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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

Observation: Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond on supporting grown kids financially

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Writing on The Sweet Spot, Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond tackle a question from a reader about financial support for their grown children and if it's fair to withdraw that support while they are still dependent on the parents. 

Cheryl Strayed:

You’ve been deeply generous because you wanted to provide your children with an education, security, comfort and ease. Well done. Now you must be deeply generous in another, seemingly paradoxical way: by giving your grown children the gift of independence and self-sufficiency.

They don’t pay for their own way in the world for one reason and only one reason: because you do. I encourage you to stop doing it. Allow your adult children to find a way to do it instead. And allow them to struggle with doing it.

By providing all that you provide your kids at this point in their lives, you’re preventing them from learning how to problem solve, sacrifice, persevere, and suffer and benefit from the consequences of their own decisions. In other words, from becoming adults.

Steve Almond:

The reason it’s been challenging for you to stop paying for your kids is because it’s a reversal of the way you’ve operated since your kids were born. They needed something, and you paid for it. That made sense for a time. But it doesn’t make sense now, and it hasn’t for a while. Your children aren’t children anymore and they don’t truly need you to pay for their lives, even if they find it convenient that you do.
 
Part of being a good parent is modeling healthy boundaries for our children, and this is ultimately that. In establishing yourself as a person who knows and states her limits, you’re showing them how to do that too.

 

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One response to “Observation: Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond on supporting grown kids financially”

  1. Victoria Avatar
    Victoria

    You both make great points. I raised my children to stand on their own two feet and they always have. I think parents in this day and age have a harder time cutting the apron strings than I did.

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