In Saudi Arabia, Moving Out Can Wait

In many places, leaving the parental home is treated as a routine step into adulthood. In the Saudi families I know, people usually move out when they marry, study abroad or take a job in another city. Moving out simply to live alone is less common, and can prompt questions about whether something is wrong with the family.

That does not mean adults in Saudi lack independence. It means independence is not always measured by having a separate address. Many parents and children actually like living together. “I would feel I had abandoned my child, no matter how old they are, if they didn’t live in my house,” says Alwa G, a 75-year-old retired teacher with married and unmarried daughters.

“Having children at home is nice, with all the good and the bad,” says Dr. Nadia G,  a 79-year-old retired schoolmaster. His unmarried daughter, now in her fifties, has always lived in the family home and works in public service. Her son, in his late forties, moved back after his divorce.
For younger adults, staying can be both practical and personal. Talal M, a 21-year-old university student of medicine, says his parents do not ask him to pay rent or household bills. He values the financial ease, but also being with his family and caring for them. He says living at home would not determine his choices about work or marriage - he sees no contradiction between making his own decisions and remaining in the family home.

Housing costs can make staying with family a simple matter of finance. A cousin of mine in his early fifties recently moved with his wife and four children into a home they had spent nearly seven years building and buying - but they had lived with his mother while they had done son. Two of their children had effectively come of age with these arrangements in place - they are now close to finishing university.

And when I continue to reflect on my wider family’s circumstances it’s clear that moving out or staying depends completely on who there is available to share life with. Two of my maternal aunts never married and lived with their mother until she died, and then continued living together; another aunt moved into her eldest brother’s home after their parents died and stayed with his family - and when they too died, she remained in the house with an unmarried niece.

I remember, too, another uncles’s wide building homes for her two sons on her land after their father died, giving them separate households while keeping them nearby.

There are exceptions, of course. My sister-in-law’s father wanted her to move out with her children after her divorce, and she did. Now in her mid-forties, she has a senior management job, two children at university and supports herself, with help from their father. Her experience shows that living separately can work, even if it is not the usual pattern in the families I know.

And usual patterns for women in previous generations were very different - living independently was admittedly difficult. Human Rights Watch documented women who said landlords preferred to contract with men, making it hard for women to rent or buy without a male relative.

So the reforms have widened women’s options, but living alone can still raise questions; I remember a German friend visiting Saudi Arabia in her thirties. She was unmarried and living alone, but in the same city as her parents. When my elderly aunt heard this, she assumed they must be on bad terms: otherwise, she thought, my friend would live with them. The moment revealed the different assumptions people bring to independence.

Official statistics do not yet tell us how many Saudi adults live with parents. GASTAT reports an average Saudi household size of about five people, but that figure does not identify the ages or relationships of everyone in a home. But it feels, just from the families I know, that moving out is usually linked to marriage, study or work - and sometimes divorce or conflict.

Staying close is, even in modern Saudi Arabia, still often the preference. A separate home may come later, after years of saving, or be built nearby. Moving out can mark a change in circumstances, but it no longer has to be the test of whether someone has become an adult.

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