Dear Sally | May 2025

Should I kick out my freeloader son?

Dear Sally,

I have a 21-year-old son who holds a couple of jobs, which make up full-time hours each week. One of these is a body piercer and therefore he is covered in facial piercings and accompanies this with loads of tattoos on his arms. Now I also have more than one tasteful ear piercing and a couple of delicate tattoos so I can’t judge too harshly. However… I feel this expression of himself is stopping him entering more prospective earning employment and therefore my husband and I are constantly subbing his meager wages. And we want to live… away… from him!!! Do we just drop him into real life and move him out? Or do we enjoy the self-expression that millennials can have that we didn’t?

Conflicted and Cash-Strapped

Dear Conflicted and Cash-Strapped,

First of all, I think we can all agree that a tasteful tattoo (or three) is practically a parental requirement. I mean, how else will your child know you were once cool?

(Although, full disclosure: my eight-year-old daughter Clementine recently informed me — with great solemnity — that I am "so cringe." This was after I tried to impress her and her friends by casually dropping "bruh" into conversation. I thought I nailed it. Clementine thought otherwise. I thought adding YOLO might change her mind. No such luck. Apparently, my tasteful ear-piercings didn’t save me from the deep, soul-crushing cringe of being her mum.)

But this is about your son.

It sounds like he’s doing something important: working full-time hours, building a skillset, and — critically — learning what it feels like to stand out (or possibly be judged) for how he looks. This is all valuable life experience... not to mention deeply character-building (for you, not him, when you’re the one still paying for his phone plan, his eyebrow rings, and his fourth Uber Eats of the week.)

When it comes to getting grown-up kids out of the house, I believe in incentives.

I say this with some experience. My two older brothers and I all moved out fairly soon after finishing school — responsible adults! Citizens of the world! Flown the nest! ...and then, after long stints overseas, we somehow slithered back into the family home in our early twenties, hoping our parents wouldn't notice.
(They noticed.)

By this point, my parents had well and truly embraced empty-nester life. They were wild. They were free. They had a cheese board permanently set up on the kitchen bench. And then — boom — their three fully grown children were suddenly back under their roof, raiding the fridge, hogging the bathroom, using the good wine for sangria, and forgetting to clean the toastie maker.

In that instance, no conversation was necessary.

My dad simply sold the house from under us and gave us thirty days to vacate the premises. He and Mum moved into a one-bedroom apartment and have never looked back.

Which brings me to your situation.

At this stage, diplomacy is overrated. You need a plan. Preferably one involving wildlife.

As far as I can see it, you have three options:

1. Suggest he start paying rent “in-kind” by tattooing his dad’s ball sack with your initials. (He'll have packed his bags before you can say “font options.”)

2. Release a ferret or possum into his bedroom and explain that for every week he doesn’t move out, you’ll be adding a new wild animal. It’ll be just like I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here — only without the cash prize (or the medical team standing by).

3. Casually change the WiFi password to something unguessable, like "GetAJobLoser123," and wait. (And if he’s still there after a month, downgrade the WiFi to dial-up.)

Or, if all else fails:

4. Join him. Get matching tattoos. Pierce your nostril. Move into his room with him and the wildlife.

Look, your son is doing a lot right. He's working. He's expressing himself. He's building character (and probably muscles from carrying all that metal in his face). But while self-expression is beautiful, self-sufficiency is more beautiful.

(And anyway, eyebrow rings are expensive. Someone's got to pay for them.)

So yes — you are absolutely allowed to nudge, hint, or deploy marsupials as needed to encourage him towards independence. You’re not crushing his dreams.
You’re just giving him the opportunity to finance them himself.

And when he’s happily ensconced in his new share house with Spider the Ferret and whoever else he ropes in, you can pop over occasionally, admire his latest eyebrow ring with a proud smile, and then go home to your blissfully child-free living room, where the snacks are yours, the WiFi is fast, and nobody needs a lift to work because they "forgot" their scooter charger.

You’ve earned it.

Love,
Sally xx

P.S. No actual animals were harmed in the writing of this advice.

P.P.S. Stay strong, stay sneaky, and don’t forget to change the WiFi password. And consider the tattooed ball sack. It would make it hard for the hubs to stray.

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