It's family life pete but not as we know it

INDEPENDENT: Pete Doherty This is one of the happy/unhappy stories of our time repeated and repeated, presumably to make us wince/smile at the misfortune/good fortune of the young people/old

people who unwillingly/willingly find themselves cursed/blessed in this way. I imagine all/none of us agree that having adult children still at home makes for greater

understanding/misunderstanding between generations and a more relaxed/tense atmosphere. Wouldn’t it be marvellous/catastrophic to enjoy/suffer the company/invasion of family members you

thought you had lost/ got rid of into independent/dissolute lives of their own? New  statistics show that as many/few as one in five under-34s is still at home – rather like the Royal/Royle

family. Which means that as few/many as four out of five have waved goodbye/good rid- dance and embarked on their own life/debt. To escape from cold statistics and get a real idea of whether

it is better for grown-up kids to stay at home with parents rather than striking out for themselves, let us consider three cases of youngsters around the age of 30: John George Terry,

originally from Barking, East London – John is 29-years-old; Katrina Amy Alexandria Infield Price, 31, from Brighton and Peter Doherty, 30, born in Northumberland. All three of these young

people moved away from home quite early. John and Katie were in the happy position of being able to house themselves lavishly – John is a professional footballer and Katie is a model who has

also been on TV; Peter, a rock musician, is less elegantly housed but still prefers, despite various dif-ficulties, to live away from his family. John, who married his childhood sweetheart

Toni, is the father of twins. In 2009 he was elected Dad Of The Year in a Daddies sauce survey, so I think we can take it that his own family life is going swimmingly – an excellent

advertisement for leaving home and setting up for yourself. KATIE was a bright girl, keen on horses. She particularly loved the open air and always enjoyed the breezy, informal atmosphere of

a seaside resort where one can wear very few clothes with- out it seeming at all peculiar. The sea air encouraged her to puff out her chest in a way that might seem quite outlandish

elsewhere. Latterly she has become an enormously successful novelist and is now betrothed to a cage fighter, Alex Reid, who recently became one of the nation’s favourite men. For Katie,

moving out of home has been an unalloyed success. Peter might have done better to stay with the folks. He often looks in need of a square meal and has developed the bad habit of wearing a

hat indoors and using harmful drugs in  a way he surely wouldn’t have in a bedroom at his mother’s house. There his life would be punctuated with loving calls of: “Can you come down now

Peter, supper’s on the table?” The worst he would have to put up with might be: “Could you put your washing out today, darling, I’m putting the machine on?” Or: “Be sure to empty your

pockets before you hang your clothes up.” Such a request can be extremely irritating to any child over the age of about five though it might have been welcome last year when young Peter was

arrested for entering a law court with a couple of hundred quids’ worth of heroin in his pocket. I think on the whole the lad would have done better to stick with his mum and embark on a

sensible job in a bank. Italians love the idea of living together, generation alongside generation, with mama making meat- balls and sauce for all; Hindu families often have several

generations under one roof. The British, on the other hand, with our stress on independence and homes of our own want  to get shot of each other as quickly as possible. The upper classes

send their kids away to boarding school at the age of about six in the hope of seeing as little of them as possible. The rest of us, who can’t afford to shoo the kids out, keep them at home

for longer. For reasons both disturbing and financially insane, British schoolleavers go hundreds of miles from home to universities no better than the one 100 yards away. This is sup- posed

to encourage “independence”. Stuff and nonsense! That sort of thinking has led to violence, drunkenness and neglect of our old people. I look forward to the day when not one in five but

four in five grown-up children live at home. Filling the house with love/mess, treating the place as a home/ hotel, sharing/scrounging as if the world is  full of love or owed them a living.

[email protected]