My dissertation investigates prolonged co-residence between young adults and their parents in the Czech Republic, asking who stays, who hosts, and why. The research situates this phenomenon within the context of post-socialist housing transformation and the broader dynamics of the global housing crisis, while examining how both generations make sense of their shared living arrangement. The study addresses a significant gap in European research by defining a post-socialist demographic gradient to complement the established North-South gradient, which shows that life transitions occur earlier in Northern Europe than in Southern Europe. Post-socialist Central Europe remains underexplored despite its distinct historical trajectory: the transition from socialism to a market economy transformed the nature of scarcity, replacing shortages of consumer goods with a new deprivation, the lack of affordable housing.In the Czech Republic, homeownership is deeply embedded in cultural understandings of adulthood, with over 70% viewing it as "a dream come true." Yet only one-third of young adults aged 18–35 could obtain a mortgage in 2023, and Czechs now require the highest number of gross annual salaries in Europe to purchase property. This contradiction forces young adults into precarious alternatives: the parental home or an unregulated rental market.The dissertation employs a mixed-methods design structured around three articles. The first article uses quantitative analysis of Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) data from 2004–2022 to map co-residence patterns among young adults aged 18–34 across post-socialist Central Europe. Using logistic regression models, it identifies which groups are most vulnerable to prolonged co residence by gender, education, employment, partnership status, and family background, distinguishing between voluntary extended co-residence and structurally constrained housing exclusion.The second article draws on 20–25 in-depth interviews with young adults and parents co-residing in the Czech Republic. Combining Elder's concept of linked lives with Goffman's frame analysis, it examines how both generations construct meaning around their shared living arrangement whether as individual failure, economic necessity, temporary strategy, or mutual support. The analysis investigates how intergenerational blame narratives (such as the "latte factor" argument suggesting young people could afford housing by cutting small luxuries) are negotiated within families, and whether participants adopt dominant frames that stigmatize delayed transitions or construct alternative interpretations emphasizing structural constraints. The third article employs critical discourse analysis to examine how chrononormative frameworks shape scholarly and public understanding of young adults' housing transitions. Drawing on Freeman's concept of chrononormativity, it analyzes how temporal norms convert structural barriers into perceived personal failings, and how the "delayed transitions" framing transforms systemic problems into individual pathology. This article turns a critical lens on the scientific practice itself, problematizing the uncritical use of "delay" language in scholarship. Theoretically, the dissertation bridges macro-level frameworks (life course theory, emerging adulthood, chrononormativity) that explain structural and historical conditions with micro-level analysis (Goffman's frame analysis) that captures how individuals interpret their situations. The research contributes to understanding how macro-level housing crises translate into micro-level family dynamics, emotional strain, and negotiations over autonomy, dependency, and the meaning of adulthood in post-socialist Central Europe.