From Bridget Jones' Diary, through to Friends and The Secret Life of Us, the single young adult is a subject of fascination in contemporary culture. Envied and disapproved of in equal measures by older generations, twenty-somethings have become potent icons of social change. Set against the backdrop of the ongoing destandardisation of household formation, this groundbreaking book explores the context of these changing patterns. Drawing together a welath of research from Europe, North America and Australia, alongside new evidence from a study of non-students living in shared households, the authors argue that contemporary young adults - with graduates in the vanguard of change - are questioning the relative attractiveness of different domestic arrangements during their 20s and as a consequence are redefining the boundaries between 'youth and 'adulthood'.