Which rites of passage make an adult? Is it being able to live independently, without parental support? Having a stable career? Being married or making a lifelong commitment? Owning your own home? Or is it being responsible for the wellbeing of another human life – in other words, becoming a parent yourself?

These are the traditional markers of adulthood; of stability, responsibility and independence. From an early age, most of us grow up thinking that we will achieve some, if not all, of these things. But if you asked me, a 28-year-old woman, whether I fulfilled most of these criteria, you’d have to deduce that I am, essentially, living a prolonged adolescence.

I live in a shared, rented flat with my long-term boyfriend and another flatmate, where the rent will remain affordable only if the landlords decline to hike it again (last year we had a £300 a month increase). I have a freelance income that fluctuates wildly. I’m in no position to get a mortgage – not just in London, but anywhere in the UK (even if the latter were a possibility, I’d have to move to a part of the country where there is very little of the work I rely upon). Asking my parents for a deposit is not an option, nor is it for my boyfriend (and why should they give us money? I worry enough as it is about how they will get by in old age). As I approach my 30s, I can’t help worrying: what happens when I decide I want a baby?

The average age of British mothers hit 30 for the first time in 2013. This is often framed as a result of women “choosing” to focus on careers before they decide to have children. Very little has been said about those women – or, indeed, couples – who want to have children, but whose circumstances prevent them from doing so.

I have always known that I wanted children and, because of disabilities in my family, I was told it would be better for me to do it young (or, at least, before I was 30 or so). But I graduated into the recession and, following a number of unpaid internships and a couple of years spent establishing a still unpredictable freelance career, I only just feel as though I’m getting on my feet. The idea of having a baby in my current situation is unthinkable. For a start, I couldn’t afford to take maternity leave, and the state maternity allowance of £139.58 a week would nowhere near cover us.

I long ago accepted I wouldn’t own a house by the time I got pregnant, and was never prepared to let that get in my way

I long ago accepted that I wouldn’t own a house by the time I got pregnant, and was never prepared to let that get in my way. I was born into a shared house myself – but it was a big, alternative co-op and my parents lived in the attic. What single young professional flatmate is going to put up with a screaming baby in a tiny two-bed? Not one I know.

These hurdles to the world of adulthood continue to be a great source of sadness and anxiety, and I’m not alone. For swathes of people in their 20s and 30s, who largely thought they would be at least a bit sorted by now, achieving the adult lives they want seems a distant fantasy. Spiralling property prices coupled with the fetishisation of housing as an investment – expressed through buy-to-let properties and often poor rental conditions – means secure housing is off the table for many of us as we continue to subsidise our much richer landlords. The average price for a starter home rose to £211,000 this year, requiring an average deposit of 17%, or £36,000. The recession, unstable and unreliable unemployment, low pay compounded by a pensions shortfall and an ageing population, have all led to a situation in which many members of my generation feel not only short-changed, but helpless when it comes to building some semblance of a stable family life. While our generational predecessors, the baby boomers, reaped the rewards of free university education and affordable property prices, we have been disproportionately affected by austerity.

Andrea, 30, is a university administrator from Bradford. “I’d love to start a family,” she says, “but that’s just not going to happen and it really, really upsets me. I spend hours looking at Facebook at the photos of my friends’ babies, and making presents for them – I learned to knit a few years ago and have made various booties, hats and coats. I get a lot of compliments at baby showers. I hate baby showers. I do all this knowing that it can’t happen for me because of the hours I have to work in order to have a career, in order to have any kind of job security.”

Andrea works a 45-hour week, commuting for three hours a day, but still feels home ownership is not a realistic prospect. “I’d probably get a mortgage, but where the hell are we supposed to find £10K-plus for a deposit from?” The challenges that young women like Andrea are facing when it comes to settling down are compounded, she says, by that perennial difficulty of balancing a career with having children. “Within my industry, the women in positions of power are either non-parents, or came to the industry after they had children. I don’t know one woman in the grades above mine who has young children.” Andrea’s situation is compounded by the media coverage of pregnancy statistics. “Those ‘Have a baby by 30 or you’re sterile, you selfish career-driven hussy’ headlines,” she says.

Photograph: Dan Matthews

Andrea wanted to remain anonymous, as did most of the people I spoke to, for various reasons. Generation Y are used to being accused of whining when we talk about our frustrations, and we are sensitive to that. We’ve been brought up in a somewhat status-obsessed society, too, so mentioning financial difficulties leads to feelings of shame. Some young women were concerned that admitting to the desperate desire for a child might harm their career prospects. But by far the most commonly cited reason is that they didn’t want to hurt their parents’ feelings by discussing how, in contrast to the parents of some of their peers, they are unable to give them that vital leg up. Everyone I spoke to wanted to stand on their own two feet, but they were aware that their parents shared their feelings of powerlessness and sadness. “It would kill my father to have this printed,” one woman said. “He’s a proud man.”

On the whole, our parents’ generation is far better off. “The recent living standards squeeze has played out differently across the generations,” says Matt Whittaker, chief economist at the Resolution Foundation. “Younger people experienced the sharpest increase in unemployment and the biggest fall in pay, while employment among older people has surged. These shifts have been amplified by welfare changes, with cuts to working age benefits contrasting with protections for pensioners. But there was evidence of a divergence in experience even before the financial crisis hit. Rising housing costs have further widened the divide between Generation Rent and the baby boomers.”

Jealousy towards baby boomers is an everyday occurrence. You’ll be sitting in a bar with friends and hear them lament the fact that their parents had bought a house by the time they were 27. “My mother had already had me and my sister by the time she was my age,” one friend said gloomily when the subject came up. Generation Y – or millennials, if you must – are still often portrayed as existing in a state of perpetual kidulthood; we’re Peter Pans who never want to grow up. Yet many of us are desperate to do so.

Unaffordable housing and living costs are often portrayed as a “London problem”. “Why not simply move?” detractors say, as though career opportunity, family ties or personal finances are not an issue. Yet I spoke to people in their 20s and 30s from all over the UK, and many felt the same way: that their chances of getting to the point where they are stable enough to settle down and have children are slim to none. Many of them feel great sadness about this, not only because they look to their parents’ generation and see opportunities they’ve never had, but because a gulf is opening within our own generation – between those who can start a family or whose parents can help them get on the property ladder, and those who can’t.

For swathes of people in their 20s and 30s, achieving the adult lives they want seems a distant fantasy

“The number of people who have said I should ask my dad for a deposit,” Andrea says. “As if his life doesn’t matter any more… My dad might live for another 20 years – I hope he does – and his care will cost. He needs his money.”

While Andrea’s work life is relatively stable, Sophie, who is 26, feels her employment circumstances mean that having a baby is off-limits. “Since graduating, I’ve had a series of jobs that don’t equal a career. I’ve recently left my job, and am doing temp work and a vocational course that should get me to where I want to be, finally,” she says, adding that she wouldn’t have been able to do this without the support of her partner, who, at 37, is more established.

“I would like reasonable maternity pay and a role to return to after having a baby,” Sophie says. “But that seems like an almost impossible dream.” She worries about her partner, too. “When I think about the time it might take me to be well established in a new career – four years? – I think about my partner’s worry that he will be an old father, and won’t have the time to be a good grandfather.”

The more people I spoke to, the more apparent it became that this is not just about generational divides, but about class. Interviewees were forever mentioning friends or acquaintances who had been privileged enough to buy, while those from low-income backgrounds lost out.

Ciara, 25, from a town in the south-east, graduated three years ago into an unstable work environment, where she struggled to find a job that wasn’t an unpaid internship. She now has one, but is saddled with enormous student debt and still lives at home, angry at the failure of politicians to support her generation. “My parents are hardcore Conservatives who can’t understand why I am so frustrated with this government, who, I believe, are deliberately limiting social mobility for working-class single people,” she says. “They blame a Labour government who ‘gave too much to too many’, while wondering why my younger sister, who is ex-military, and I haven’t moved out.”

“I got pregnant, accidentally, two years ago. My boyfriend and I desperately wanted a child, but knew we had nowhere to live and no means to support it. Instead of living in fear of raising it in what could ultimately have been poverty, in a society that refused to help support us, we had no choice but to end the pregnancy. I’ve been in grief counselling for a year to come to terms with that decision.”

Ciara is scared she won’t ever get the chance to have a family. “My mother reminds me that, at my age, she had been married for five years and had me for four. At 25, I can’t even imagine having a one-bedroom flat to myself, or a husband, or the baby I so badly want. I’m terrified that in the next five years I’ll still be no closer to that.”

And that’s the worry: so many of us are fearful that, even as we become older and perhaps gain a bit more stability at work, or a leg up on to the property ladder, bringing up children will still be all but impossible. Steve, 37, lives with his girlfriend in a house near Cardiff that they were able to buy because of an inheritance; but despite them both being self-employed in marketing, and earning a regular salary apiece, he says that “long-term planning is impossible”.

“Neither of us have pensions, sick pay, holiday pay, life insurance. Taking a summer break is nigh on impossible. There is no way we could have kids, despite both us of us wanting to. No way. We’d lose one salary, and even with welfare support, we could not give a child the right kind of environment to thrive. Let’s be honest, you need to give way more than just love.”

Hiran, 37, tells of how his mother came to this country from east Africa when she was 19. “She earned £7 a week doing factory work. By the time she was my age, she had saved enough to get married, have two children of secondary school age, had bought her council house and mortgaged it to buy a shop.”

Photograph: Dan Matthews

In contrast, Hiran and his brother live at home, both earning less than £7 an hour. “If you are drowning in debt, it closes the door on going to bars and nightclubs, or spending money on hobbies that could lead to intimate relationships. With no money to socialise, we’re left playing computer games in our rooms. We might as well be 15. Marriage, kids, mortgage? No chance. Without our parents’ pension, we couldn’t eat. As they get older, their assets will have to be sold to pay for their care, and then my brother and I are likely to face middle age dependent on the state.”

Some might argue that expectations are now simply too high. Thea, 26, certainly thinks so. “I come from a working-class background, so, while I have had some financial help from my parents when I’ve been desperate – I’m talking a couple of hundred quid a month – the onus has always been on me to achieve and get where I want to be in life. I’ve not had anything ‘handed’ to me, like a house or substantial amount of money that would help me settle down in future.”

But it doesn’t bother her too much. “My upbringing and background have helped me accept my current situation. Despite not having much money as a kid – we never went abroad, for example – I never felt I missed out on anything. I do think my expectations of what constitute necessities – foreign holidays, owning a house or car – are lower than those of some of my peers who had more middle-class upbringings.”

Thea has never wanted children and, as an only child, knows that she will inherit her parents’ house when they die. “I think the country, as far as wages, property, poverty and my generation actually being able to build secure finances, is in an absolute state and something undoubtedly needs to be done. But I also think part of the problem is that so many people go to uni now: it devalues a degree (I don’t have one) and doesn’t guarantee anyone a job. So you’re left with broke, unemployed twentysomethings in debt.”

She has a point: those of my friends who had children young and didn’t go to university now have older children and are in a position where they can enter higher education or retrain. But that’s not to say it’s been easy – they have struggled financially, often as single parents. More flexibility in education would help but, as almost everyone I speak to says, and Jessica, 25, articulates, “The main thing the government needs to do is build more bloody houses.”

My mother reminds me that, at my age, she had been married for five years and had me for four

“It’s sad,” Jessica adds, “because I’ve convinced myself I don’t want a marriage, mortgage or kids. But I genuinely see them as impossible, and that’s probably why.” She does think moving to London has been a factor. “Renting a room any bigger than about two metres wide, in a flatshare, is unattainable.” She feels she is being penalised for being ambitious.

As Kirsten, a 32-year-old legal-aid lawyer specialising in human rights, says, “Why shouldn’t a professional woman in her 30s be able to afford to live in, not the centre, but even the very outskirts of our capital city?” She currently shares an overcrowded house with four others. “I’m an adult, but am not able to live like an adult. London’s housing market has trapped me – paying high rent that prevents me from saving anything towards a deposit for a flat. It would be hard for me to move out of London and find a similar job and, in any event, I feel resentful at that suggestion.”

Besides, to suggest that being somewhere cheaper solves the problem is simplistic. Chloe is 29 and moved to London from the north-east a year ago due to a lack of jobs. “I’d like to have kids, but don’t really feel in a much better position to do so than I did when I was 20. The ‘one day’ seems to be stretching way in to my 30s, and that’s pretty concerning, especially when there’s so much talk about biological clocks. My 20s have felt like a very extended teenage period, in terms of financial circumstances rather than mindset. I remain optimistic and resourceful, and I don’t have crazy expectations, but I think that this might continue for a while yet.”

In David Willetts’s book The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Stole Their Children’s Future, he describes Britain as the “first nuclear power”. He’s talking about the nuclear family, something he argues is a long-standing feature of Anglophone societies, in contrast to countries on the continent, where property is transmitted through larger familial networks. Because we are a nation made up of small families and focused on private property, we need the state more, because there is less to fall back on. It follows that when the system fails or gets into difficulty, the nuclear family suffers.

Everyone I spoke to for this article felt a responsibility not to bring children into an environment that was economically precarious; but I wonder how long people are willing to sacrifice future parenthood because of this. If we all go ahead and have babies anyway, what will be the consequences for the state? It’s ironic that a government so ostensibly dedicated to notions of “family” is giving little help to those who desire nothing more. Communal living is already a reality for many people, as overcrowded houses and boomerang children demonstrate. Do we all just need to learn to live with other people’s babies?

Moving abroad is one solution, as Eleanor, 30, explains. “I honestly don’t see a way that I will be able to raise children in the UK. If I look at my peers from school and university, most have left for Australia and the US, and I don’t blame them. They seem really happy elsewhere – wages are lower, but their standard of living is higher. I would like to have children in the UK, because my parents and my partner’s parents live here, but it would be too much of a struggle. And I can’t afford to live near my family, who might otherwise be able to help me if childcare was ever an issue. I am barely able to make ends meet as things are. It’s heartbreaking.”

Andrea agrees: “There are days I wish I could just take the baby-brain out, when I just feel so sad about it. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve lost my mum, so don’t really have that unconditional love with anyone any more – but I just feel like my arms are empty.” She won’t feel complete until she has a baby. Until then, she says, “I’m not fulfilling what I’m supposed to do.”