The phenomenon of adult children returning to their family homes, known as boomeranging, is increasing (Bouchard, 2013; Cherlin et al. 1997; White 1994; Clemens and Axelson 1985). Oftentimes, modern parents seem to be sympathetic to the return of their independent adult children. In other cases, the return of adult children reflects the condition of the labor market and the availability and prices of housing.
It is not common in the French model to go back to the parents. The economic and health crisis of the last few years and the increase of the phenomenon in France have as a consequence that parents accept the return even if it means new changes for them. At the time of departure, new habits are established and parents develop their personal identity more and with the return of their child they have to take up old roles again (Gaviria, 2020). In Poland the “boomeranging” phenomena is not well described yet. As Pustulka et al. stress, parents nowadays are offering their households as ‘feathered nests’ during extended transitions to adulthood.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many families. The restrictions which were introduced on movement along with the subsequent closing of borders stopped traffic throughout existing communication routes -young adults who had (recently) been living on their own – working, studying, creating intimate relationships returned and started living at family home again. The returns, and the motivations behind those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, , are of a different nature than those described so far
The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the return of young people to their parents in Poland and France during the pandemic. This phenomenon has the particularity of having taken place at the same time in different countries and being motivated by simmilar factors : : economic, health, safety and relational. The aim is to examine the convergences of the return phenomenon in the two countries and describe relations in the time of sudden recohabitation and the narratives about different strategies to survive in the reconstructed « full nest ».