First, there were the trad wives. Then came the stay-at-home girlfriends. Now, a cohort of Gen Z men who live with their parents are rebranding, too.
They call themselves stay-at-home sons, and they include early career professionals saving on rent, college dropouts struggling to find steady work, and unemployed Jeopardy champions.
One such self-described stay-at-home son, 24-year-old Abdullah Abbasi, is monetizing his lifestyle through his clothing line, aptly named Stay At Home Sons, which he runs with two of his childhood friends. They sell hats, T-shirts, and hoodies emblazoned with their taglines: “Doing nothing is hard” and “Trust the fund.”
The brand is designed to be aspirational, not tongue-in-cheek. Its Instagram account is brimming with private jets and Ferraris and hashtags like #oldmoney, #richlife, and #wealth. The conspicuous consumption is the point. “It doesn’t really matter how you got it, as long as you have it,” Abbasi told Business Insider.
Abbasi said he and his co-founders, who all live in a well-to-do Chicago suburb with their parents, earnestly believe that living with their families isn’t a bad thing. The path to success doesn’t necessarily mean moving out at 18 and living independently, they argue.
“We wanted to unapologetically own the fact that we’re happy to stay at home,” he said. “I have no problem living with my family, and I think there’s no shame in that.”
Courtesy of Abdullah Abbasi
To be sure, Abbasi and his peers represent a privileged slice of young adults living with their parents: those with families well-off enough to help support them. In Abbasi’s case, that means he doesn’t pay rent and he doesn’t need to make a certain income to satisfy his parents. “It’s a household economy, everybody’s money is everybody’s,” he said.
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Grown men living with their parents is nothing new. Many of them struggle to find work and affordable housing. Young people are more likely to live with their parents when jobs are hard to come by and wages are stagnant, according to Pew Research Center researcher Richard Fry, who authored a recent report on where in the country younger Americans live with their parents.
Abbasi decided the stay-at-home son life was right for him during a summer in college that he spent living at home with his parents and not doing much of anything. He was relieved to get a break from dorm life, and it dawned on him how good life he had it at home, kicking it with his friends and hanging with his family.
“Basically every night we were on the golf course, having dinner, going out, and during those extended hours of what most people would consider leisure time, we realized doing nothing is pretty hard,” he joked.
So Abbasi moved back home and started part-time online classes. In his spare time, he helps out with his family’s businesses, which include a physical therapy venture and a medical administration company, and splits his time between Pakistan, Dubai, Canada, and Chicagoland.
“Wherever the family goes, I go,” he said.
Are you a stay-at-home son or living in a multi-generational household? Share your story with this reporter at [email protected].
