: Ketut Subiyanto (not the actual photo)

There’s a common belief that people like Better Arachnid who continue to live with their family entering adulthood are spoiled and too lazy to take care of themselves.

And you can understand why someone might think that. After all, a record share of young adults moved in with their parents during the coronavirus pandemic. The figure reached 52% in July 2020, soon after millions relocated due to lockdowns.

But “the higher prevalence of living with parents among those 18-24 at the end of 2020 was almost entirely university students living in their parents’ homes, and not young adults in the labor force,” Daniel McCue, a researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, noted.

As restrictions eased, the numbers went down to pre-pandemic levels. According to data from October 2021, 46.5% of young adults now live with their parents.

The woman then asked people to judge who was in the wrong, and everyone unanimously said she’s NTA – not the a***ole

Jeffrey Arnett, a senior research scholar at the Department of Psychology, Clark University, has been studying 18-to-29-year-olds, an age group he calls emerging adults, for over 30 years now.

Arnett describes their in-between status as no longer adolescents, but not yet fully adult. “Although 52% [was] the highest percentage in over a century, this number has, in fact, been rising steadily since hitting a low of 29% in 1960,” the scholar wrote in The Conversation. “The main reason for the rise is that more and more young people continued their education into their 20s as the economy shifted from manufacturing to information and technology. When they’re enrolled in school, most don’t make enough money to live independently.”

Before 1900, it was typical for young people in the US to live at home until they married in their mid-20s, and there was nothing shameful about it. “They usually started working by their early teens – it was rare then for kids to get even a high school education – and their families relied upon the extra income,” Arnett explained. “Virginity for young women was highly prized, so it was moving out before marriage that was scandalous, not staying home where they could be shielded from young men.”

“In most of the world today, it is still typical for emerging adults to stay home until at least their late 20s. In countries where collectivism is more highly valued than individualism – in places as diverse as Italy, Japan, and Mexico – parents mostly prefer to have their emerging adults stay home until marriage. In fact, even after marriage, it remains a common cultural tradition for a young man to bring his wife into his parents’ household rather than move out.”

In today’s individualistic U.S., however, most people expect kids to hit the road by age 18 or 19 so they can learn to be independent and self-sufficient. But can you label someone who works nights to support themselves as lazy? Even if you disapprove of their choice, sabotaging their well-being isn’t the way to communicate that.

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