There is a particular silence that comes with moving back home as an adult. Not the peaceful kind, but the quiet recalibration of a life after the plan you committed to emotionally, financially and wholeheartedly, has fallen apart.
Research and recent surveys show a steady rise in adults returning to live with their parents, a trend often referred to as the ‘boomerang generation’, but its local shape is defined by Eswatini’s own economic and social realities.
While the circumstances differ from person to person, the reasons are familiar: Financial strain, unemployment, rising living costs, debt, burnout, mental health challenges or the collapse of relationships and opportunities that once promised stability.
Moving back home rarely feels like a clean or confident decision. As you pack what you can justify keeping, expectations shift quietly, pride is renegotiated and hope is placed gently on a shelf, not discarded, just postponed. You explain what you can to those brave or insensitive enough to ask: ‘What happened’, and you return to a place you once left, now older, more tired and carrying disappointments you never expected to bring back. For many emaSwati adults, independence was meant to follow a clear path. Education would lead to employment. Employment would lead to stability. Stability would lead to autonomy. These beliefs were not naïve; they were inherited. They were shaped by stories of progress and by a generation that believed effort, patience and persistence would eventually pay off.
However, the economic landscape has shifted. Formal employment opportunities are limited. Many jobs are short-term, informal, or poorly paid. Contracts replace permanent positions. Rent in urban centres continues to rise, even as wages stagnate. Transport costs, food prices and basic living expenses quietly eat away at income. In this situation, struggle is rarely dramatic. It erodes gradually. Living in places that are supposed to be temporary seems to be the case. Planning meals rather than futures is how it feels. It is mastering the art of seeming functional while silently lagging behind. You keep yourself occupied to prevent hopelessness. To avoid collapsing, you maintain your optimism.
Beneath it all, mental health starts to deteriorate. There is constant pressure to ‘make it.’ It is expected that you will be resilient. Burnout has become commonplace. Anxiety persists all the time. Sleep becomes erratic. Silently, depression manifests as fatigue, irritability or numbness. Since survival leaves little time for introspection, many people fail to see it for what it is.Access to mental health support in Eswatini remains limited. As a result, many people cope privately and invisibly. Financially, emotionally and psychologically, the math eventually breaks down.
Moving back home is often framed as failure and feels like it too. In reality though, it is often an act of realism. When rent, food, transport, mental health, and self-respect all compete for limited resources, something has to give. For many adults, returning home becomes a way to survive rather than slowly self-destruct. Home, however, is not frozen in time. Parents are older. Siblings have their own lives. Space is shared differently. You return not as a child, but not quite as the independent adult you imagined you would be. That in-between state can be deeply uncomfortable.
In rural or less resourced settings, returning home can feel like stepping backward. Access to opportunities is limited. Services are fewer. Yet there is also a different rhythm of life - one less dependent on cash, but no less demanding. Contribution is measured differently. Work does not disappear; it changes form. Going back home can be both a haven and a confrontation for people dealing with addiction or mental health issues.
Some temptations are eliminated by being away from stressful situations, but anonymity is also lost. Struggles become apparent. There is more space for accountability and less space for concealment. When recovery does start, it usually does so in routine, accountability, and visibility.
Returning home exposes not individual failure, but structural strain. Eswatini’s economy, like many others, supports only a narrow range of stable livelihoods. In today’s society, going back home brings up questions of identity. Who are you without the job title? Without the home that signals success? Without the appearance of having made it? These questions linger long after the unpacking and resettling is done. Yet, there is something honest about being back. All pretense stops. The pressure to perform stability eases and you can sleep without calculating rent, eat without counting every lilangeni. You breathe and honestly, sometimes breathing is enough to begin again.
Adults are returning home quietly, not because they are lazy or defeated, but because independence has become precarious and costly financially and mentally. Perhaps the more difficult question is not why people are returning home, but why adulthood has become so difficult? Why are so many emaSwati breaking silently before they ask for help? For many, going back home is not the end of the story. It is the pause that makes survival and recovery possible. Sometimes, that pause is what allows life to begin again.
There is a particular silence that comes with moving back home as an adult.