PenPenWrites

PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Bank on It: Why aren’t our adult kids moving out and on?

04/25/2023

I remember it well: The thrill of graduating from college, getting my first "career" job and, highlight of highlights, moving out of my parent's house in the suburbs and into a one-bedroom apartment in The City with my best friend as a roommate.

A generation later, our kids graduated from college and did things a little differently. They had the thrill of independence by moving around the country, taking non-career jobs and living in group homes with an assortment of roommates. They eventually figured out what they wanted to do with their lives. But they never lived in our house again.

Another generation later, reports tell us, the kids aren't into the kick of independence. A good number of them aren't moving into their own apartments or taking a share of a room in a group house in a city in another part of the country: They're living at home with their parents–even if they have "career" jobs that pay well. They're doing this while they calculate how much in savings it will take for them to achieve their personal and financial goals. Those goals may not include living independently right now.

It's a trend that's been noticed by the NYTimes. Here's the newspaper's observation/explanation for the phenomenon:

Young adults are often encouraged to leave the nest as a rite of passage to establish financial independence and build a life and career away from their parents. But for some members of Generation Z and younger millennials, factors like the high cost of living, student debt, family obligations or cultural traditions keep them living at home for longer than expected. The pandemic and its resulting economic downturn also forced many young adults to move back in with their parents.

A Pew Research Center survey this past summer gives the rising trend a numerical perspective.

In July 2022, half of adults ages 18 to 29 were living with one or both of their parents. This was down from a recent peak of 52% in June 2020 but still significantly higher than the share who were living with their parents in 2010 (44% on average that year) or 2000 (38% on average).

Many of us are waiting for our adult kids to move on and out, but generation Z seems to see the world as more perilous and less financially sound than we did. And they're not going anywhere for now. The thrill is gone.

painting: Edward Hopper
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The New Sandwich Generations: We’re in the mix somewhere.

04/06/2023

We've all heard of the sandwich generation–the one where we're on the hook for caring for our aged parents and our young children. What with many of us living longer and the needs of our adult children changing, there are two variations on the sandwich motif.

One is the club sandwich: We're taking care of our aging parents and still supporting our adult children.

The other is the grand-sandwich: We're taking care of our aging parents and helping out with our grandchildren.

Either way, the generation in the middle (it may be our adult children rather than us) has a load of emotional stress and time-consuming responsibilities say nothing of dealing with a financial squeeze.

A Washington Post story posts some of the details for those of us caught in the middle or worried about our adult children who are stuck there:

Point one: The financial burdens associated with being responsible for multiple generations are rising, but the main culprit may not be elderly parents but adult children.

With more post-college youths coming home to live with parents or doing so throughout school, there are now estimates that nearly 30% of 25-to-34 years olds live with their parents. Essentially this leaves parents taking care of many of their children's financial burdens in addition to tending to other responsibilities they may bring about.

Point two: The emotional stress of caring for elderly parents runs deep.

Those amid the sandwich generation are handed double duty by also wanting or needing to help take care of their aging parents—a role many consider far more their responsibility than taking care of adult children. Whether their parents live at home, in a facility or within their home, the stress can become overwhelming. The burdens of medical costs, helping with daily activities, overseeing supervision, legal considerations and other concerns can take a physical and emotional toll on top of ongoing financial concerns.

art: Rauschenberg
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Money Matters: Should a financial gift come with strings attached?

03/21/2023

We are a generation that wants to–especially if we have the wherewithal to–help our kids out financially. Whether it's a gift to assist with the downpayment on their first house or money to pay health insurance premiums, we're often very generous with our grown children.

Whatever the reasons behind the gift, there is always a question of whether they do with it what we intended. That is, if we hand over a chunk of cash to pay down their car loan, will we be angry if they use the cash to buy new clothes.

In a recent Social Qs column, Philip Galanes answered a reader who told Galanes she often sends her brother and sister-in-law, who were living in financially tight circumstances, a check "to make their lives easier." Her aim, she explained, was to make sure they had money for emergencies; that her largesse would, in effect, be put aside as a safety net. But when her brother called to thank her for a recent gift, he mentioned that he and his wife had used it to travel to Europe. Her question–and one that applies directly to those of us who are financially generous to our grown children–was, how could she make sure, without dictating how they use the money, that they use it responsibly–at least responsibly in her eyes.

Galanes's answer is a practical one for those of us who struggle with the same or a similar issue:

There is nothing wrong with calling your brother to say: “Please tell me to butt out if you like, but I worry about your financial security. If you ever have an emergency and can’t pay an essential bill, please let me know, and I will try to pitch in.” From a distance, this seems to be what you want to do: help protect them without becoming their bank or fairy godmother.

But to continue giving them money and then feeling resentful when they spend it differently from how you imagined, isn’t fair to any of you — particularly given your hazy sense of their financial condition and prudence.

In other words, we can tell our kids there's a string attached to a particular gift–paying off of a car loan, say–and hope they use it that way or we could pay off the loan directly. No point building up resentments over gifts: they're supposed to be joyful and helpful not a sourse of future ill will.

Blessed are those of us who are able to give the gift and trust our children to use it as they see best.

painting: Picasso
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The Five Stages of Grandparenting

02/20/2023

As parents we worried, watched and weaned our children through their various stages of growing up: from wee babies to toddlers to teens and beyond. Now our kids are having kids and as grandparents we're experiencing those stages but in a different way. At least that is the point Karen Rancourt, who writes an advice column for Grand Magazine . as Dr. Gramma Karen, makes in her list of grandparent stages.

The stages, Dr. Gramma Karen writes, "are intended to provide a framework to think about and better understand grandparenting roles and how these roles change as grandchildren age." Of course, they may vary as more grandchildren are added to the family. You can read it all here but below is my brief summary of the Big Five stages of grandparenting.

            Stage 1: Grandparents as indispensable contributors (birth to 4 years old): We the grandparents are very involved in our first-born grandchild's life, called into service by the inexperienced parents for advice and counsel. We're highly valued for our experience and wisdom.

           Stage 2: Grandparents as critical contributors (4 to 8): As our adult children become more practiced as parents, our greatest value is in spending time with our grandchild. We do a lot of teaching, educating and hanging out. Our grandchild may even consider us their best friend.

            Stage 3: Grandparents as important contributors (8-12): Friends become our grandchild's focal point. We're less of the main attraction. Our role is being social directors and chauffeurs, helping with the arrangements and transportation to help the grandchild be with their friends or go sport practices or art classes. We're chauffeurs; we support our grandchild from the sidelines.

            Stage 4: Grandparents as occasional contributors (12-16): The reality for many pf us is that our grandchild and their parents (our adult children) need us less as an active part of their lives. Our main role now is to be a backup–we might take grandchild to an activity or doctor's appointment when the parents have other commitments.

            Stage 5: Grandparents as nonessential contributors (16 – adulthood): We realize, sigh, that we are no longer needed. Our work as participants in the ongoing growth and development of our grandchild is done.

As a grandparent in stage 5, I find that nonessential tag stings. And yet, much as child rearing was, each grandparenting stage is somehow more entrancing than the previous one. We may not be essential in stage 5, but we are still privy to the joy of being around our young adults and understanding the world through their eyes.

I can't help but end with this snippet of Robert Browning verse: "Grow old along with me/the best is yet to be…"
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Gifts for Grownchildren and Grandkids: The frustrations of the no “Thank-you” note

02/09/2023

It's the irritant that won't go away: A good number of readers–of my blog and of advice columns–have vented deep anger about not being thanked for presents they send. Some have considered calling a halt to the gift-giving or, in the case of gift cards or cash, cutting down on the size of the gifts. Some of us hold out for written missives on fine-grained paper but many of us have evolved and accept a thank-you via email, text or phone message. All we want to know is that our gift was received and, even more, that it was appreciated. For one reader of Carolyn Hax's column, the gift-giving was not just about bringing pleasure to a loved one. They were her way "to let them know we love them and that we are not going to forget that they are part of the family."

And therein lies the rub. In her reply, Carolyn Hax zeroes in on a larger issue that she calls "the diminishing relevance of gifts for the emotional purpose we generally intend." Hax remembered receiving gifts from various relatives when she was a child and that the feeling of love for the sender was not from the gift but from year-round efforts to have a relationship with her.

The reflection leads her to look at the issue from the recipients’ point of view. And therein lies some explanation for the lack of response from our big and little loved ones.

… anyone buying gifts as emotional outreach is using steeply devalued currency. Another sweater/toy/tchotchke! Thanks?

Which doesn’t excuse the death of polite thank-yous — I will defend and urge and send them to my last breath — but may help explain it.

This is clear from the anguish I hear from the recipients’ side. Anything but the most useful, imaginative, sustainable or apt gift, small or large, risks incurring an obligation on the recipient. To find a use or place for it, to regift or dispose of it responsibly, to show somewhat unfelt gratitude for it, to tamp down the guilt of costing someone money and being a helpless party to natural resource depletion. Call these recipients killjoys or ingrates or both, but you can’t say they’re wrong.

Thus my advice: Think carefully about what you want these gifts to say to the children in your family. Try to think of a different, more personal, non-holiday-stuff-pegged way of saying whatever it is; adopt that way.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Observation: We are no longer the “finishing school” for our adult kids

01/04/2023

We may not like the way our adult kids dress or tat their arms or use foul language. We may want them to change the way they cut their hair or, for their health's sake, lose weight! But "fixing" adult kids is a ship that has sailed. They are who and what they are–much as we'd like to tweak a habit or look or two.

Carolyn Hax addresses one aspect of the "appearance" issue in an answer to a mom whose children use profanity on a regular basis. ("It makes my kids seem crass," the mom worries.) She wants to know what to do to correct her children's salty language, language that she fears could harm them professionally.

Here's the wisdom Hax imparts:

This isn’t a what-is-a-mother-to-do question anymore, not with your kids in their 20s.

Instead, it’s about where your authority ends and theirs (or anyone else’s) begins when it comes to decorum. Do you have standing to ask your kids to curb their profanity in your presence? Yes, you do, as anyone does. Do they have the right to ignore your requests? Yes, technically they do, though that’s rude and I hope they don’t exercise it. Do you have to stand for that? No, you don’t. But they’re your kids, so you may understandably have other priorities in your relationships with them.

art: self-portrait by Sara Cain
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Holiday Greetings: And a reminder about stress and family get togethers.

12/14/2022

The Holidays are upon us. May there be peace and joy in our lives and in family get-togethers.

But just in case, here's a column I wrote a few months ago about the behavioral stresses at play when our adult children are in our company for extended periods of time. May we all relax and enjoy our children's company and they revel in ours without pushing any emotional buttons. So as a reminder, here's the column on the baked-in stresses of holiday get-togethers with adult children:

The holidays are coming. Maybe you've been distracted by the disastrous hurricanes or the sudden outbreak of winter weather. But Thanksgiving is not that far away. That dinner often sits on the back burner because, unlike multi-generational family get-togethers around Christmas, it's supposedly free of stress and anxiety.

Don't you believe it! Thanksgiving may not mean gift-giving and big get-togethers at grandma's house; it may not have religious overtones or problems with someone drinking too much eggnog. But it still creates demands on family togetherness.

One friend, whose son and daughter are both married with teenage children, is navigating a path between Thanksgiving "suggestions" from her children. The siblings had a falling out this summer and now their proposals for Thanksgiving dinner, though based on rational reasons, exclude the other one. A compromise has been hammered out: The grandparents (my friend and her spouse) will spend Thanksgiving Thursday dinner with their son, who lives nearby and travel to Boston on Friday to have a second Thanksgiving feast with their daughter and her family. It's not that the compromise is an unreasonable solution. In fact, many of us who can't be in two places at once, have doubled down (doubled up?) on Thanksgiving dinners. We did so last year. For my friend, though, the double dinner makes it clear that the animosity between her children has not cleared up, and that's what's making her miserable about Thanksgiving.

There's another stress that may surface around holiday visits–especially when they include an overnight or two at our house or theirs. Some of our kids may be worried about spending too much time with us! This issue was posed and answered in a New York Times story with the provocative title: Your Mom is destined to annoy you

The column handed out suggestions to help our grown children survive a holiday visit with us. Since visits are a two-way street, here's the "sanity-preserving advice" they're getting that may apply to us as well.

Prepare for your inevitable regression. From our children's persepctive, "It’s not a question of if the regression is going to happen, it’s when."

Our kids are advised to ask themselves where there are "particular topics of conversation or physical places that tend to send your family into a tizzy" and then try to avoid those topics and places.

One solid piece of advice we can act on as well: "if the family dinner table always devolves into chaos, try going out to eat one night and see if it improves relations."

Get ready for parenting criticism. Our adult children–particularly our daughters–are on knife's edge waiting for us to criticize their mothering skills. How grandchildren are being raised is a major trigger for this dynamic.

Our daughters are advised to “try to remind yourself that it feels like criticism, but it is an expression of caring. Your mother just wants everything to go well for you, and she’s trying to help (even if it makes you want to scream into a pillow)."

We are offered advice on how to keep that screaming to a minimum: "Bite your tongue, because even the most benign (to you) suggestion may be perceived as criticism."

Make space for yourself. You will need an escape hatch from time to time.

Our kids are advised to create space in order to "get some emotional distance from your family." This could mean hiding out in the bathroom for 10 minutes to cool down, structuring the length of visits or springing for a hotel rather than staying in our guest room.

What works for them should work for us as well. It's not as though we aren't feeling similar tensions and need breathing room as well. Just don't let that bathroom get too crowded.

Don’t expect change. The holidays are stressful. "There won’t be a magical solution to your family trauma over the holidays."

This is not, our kids are advised–and we are too–"the time to bring up old baggage and expect to work through it."

Forewarned is forearmed. On with the holidays. Let joy be unconfined.

painting: Baillargeon
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Observation: Parenting Coach Meghan Leahy on solving our grown children’s problems

11/15/2022

When our kids were young, we were their problem solvers. It came with the parenting territory. We had to keep them safe, help them understand how the world works and show them how to move toward independence.

Now that our kids are adults, does that territory need to be trimmed?

That's an issue parenting coach and Washington Post columnist Meghan Leahy addressed in this Q and A session.

The guest asking the Q was concerned that her 24-year-old daughter is depressed about her job and making little effort to find a new one. The mother writes that she is "trying to solve her problems for her, which leads to further issues."

Here's how Meghan suggests this mother deal with her daughter's problem.

"Back out and be supportive."

I would ask on the phone, "Would you like my advice or would you like me to listen?"

You could say, "I have noticed, Amira, that you've disliked this job for a while…what is standing in the way of changing that?" And then see what she says.

Otherwise, keep saying, "I trust that if and when you need support making a change, you will do it. I am here for you, no matter what. I love you."

Then, keep your boundaries.

That last line may be the most challenging. But what Meghan is telling us is this: We're no longer in charge of solving our grown children's problems. Our job is to be good listeners and, if the opportunity seems right, make observations.

painting: Picasso
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Covid Realities: The new normal for caring for our kids when they get sick.

11/07/2022

Several years ago when my daughter lived clear across the country, she called late one evening. She was sick and so was her husband and the baby–my year-old granddaughter. "I wish you lived next door," she said in a dispirited, sick-person voice. I was on a plane the next morning, It's what we do if we can, and I could. I arrived to make soup. straighten the house but mostly take care of my baby Grand so her parents could get some rest.

Fast forward several years and cities to last week. My son, daughter-in-law and their daughter–my 14-year old granddaughter–were all sick. My daughter-in-law was bedridden with an excruciating headache; my Grand had a fever and was congested; my son had what he thought was a bad cold. They tested and all of them were positive for Covid.

I did not hop on a plane.

This is the new reality. There are times when our grown children need us–or we may think they need our ministering care. But we can't or shouldn't race to their side. It isn't just Covid that keeps us away–though that's a significant part. In ways that the pandemic accelerated, the home care we once provided has been supplanted by apps. Prescriptions can be delivered; so can food–prepared or otherwise. Friends and neighbors can be texted and asked to drop things off or run errands. As to taking care of my Grand: A 14-year-old is not a toddler; it's unlikely she would welcome an intrusion by granny and gramps even if it came in the form of chicken soup. She took care of herself. She had her laptop to pass the feverish hours and books from me for her Kindle.

I've had to re-think the ways in which I can be helpful or useful to my grown children if they become ill. When my husband and I were sick with Covid at the very beginning of the pandemic, my son and daughter, both of whom live hundreds of miles from us, checked in on us by phone or text several times a day and ordered stuff to be delivered to us. We felt cared for. That, I remind myself, is the way things are now.

Last week, I called and texted my son and his family; I ordered stuff for them. But I did not travel anywhere. As our doctor told my kids when we had Covid and they wanted to drive here to oversee our care, "All you can do if you come here," she said, "is get Covid."

They stayed home then. We stayed put now. It's the new normal.

painting: "Repose" by John Singer Sargeant
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Our Children, Our Bosses: A change in the dynamics of who’s taking charge of whom.

10/26/2022

Friends of ours just returned from four weeks in Italy. Days of sunshine. Mornings with una tazza di caffè. So delightful. They stayed at a four-story house their son and his family have rented: Their daughter-in-law was appointed to a prestigious job at an international agency headquartered in Rome and so the family relocated. What that meant for my friends, who have been plagued by health issues these past few years, is that their son is no longer available (as he had been) to help them out when they have a health or house-maintenance problem. The son, in his turn, is gently insisting that his parents move to Italy–the four-story house has a suite for them and he will be able to take care of them as needs arise.

A week after our friends returned from Rome, we had dinner together. "No way," they said. "We are not moving to Italy." Language issues aside (It's not a minor aside when you don't speak Italian and live in Italy.), they were not, they said "ready" to make such a move, a move that would make them totally dependent on their son and his family. How would they make friends? Have any kind of community life? Be able to talk to anyone outside of the house?

The question that hung in the air: When is one "ready" to pull up roots and move near one's grown children? Italy may throw a slightly romantic cast on such a decision, but whether it's Rome or Miami or Chicago (or wherever a grown child now lives), it's disorienting to leave a "life" behind and start over. Should we do it when we're young enough to join communities and build a new life? Or do we wait until we're deep into our dotage and don't have many good choices left?

Even more to the point: Should it be our children who are telling us (gently insisting) what to do and when to do it? During Covid, when those of us over 65 were told we were at greater risk than everyone else, many of us found our children got bossy: Telling us to stay home and keep ourselves under strict quarantine. I posted about that phenomenon here and here.

Within my own family, my children have brought up the "relocation" subject in a less insistent way. Their dad and I are without major health problems. We may no longer be taking bicycling vacations in Brittany, but we're still leading active lives. Our children want to know what we'd want to do if/when the time came that we couldn't manage on our own. Would we want to move to a supportive living facility near them or where we are? So hard to imagine not being able to take care of oneself. But who knows what lies ahead?

My daughter put it this way: "It's hard to imagine this most ordinary thing."

That said, the seed has been planted–by them for us. The issue is not front-of-mind but it's back there somewhere, ready to be addressed when we're "ready."

photo: Maia Lemov