He's tried a few different jobs, different degrees, different apartments.

But when he found himself in a self-described professional and personal limbo, his parents' comfortable house in the Montreal suburbs beckoned like the flashing neon lights of the late-night pizza parlours from his university party days.

"I knew financially it would be smarter to move back with my folks while I just got things sort of sorted out," Harris, 27, said in an interview.

Choosing whether to listen to the devil urging independence or the angel whispering for fiscal restraint is one of the many conundrums facing a growing number of young adults who are no longer fleeing their parents' homes the minute they turn 18.

On Wednesday, Statistics Canada reported four million people aged 20 to 29 in Canada or 44 per cent lived with their parents, an almost three point jump from 2001 -- In 1986, the figure was only 32 per cent.

Among people aged 20 to 24, 60 per cent were living with their parents in 2006, up from 49 per cent 20 years ago.

"Young people really are growing up in a very different social and economic climate than their parents did," said Barbara Mitchell, a sociologist at Simon Fraser University. Source...