As someone who has a spotty job history and who didn't get a driver's license until recently (I'm 48) I totally sympathize with your feelings. About 10 years ago, when I was in your age range, IT, I had a marriage fall apart and made the mistake of moving in with my mother until an apartment opened up. She absolutely made me play the child role while I lived in her house. I was given chores to do, and my work was inspected. I was told what time to go to bed, called awake in the morning, and allowed to eat only what my mother shopped for and cooked. Worst of all, she lived (still does) in the middle of nowhere and took advantage of the fact that I couldn't drive to basically hold me hostage. There was no transit system in that little you-blink-you-miss-it, tiny dot on a state road map, of a town. I couldn't go anywhere that she didn't take me, so if she didn't want to go, I was stuck. Imagine how competent and respectable that made me feel.

I am now happily married. My husband has done his best to see that I will be financially protected, if God forbid something should happen to him. But let me guarantee you that if the unthinkable happens, and I am ever again in a position of having nowhere to go, I will live in a homeless camp before I'd move in with my mother again. At least that way I'd have more freedom.