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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.

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

    Money Matters: The Bank of Mom and Pop is always open

    Bank-teller-window

    When our kids were young adults, the Bank of Mom and Pop was often there to help out, to be a cushion for an unexpected expense, to defray education costs.  Even when the grown kids started families, We the Bank was a generous lender–for child care costs or a downpayment on a house.

    We were not alone. According to a 2,000-person survey by TD Ameritrade, on average grown kids ages 19 to 37 received more than $11,000 in financial support and unpaid labor (babysitting, household help) from their boomer parents, ages 50 to 70.

    A managing director of TDAmeritrade tells us that the underlying driver of our children's financial needs are student debt, stagnant wages and rising childcare costs.

    Then he adds a kicker: "Grandparents are the secret to making it work — eager to help with financial support, child care and running the household."

    He made that comment because half of the grandparents surveyed said they've made sacrifices to help their children and grandchildren. All of which suggests that we may think adulthood has brought our children financial independence, but we need to rethink that. For many of us, the Bank of Mom and Pop is never closed.

    If you're interested in exactly where the money (and free labor) goes, rent/mortgage tops the list in terms of dollars received, followed by car payments, groceries, utilities and cellphone bills. Almost 20 percent of the kids surveyed said their parents helped  pay their phone bills to the tune of somewhere between $262 (the average of what kids said they received) and $547 (the average of what parents said they sent.)

    Also on the grandparent help-list: toys and clothing for grandkids as well as grandkid schooling.

    Is there a price to pay for being a 24/7 banker? You bet. A GOBankingRates' savings survey looked at the price parents and grandparents are paying for their helping hand. Boomers ages 55 to 64 owe a median of $3,000 in credit card debt and two-thirds of them have less than $1,000 in a savings account.

     

     

    Related articles

    Parenting Grown Children: We are at our peril when we give advice they didn't ask for
    Grandparenting: Being careful what we say to our grownchildren about their children

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

    Parenting Millennials: Why they aren’t moving out and about the country the way we did

    Map o licenses

    When Paterfamilias and I were young and starting our life together, we picked up stakes and left New York City for Washington, D.C. Almost all of our friends have similar stories to tell. One left Nebraska and lived in Alabama before making a home in the east. Another hightailed it from New Jersey to Seattle, got married and moved east with a spouse who took a job here.

    That was then. Evidently, it's not happening now. According to Pew research, Americans overall are moving about the country at the lowest rate on record and a primary reason is Millennials: They are staying put at a significantly higher rate than earlier generations of young adults. In 2016, only 20 percent of Millennials who were 25- to 35-year-olds reported having lived at a different address one year earlier; in the mid-1960s that percent was 30.

    Pew researchers find this counter-mobility trend counter-intuitive since the three usual impediments to moving about the country are missing from the Millennial repertoire:

    –Having a spouse. Marriage is a drag on mobility since a move generally means two people have to line up new employment. According to Census data, in 2016, only 42 percent of Millennial 25- to 35-year-olds were married and living with their spouse; in 1963 it was 82 percent.

    –Owning a home. It is usually less disruptive and less costly to move from a rental apartment than it is to sell a house, so one would expect renters to be more mobile than homeowners. In 2016, only 37 percent of Millennials in the 25- to 35-year-old age span lived in owner-occupied housing (not owned by their parents). In 1981, 56 percent of early Baby Boomer 25- to 35-year-olds lived in such housing.

    –Being parents. They don't have kids yet. It's much more difficult to pick up stakes when children are part of the household. In 2016, a majority (56 percent) of Millennial 25- to 35-year-olds didn't have a child of their own living with them. Fewer than half of Gen Xers and Boomers were childless at a similar stage of life.

    So, if Millennials are less tied down by spouses, houses and kids, why are they staying closer to home than we did? The recession's job market and student debt may have something to do with it. But I'll let Pew spell it out:

    Labor market opportunities may be a factor. Millennials were hit hard by the Great Recession in terms of job-holding and wages. For many young adults who moved in the past year, job opportunities were a prime motivation for moving, and the modest jobs recovery may not be providing the impetus Millennials need.

    When they do move, Millennials’ motivations for moving are significantly different from those of earlier generations of young movers. One incentive for moving is to buy a home, but Census Bureau migration data suggest Millennial movers are doing so at significantly lower rates than earlier generations. In 2016, homeownership among younger households was at its lowest level in at least 40 years. On the one hand, the different family demographics of Millennials – such as not having children – may undercut their desire to own a home. But financial considerations may play a role as well. Compared with Gen X young adults around 2000, lending standards are much tighter, making it more difficult for Millennial 25- to 35-year-olds to get a mortgage. Related to this, student debt may be deterring young adults from home ownership.

     If you want to visualize the mobility stats, here are the Pew charts plus a link to the Pew report.

     

    Related articles

    A Generational Guilt Shift: Our sons seek a better work-life balance than their dads did.
    Bank of Mom and Dad: The trend line on supporting grown children
    Millennials Are More Likely to Think Women Should Stay at Home Than the Previous Generation

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

    Observation: Philip Galanes on the impact our judgmental remarks have on our adult kids–and not in a good way

    Philipgalanes

    We often make casual (but critical) remarks to our children and don't realize the impact we're having. That's the point of a recent Social Qs column headlined, "A Judging Mother."

    In a letter to Philip Galanes, a reader–an adult child–lamented how her mother's "casual" comment about her need to put on more makeup (the reader was headed out for a concert) made her feel less confident about the way she looked. This was not the first time. The mother had a habit of this kind of commentary.

    Here's the Galanes reply, which I take to heart, mind and try to remember in conversations with my grown children:

    "Parents can be nimble-fingered at pushing our buttons — because they installed them. This is especially true in matters of self-esteem, where mere flickers of parental facial muscles can trigger feelings of hurt or outrage.

    It’s worth noting that your mom is probably not aware of her outsize influence on you. You’d think that she (and other parents) could translate their own experiences with powerful progenitors into smoother dynamics with their own kids. But strangely, it doesn’t often work that way.

    Every morning, when you’re getting dressed, remind yourself that you don’t need approval from anyone. (It’s your face!) And when you next see your mom, say: “Those little things you say and do about the way I look make a big impression on me. I know you mean them kindly, but can you skip them? They make me feel unsure of myself.” You may have to remind her (and yourself) that you’ve got hair and makeup covered. But trust me, you do."

    Related articles

    Grandparenting: Being careful what we say to our grownchildren about their children
    The Quote that helped me Stop Chasing the Tail of Self-Esteem.

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

    Money Matters: The value of spending time and money on shared experiences

    Belgianwaffles

     

    It can get corny fast–those ads about what's "priceless." But that's partly the point financial adviser-writer Carl Richards is making in a column that has special meaning for those of us who have grown children who are willing and able to, well, do things with us.

    Of course, there's always a price tag attached. Paterfamilias had lunch with a friend who was bemoaning the $100,000 he spent on a two week travel vacation with his six grands, two grown kids and their spouses. Two weeks was too long and exhausting, he said. And whoa! That was a lot of money for a two-week vacation. But his wife–the mother and grandmother of the brood–planned it and was exhilerated by it. She's planning another full-family trip this coming year.

    That's one variation on the vacation-with-kids spectrum. But it got PF and me to thinking about trips we've done with our kids. Much shorter and less expensive ones to be sure–like a long weekend in London with Alpha daughter and her family when she was living in Berlin for a year. Here's what we reminisce about: The joy on our granddaughter's face when we took her to see Wicked. Her delight in our luxury hotel abode–a converted railroad terminus at Kings Crossing. 

    When Uber son and family were in London on a three-month business trip, we met the five of them in Brussels for a few adventurous days–gobbling down Belgian waffles from street vendors, taking a train to Brugge to site-see the Medieval city.  One of my vivid memories: When we walked about the main square, eyeing the plethora of chocolate shops lining the streets, our 6-year-old granddaughter was captivated by a chunk of chocolate shaped like a an electric drill, set amidst chocolate hammers and nails. We had to buy it. What happy times. How lucky we were to share them with our children and their children.

    The Carl Richards column addressed the value of those experiences and  how whatever we spent for them was as important a return on our capital than if we had squirreled that money away in an investment account. There are many points to factor along the spend vs. save continuum. Lots of financial advisers hammer home the priority of saving for retirement. If we're having trouble meeting mortgage payments or have nothing in the till for our retirement years, we would do well to opt for the saving side. But if we have the money and the choice is spend or relentlessly save, we should ease back and invest in experiences that provide memories of time spent with the people we love. 

    Without experiences to relive in our retirement, we may not have invested our available money wisely. As Richards puts (and punctuates) it,

    "Life experiences give you an incalculable return on investment. Every. Single. Time.

    and

    Do you have something you want to do with someone you love, and the money to pay for it, and the only reason you’re not doing it is that you have this nagging feeling that you should be saving the money for some vague goal beyond the basic ones you have already articulated for yourself? Spend the money! Then, do it again. And again. And the next time? Spend the money!

    Did I mention spend the money?"

    Here's a link to carl richards column

     

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

    Parenting Grown Children: Sometimes we need to say ‘I’m sorry.’

    Writing-hand 1

    My previous post was about estrangment: the devastation a parent experiences when an adult child no longer wants to be part of their lives. (There may not be an app to fix that but there is a book that can help: Done With the Crying by Sheri McGregor))

    Following on that anxiety-provoking aspect of being the parent of an adult child, I came across a Jane Brody column in the NYTimes headlined, "The Right Way to Say I'm Sorry." While Brody mostly looks at the efficacy of apologies between neighbors and friends, the gist of what she has to say–and the commentary of experts she consults–also applies to our relationship with our grown children.

    Who among us us hasn't inadvertently–or in anger–offended a grown child. Maybe we've been unfairly critical (even if we were being "honest") about something as major as their life style or as frivolous as their housekeeping or the cut of their hair. (The latter is a surprisingly big source of self-inflicted wounds.) Feelings get hurt, emotional buttons may be pushed–buttons that hark back to childhood wounds–and suddenly, the "innocent" thing we said has been blown up and out.

    All of which is to say, whether the offending remark or action is our fault or not, an apology has the power to soothe wounds, repair harm and mend relationships. This can be accomplished by an apology delivered correctly. Combing through Brody's column, I came up with four tips for delivering an "I'm Sorry" that might actually meet its repair-harm objective.

    1. Offer the apology straight up–with no "but" attached to it. A "but" is an excuse that counters the sincerity of the message. No explanations required–or desired.

    2. Don't ask to be forgiven for your trespass. It's up to the offended party to decide whether and when they want to forgive. The experts say it's not your place to tell anyone to forgive or not forgive.

    3. The focus of the apology should be on what you've said or done and not on your child's reaction to it. "I'm sorry you feel that way" suggests you aren't really sorry at all.

    4. Allow the offended party to vent. It's called non-defensive listening. Resist the temptation to refute, argue over or correct their version of whatever happened.

    For those who want more insights into apologizing, Brody's sources were Harriet Lerner's  Why Won't You Apologize?  and Beverly Engel's The Power of Apology.

    Brody isn't the only columnist addressing the apology issue. In a Philip Galanes Social Qs column, a reader wanted advice on repairing a relationship with a friend she had stood up for lunch a year ago. Galanes advised an apology, "I'm sorry for treating you badly," but also added a line that asks for forgiveness (see Tip 2 above).  Though he suggests the request, he adds this note: "Sadly, we don't control whether pals accept out apologies. But trying to put things right eventually is better than not trying at all."

    Ditto and double-down when it comes to our kids.

    Related articles

    The next time you apologize, avoid the 3-letter word that negates the point of your whole speech
    Grandparenting: Being careful what we say to our grownchildren about their children
    Parenting Grown Children: We are at our peril when we give advice they didn't ask for
    The One Word That Can Screw Up an Apology

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

    The Pain of Estrangement: What happens when your grown child “divorces” you

    Tolstoy_
    All happy families resemble one another;

    each unhappy family is unhappy

    in its own way. 

    Leo Tolstoy

    Anna Karenina

     

    At the heart of the more difficult parental negotiations with our grown children–real-world advice, necessary but unpleasant suggestions, harsh critiques–lies a universal anxiety: when push comes to shove, we don't want to push or shove so hard that our children become estranged from us. That is, they will no longer want to talk to us or be an integral part of the family; that they'll cut off all communication–they won't answer our phone calls, tweets or email; they'll unfriend us their Facebook page.

    We may go through difficult and challenging times with some or all of our adult children, but most of us find that we–and our kids–cycle through the down times and eventually reach a better place. But not always and that is the subject Sheri McGregor covers in her book, Done with the Crying: Help and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children.

    McGregor starts her book by telling us that one of her five children rejected her and when he did, she felt loss, anger, disbelief and embarrassment. "At first, I was shamed into silence," she writes. She went through an initial period where she blamed herself "for the tiniest mistake I'd mined with a fine-tooth comb from memories of my son's childhood. I'd seize on any infraction and blow it out of proportion as I struggled to find some answer to my echoing question: Why?"

    When her  life with the rest of her family started to suffer from the pressure of her misery, she realized she had to move on when she lit on this fact of life: While the experts "tell us never to give up, or to do whatever it takes to reconcile," the truth is "reuniting isn't within our control….We can make our hopes known, but we can't control what our adult children do."

    So this is not a book on how to "fix" the relationship with an estranged child. It is advice, suggestions and even mental exercises to help parents whose children have, in effect, divorced them, move on with their lives and get beyond the devastating loss and pain.

    The style is direct and simple. McGregor fills her book with anecdotes and tales from other families suffering through the shock of their child rejecting them. Then she offers exercises to help a parent move forward. The first exercise, for instance, is for the parent to simply observe what times of the day, week or year are more difficult to deal with the loss and then to consider how to use that time differently. By chapter four, the exercise is keyed to having a parent wish their estranged child well, despite his choices or whether or not his path leads back his parents. By doing so, McGregor writes, "you set the stage to let go of worry, anger, pride, or expectation. You set yourself free to embrace the present."

    In the final chapters, McGregor deals with long-term issues: from estate planning (making decisions about such questions as, Will you provide for the estranged child's children?) to thinking through whether you want your estranged child notified when your end is near.

    This is not a book that holds out the hope or a path to reconciliation. It is about acceptance and acknowledging that all you can control is you. Something that's true for all of us.

    Book cover

    (Note: The publisher of this book sent me a review copy.)

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

    Observations: Jane Pauley and Samantha Bee on the impact of their parents’ opinion

    96px-Jane_Pauley_2012_Shankbone74px-SamanthaBeeFeb2011

    When our children are grown with children of their own and with full-fledged careers, does how we feel about their career choices and their appearance still have an impact on them?

    Here are Jane Pauley  (currently the anchor of CBS Sunday Morning and the parent, along with Garry Trudeau, of three children) and Samantha Bee (host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee on TBS and the parent, along with Jason Jones, of three children) to tell it like it is–for them and their parents. Comments are via an interview with Philip Galanes in the New York Times.

    PG: Now I’m dying to know how Jane’s mother felt about her giant career.

    JP: She didn’t trust journalists much. That was possibly inspired by Walter Cronkite coming back from Vietnam and saying that we had not been told the truth about the war. Still, she was absolutely proud of her daughter and son-in-law. Garry was this liberal satirist, and she loved him. Boy, could he make her laugh. But she had an issue with the media, and my being part of it didn’t resolve it for her.

    PG: How about your parents, Sam?

    SB: My dad is very in there; he watches the show regularly. My mom watches it after the fact. But they’re supportive. They live in Canada.

    JP: What’s that supposed to mean?

    SB: They’re low-key. It’s just the new reality: Their daughter has a TV show. They’re not overly impressed. My mom will still call me up and go, “I didn’t care for that red blazer.”

    JP: Did your father ever tell you that you had to be a lady?

    SB: Never! I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, who sounds a bit like your mom. She would see women on TV and think they were snippy or full of themselves. She would not enjoy the content of my show, but she would be so proud.

    PG: The eternal distinction that parents make for us.

     

     

     

     

     

     

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

    Vacations and Grown Children: They travel with us to Morocco, but only virtually

    Morning light in blue-rinsed Chefchaouen

    There was a time when our grown children were available to travel with us–they were just out of college, thinking about grad school or trying to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives.

    Those days are history for some of us. Our kids have grown into their careers, married life and families. Their lives are busy; our grandchildren are heavily scheduled. When it comes to winter travel to exotic, far-away places, we are on our own. As it should be.

     That was clear when we took off for a two-week trip to Morocco this February. There was no chance either child and his/her family could come along–we didn't even ask.

    But that didn't mean we weren't connected. We didn't stay in touch with postcards (how quaint that would have been!) or phone calls but shared our journey via texted and emailed photos.  Did Steve Jobs know about this connectivity when he came up with the iPhone? We sent a photo or two a day; we got back reactions–about the train to Marrakesh, about the blue-rinsed houses in Chefchaouen and the Medina in Fes. 

    For Paterfamilias–an old softy despite his A-type personality–the emails and texts with his children were the most meaningful part of the trip. "We were looped in and getting interesting responses from them," he told a friend. "We'd send a photo and they'd raise interesting questions in return. It was like they were on the trip with us."

    We were all aboard the Marrakesh Express, although only two of us experienced the 7-hour  trip from Fes to Marrakesh–which turned out not to be an express at all, but a delightful journey down from the Rif mountains, along the coast to Rabat and Casablanca and then up through the fertile plains to Marrakesh.

    Marrakesh express

    In Fes: All aboard the Marrakesh Express

    The food, the old-world towns, the introduction to the North African-Muslim culture? An intense and moving experience. The familial comfort of the smart phone connection? Bigly.

     

     

    Related articles

    Vacations with Grown Kids and Grands: Update on easing the stress of too much togetherness
    Rif Road Trip – SeenPlaces
    6 Of Most Fascinating Cities In Morocco – Lists Diary

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

    Parenting Grown Children: The Yoga Bond

    YOGA UP CROPPED

    Mother and daughter reaching yoga heights

    The yoga studio where I practice my down dogs has a newsletter, which is in constant search of material to fill its "Why I Love Yoga" column. I recently helped out and am reprinting it here since I focused on my relationship with my yoga inspiration, who happens to be my grown daughter, and on the ways our relationship with our grown children evolves: the former teacher becomes the grateful pupil.

    Here's the  column as it appeared in the Unity Woods newsletter:

    Blogger Mom Becomes a Yoga Mom

    Within weeks of graduating from college, my daughter shipped herself off to San Francisco–to paint, to write, to “find” herself. One of the tools she found was yoga. She started studying with Rodney Yee, then a West Coast Iyengar yogi. Her interest only deepened as time went on.

    Moms being moms, and this mom being a blogger on parenting grown children, I had to know more about what was so important to her. She suggested I had an excellent opportunity to do so.  “You live right near one of the best yoga studios in the country,” she told me.

    So it was that I signed up for Yoga I at Unity Woods. I spent a few years learning triangle pose and Warrior II … then promoted myself to … I-II for a few years of attempts at inversions …

    Whenever my daughter came home or joined us for a family vacation in Vermont, we would roll out our mats and practice together. She could bend over backwards; I needed blocks and straps to keep pace with the simplest sun salutations. Even when she took up Ashtanga yoga, she managed to find ways to include me and my Iyengar yoga in a yoga routine.

    Then came my hip pain and the replacement of one and, a year later, the other hip. This is where our yoga bond was tied into an even stronger knot. Four days post-surgery, she was figuring out ways I could practice yoga–seated for the first few weeks and then very cautiously using the wall for some easy-does-it uttanasanas.

    Three years after the gift of my new hips, I am back in yoga class and, when my daughter and I get together (she still lives far away), we salute the sun, breathe deeply and Namaste  over the pure pleasure of our special bond.

    Yoga double down dog

     Double down dog

     

    Related articles

    Light on Yoga: Yoga Dipika by B. K. S. Iyengar
    This is Why Conscious Breathing in Yoga is Never Boring.

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

    Observations: Cathy Guisewite on letting our grown daughters know how far we’ve come, baby–and how fragile it is.

    Cathy

    Remember Cathy, the comic strip character that tapped into our worst vulnerabilities about our bodies, ourselves. I still shiver with the sisterhood Cathy brought whenever she freaked out about buying a bathing suit.

    Cathy retired–or at least her creator, Cathy Guisewite retired her. But now Guisewite is back. Writing in the NYTimes, Cathy (the person) wants to impress on her college daughter the advances her daughter should not take for granted, the freedoms, as Guisewite puts it, "our grandmothers dreamed of, our mothers hoped for, what we earned and our girls will inherit."

    With Mary Tyler Moore as her lodestar,  she wants to show her daughter "How change can happen, so she isn't afraid of everything else that's happening now. To protect her by empowering her with an example of what one voice can do."

    Here is what she tells her daughter about the doors Mary Tyler Moore and her breakout TV show opened for her and millions of other women:

    "…When I was 24, a young woman could either aspire to be a homemaking Betty Crocker or a militant Betty Friedan. We argued about things you can’t comprehend. Should a woman be allowed to have a job? If she got a job, should she be allowed to wear pants to the office? If she got married before 25, was she betraying the new career possibilities for which women had been fighting for a century? If she wasn’t married by 35, was she an old maid?”

    When that doesn't seem to grab her daughter's attention, Cathy, waving  a DVD of Mary Tyler Moore's show, persists. 

    “You need to see this right now, honey, when so much of what’s been won for women feels threatened. You need to see what one, sometimes quivery, voice did to move millions. How minds and doors got opened by someone who found a way to gently, graciously shift things just enough so that people could imagine a different future. You need to know that every single one of us has the power to question everything.”

                                      Cathy_wedding

                                  

    Related articles

    Journalists, actors reflect on Mary Tyler Moore's influence
    Mary Tyler Moore: Anything but an Ordinary Person – Movies