Living at home past 18

Ive tried to post this under a few subreddits, but I keep getting alerts saying I’m breaking rules, so I’m putting it here. I’ve noticed something a lot since being a legal adult for nearly four years and that’s that many people feel like anyone still living at home past 18 is a broke bum and a failure. Many cultures around the world have the entire family living under one roof and it isn’t considered weird and no one is judged. I’ve noticed many people, especially Americans (I am American) behaving this way.

I’m in my final semester of college, I have a full time job, I have a good credit score for my age, I make my own car payments, but I do still live at home. My parents have frowned upon the idea of me getting my own place because they don’t think I make enough and they don’t want me struggling unnecessarily if they are here to help.

I post and delete quite a bit on Reddit and have since I’ve made my account, but a few now deleted posts included me mentioning that I was 21 and lived at home and I received some pretty nasty comments from people ignoring the point of the post and honing in on the fact that I live at home. Telling me I should move out and give my parents a break and that I’m too old to be living with them.

But it’s funny because I was talking to my mom about potentially moving out and she got a bit sad asking me why I wanted to move out. My parents have zero issue with me living with them. I stay out of the way and I’m not high maintenance. I’m a student and I work. If I wasn’t a student, I could work more, but that’s just not my situation right now.

I think Americans have been conditioned to think we should all be working ourselves like dogs and if we aren’t, we aren’t trying hard enough. And that living with your parents past 18 means you’re getting handouts. I’ve even seen posts where people undermine something someone else has going for them just because they’ve received a bit of help from parents.

Lastly, I ended up snapping and told one commenter under my posts, “you seem to be projecting in my comments. I have parents that helped me past high school graduation and you must not have. If that’s true, I’m sorry you did not have the same aid that I did, but that doesn’t make you more or less of a person than me” And they stopped responding.