ATHENS – The Greek family structure is so tight that 69.4 percent of adult children 18-34 still live with their parents and it's common for whole families to live in separate levels of multi-story homes.

The finding from the European Union's statistics agency Eurostat ranked Greece sixth among 35 countries in the phenomenon of children not leaving home even after they become adults, said Kathimerini.

Overall, it may not be as bad as it looks because the poll found that across the European Union that nearly 50 percent of adult children up to 34 still live at home, with many Greeks preferring it.

That's because parents often provide spending money and other benefits along with free rent and with many adult children staying home during a near decade-long economic crisis when jobs were hard to come by.

In Greece, the number of adult children living at home as risen 8.7 percent since 2011 when the crisis was starting to overtake Greece, while in Scandinavian countries people leave home when they turn 18 usually, with only 17.2 percent in Denmark staying with their parents.

“In Central and Northern Europe, it is taken for granted that when the child turns 18, it marks the coming of age,” Antigone Lyberaki, Professor of Economics at Panteion University, told Kathimerini.

The mentality in Greece, she said, is different as there are very traditional images of societal roles with the prevailing mentality is that parents are responsible for their children until they get married – regardless of the age of the “child” in question. 

Lyberaki also noted that the financial and coronavirus crises were pivotal and intensified pre-existing trends.

“There is a return home, the crisis has done that,” she said, while also noting that marriages were being delayed, also most likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic that brought another economic hit.