Jeremy Watson: Like puppies, children tend to shed their cuteness

WHO’D like to be a young adult? Well, apart from me obviously.

I’d quite like to be a young adult now, sponging off ma and pa as I wind fecklessly through a stress-free life, paying no board and lodging, coming home to a full (sometimes) fridge, putting my feet up while all the jaded routine of housework goes on around me. Washing, cooking, gardening, that’s for the old folks isn’t it? Yes, I think I could get used to that.

Perhaps they are saving their strength for when they get homes and families of their own, when new mums and dads can’t do enough for their babies and see it as their bounden duty to cater for their child’s every need and whim. But, like puppies, children have a tendency to grow and shed their cuteness. When they reach the end of their second and begin their third decade on this planet, there is an overly optimistic belief – among beleaguered parents mainly – that they might become less of a drain and somehow more useful. Without having to ask them to be useful. Or having to redo the job once they have done it. We can but hope.

I exaggerate, of course. But what twangs my conscience and allows them to loaf a little longer is that the prospect of jobs and homes of their own appears to be getting ever-more distant. Where once university graduates would sail into the workforce and start building capital to feather their first nest, even many of the brightest must enter a life-or-death struggle for the few decent jobs. Entry into a graduate trainee scheme now appears to involve novella-length written applications, online tests of bewildering complexity and telephone interviews that reduce the participants to gibbering wrecks. Then, if you survive, there’s a ‘get-to-know-you’ meal where your personality can be monitored and analysed before a day in what is called an ‘assessment centre’. Presumably that’s where Lord Sugar gets to duff you up, filleting your knowledge of widgits, your passion for the ‘product’ and your ability to sell ice-cream to the eskimos.

The cream will rise to the top, but we are in danger of curdling the milk before it even reaches the bottle. This means that – more than before – we may never get rid of them. An empty nest cannot be truly empty if the chicks keep returning, settling themselves down and opening their mouths to be fed. So message to banks: please start lending to companies so they can create the jobs that will take our children off our hands. If ever there was an argument for full employment, this is it. The health, mental stability and financial well-being of a generation of baby boomers depends on it.