A 75-year-old mother in Italy has gone to court to evict her grown sons (40 and 42 years old) after they refused to leave the comforts of her home.
Bamboccioni (big babies) is the Italian term used to describe adults still living with their parents for the convenience of free room and board– a trend recently growing in the country.
The mother from Pavia took her frustrations with these two bamboccionis to the courtroom and had the judge side with her in a landmark decision. The judge highlighted the initial parental responsibility to provide support but deemed it unjustifiable for the sons– both of whom were over 40– to remain dependent on their mother.
A local paper reported the mother had tried on several occasions to convince the sons to find independent living arrangements, considering they both had jobs. It was also reported that the men refused to contribute to household expenses or chores.
Now,as reported by The Guardian, the judge has given the men until 18 of December to locate somewhere else to live.
While Italy has long had a culture where multiple generations will stay living under one roof, the number of young adults staying longer in family homes has surged in recent years due to increasing cost-of-living and lack of job stability.
Data from 2022 shows that 70 per cent of people in Italy aged between 18 and 34 still live at home with their parents. Of this, 72.6 per cent were men and 66 per cent were women.
A 2019 study from the Italian National Institute of Statistics found that of the young adults still living at home with their parents, 36.5 per cent were students, 38.2 per cent were employed and 23.7 per cent were searching for a job.
The Pavia mother’s case isn’t the first time that an issue like this has been taken to court. In 2020, Italy’s Supreme Court ruled that young adults don’t have an automatic right to financial support from their parents, even if they aren’t financially independent.
This came after a 35-year-old part-time music teacher took his parents to court, claiming that his annual income of 20,000 euros wasn’t enough to support himself and that he needed money from them.