PenPenWrites
parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more
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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.
recent posts
© 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.
Category: emerging adulthood
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Almost every parent of a recent college grad (or of a kid now in college) I talk to is worried: It's been so hard for recent college grads–recent being the past five years–to find career jobs. The parents I am talking to have kids who've attended good colleges and who graduated in the requisite four…
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When my friend Cathy got angry at her renested post-college son–for sins like not emptying the dishwasher; not taking the job search seriously–she kicked down his bedroom door. Not that she meant to. She was just kicking his closed door to make a point and Boom, her foot went right through it. It's a moment…
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These have been rough economic times and they aren't over yet. Young adults (recent college grads in particular) are having a much harder time than we did in latching onto a career job–harder even than their older brothers and sisters. There are economic stats and charts ad nausea that support the discouraging outlook. All of…
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Our kids coming out of college have been struggling–it's hard to find a job, no less one that is a stepping stone to a career. A lot of us are supporting those kids, either by hosting them rent free at home (goodbye emtpy nest) or giving them a monthly stipend while they job hunt. When…
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I didn't mean to eavesdrop. It couldn't be helped. I was sitting at Panera's having a late morning latte when a trio of friends sat down at a table next to me and started chatting. In my defense, they were using their outside voices–or close to it. I started picking up on the conversation when…
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He's 24. He's got a job. He's still living at home. My friend Cathy is beyond frustrated. Her son is not helpful around the house. She's tired of asking him to take out the garbage, empty the dishwasher or run an errand–in the car she and her husband are providing. Part of his inertia is…
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When our kids were in the pre-teens and early teens, they started to question our wisdom. When they were old enough to go off to college, they came home with even more questions: deeper ones about our beliefs and how their thoughts now differed from ours–on politics, life style, religion, culture. It's the generation gap,…
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Cathy and Ben had to make a key financial decision: how much of his paycheck was he going to apportion to his 401k. Ben had been unemployed for five months, and now had a new job that would be paying him less–by about 30 percent–than his old job. How much could they put into a…
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