Parents' commitment to support over 16s at home is conditional, study warns

Research supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that parents often see their children's 16th birthday as marking a watershed in their responsibilities.

Although parents are nearly always willing in principle to provide a home for older teenagers, many insist that it depends on acceptable behaviour and other conditions such as a contribution towards board and help with the chores. Where conflict arises and the conditions are not being met, they think it acceptable for their children to leave home.

In-depth interviews with families living on local authority estates in Staffordshire found that:

• Half the parents agreed it was reasonable to let a 16-year old girl leave home rather than accept a boyfriend to whom they objected.
• Almost all agreed that a 16-year old boy who was in conflict with his mother's new partner should be the one to leave home, rather than the partner.
• If the same situations arose in families where the young people were aged only 14, few parents thought their children should leave.

Further interviews with young people who had become homeless - and with some of their parents - confirmed that friction within families played a major part in their being evicted or deciding to leave home.

However, the research also revealed important differences in the background reasons for conflict:

• Young people who had grown up with the same parents (or parent and step-parent) for many years were most likely to have become homeless through conflict about their own behaviour - including young men's involvement in crime and drugs. Nine out of ten young women said friction was caused by disputes over boyfriends; while parents described various failed attempts to control their daughters, including 'grounding' them at home. Eviction of young men from the family home had sometimes been precipitated by being caught stealing from their parents or by physical confrontation with their fathers.
• Young people whose families had been disrupted by parents separating and forming new relationships were most likely to have become homeless because of conflict between themselves and their parent's new partner or because their parent wanted 'to make a new life'. Young men were especially likely to believe they should have been given priority over their mother's new partner; while parents described being torn between the relationship and loyalty to their child.

Two out of five of the 56 young homeless people who were interviewed said they had been physically or verbally abused - including a majority of those who came from disrupted homes. Just under a third reported mental health problems and nine said they had attempted suicide.

The study suggested that while the majority had managed to stay in touch with at least one member of their family after moving out, young men found it harder to re-build family relationships than young women. A number of women who had become pregnant since leaving home, saw motherhood as their passport to moving back. Some of the young mothers from disrupted homes regarded their babies as a chance to gain love they had missed in their own families.

Joan Smith of the Housing and Community Research Unit at Staffordshire University, a co-author of the study, said: "These findings have important implications for the Government's 'New Deal' where young people over 16 will be required to take places in education, training or employment. There is a clear disparity between policy assumptions that families will house older children and the way in which many parents take a more qualified view of their responsibilities.

"Better counselling and support services could help to prevent the kind of conflict that leads to homelessness among young people and ensure that those who do leave home receive better help. The homeless young people that we interviewed, including those who had been abused, were agreed on how much they wished there had been someone at school or in the community prepared to listen to them."