PenPenWrites

parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more

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.

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

    Supporting Grown Children: There is such a thing as a “brat allowance.” Benefactors beware.

    Wolf piggy bank

    "Parenting has changed to obsessive paternalism over time. Well-meaning parents are taking over the financial lives of young adults….The adult child needs to be weaned away. Lines need to be drawn."

    This sad state of affairs and the heartfelt advice that accompanies it comes not from the mouth of a financial advisor or self-help columnist here in the U.S.  I came across this paean to the fostering of the financial independence of adult children in The Economic Times of India.

    Uma Shashikant was exhorting her readers to save for retirement and reminding them that the greatest hindrance to building a nest egg is a soft-spot for indulging adult children financially, particularly children who have jobs and are earning money. She goes on to describe three forms this indulgence takes: a subsistence allowance, a cushioning allowance and a brat allowance.

    India is not so far removed from us that the three categories don't apply here. In the spirit of sharing ideas from other cultures, here are Uma's descriptions of the ways in which Indian parents rationalize their financial support of adult children and the ramifications of doing so.   

    Parenting has changed to obsessive paternalism over time. Wellmeaning parents are taking over the financial lives of young adults.

    Parenting has changed to obsessive paternalism over time. Wellmeaning parents are taking over the financial lives of young adults.

    The subsistence allowance: We would call this the return to the empty nest. Parents provide a place to live, food to eat and a means of getting around. While Shashikant admits that this form of assistance can help a young, working adult build assets, she also notes that "these sheltered young adults will not know how to manage within their own incomes. …Persistence of this subsidy can lead to a situation where young adults see even core expenses as burdens."

    The cushioning allowance: Parents pay insurance premiums, fund their children's share of holiday and celebration expenses and chip in for or take on large expenses. "When the financial status of well-placed parents is better than that of the young adults, these expenses are either willing subsidies or a result of emotional blackmail," Shashikant writes. "Parents effectively bear the  decisions made by young adults, dangerously separating action and consequence. Not an advisable practice."

    The brat allowance. If subsistence and cushioning are bad ideas, the brat is worse. This is when parents pay off their child's debts (loans, credit card bills) and, in Shashikant's words, "also fund the adult children's demands for upgrading to better cars, gadgets and homes." If their adult child's income is not up to their lifestyle, the brat allowance provides cash to meet life style expenses. We don't need Shashikant to point out the flaws here, though she sums them up this way: "The brat allowance clearly encourages the young adult to live beyond their means, assuming that the parents' assets are theirs to access and use as they wish."

    Reading this piece reminds me how universal are the issues of parents, money and adult children. For Shashikant (and for most of us) there's an unpleasantness about a defined allowance–certainly of a brat allowance and its sense of entitlement. Where to draw the line? Here's Shashikant's advice: "When help comes without asking, the sense of entitlement increases. Parents should wait for the children to seek, ask, request financial accommodation, before jumping in to bail them out."

    My take-away: An occasional helping hand, yes. Open-ended allowance, never.

     

     

     

     

     

    Related articles

    Emptying the Nest: Blame it on dirty laundry when grown kids don't move out and on.
    Observations: A Stanford Dean on the effect of helicopter parenting on college students
    Emerging Adults: Detachment parenting means letting go of our great expectations for how they'll "turn out."

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

    Social Media Etiquette: How much texting is too much texting when our kids have grown and flown?

    Tao2-2skype

    They've left the building–our building, that is to say their childhood home and the comforts of their bedroom, our company and the family pets. They're off to college or to their own apartment. From day to day contact–and pretty constant text or email updates on whereabouts and what-they are doing–they are living a more independent life.

    We have an empty nest. We're no longer in control of daily decisions–what did you eat for lunch? Curfew is midnight. Who's driving you home? But we still have access to a possible 'control' button–the icons on our cell phones that let us tap out a text message or a Facebook comment.

    So, how often should we use social media to stay in touch, and do we abuse it if we use it to make us feel our empty nest is still filled?

    This is a question raised in a NYTimes story. Henry Alford interviewed several recently emptied-nest parents to explore where on the continuum of keeping in touch we should land–a continuum that flows from being a hands-on, controlling parent to an advisory counsel.

    Actress Alfre Woodward, whose younger son, Duncan, left for college in 2012, had this advice:

    “You have got to leave your kids alone. The only time you text is if you have something really slammin’ to say. Something you know they’re really into. Like, Duncan is a big golfer, so I’ll text, ‘Oh, no, Rory didn’t!’ That’s all I’ll say. What you don’t want to write is ‘Your room is so warm!’ Or ‘Have you eaten?’ Or ‘Do you have any friends?’ ‘Are you drunk?’”

    Karen Coburn, the senior consultant in residence at the office of the vice chancellor for students at Washington University in St. Louis, had this observation of college kids and warning to their parents:

    "Some students say that no way do they want their parents on social media. Others say they like it because it means they don’t have to communicate with their folks as much because the parents get an idea of what the kids are up to. But one of the worst things a parent can do is to ‘friend’ one of their kid’s friends. One of my students told me, ‘Another student came up to me and said, ‘This old woman friended me on Facebook, I think it might be your mom or grandmother.’ The ‘old woman’ was probably 45.”

     As for Alford, he ends with this sage piece of advice that covers not just the etiquette and wisdom of being part of a social media presence in our children's lives but our overall relationship with them once they've left the building:

    "The greatest lesson for many empty nesters may be learning to be their child’s coach or inspiration rather than a child’s concierge or critic."

     

    Related articles

    Social Media R Us: Staying in touch with our kids, Part 2
    Social Media Etiquette: The many ways to stay in touch with the grown kids
    Guidelines from the grown kids on how to be a good parent to them

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

    Money Matters: Is your gift giving in line with your values?

    Presents

    Just in time for the Holidays, here's a way to think about the gifts you'll be giving friends and family–especially your grown kids and their kids. It comes via the Sketch Guy, a financial columnist and blogger for the New York Times.

    In a recent column the Sketch Guy (aka Carl Richards) raised this provocative question: Is your spending aligned with your values? The Sketch Guy's point: It pays to look at the things we spend money on (invest in, in his terms) and see if the spending furthers our values or if there is a better way to invest (spend) on that value. (His example: Two men meet for lunch once a month; it costs them $40 each. What they really value is getting together to talk, not eating a lavish meal. They've switched to taking a hike together once a month.)

    Does value spending apply to how we handle gifts for our grown kids, their kids and our disposable income? 

    You bet. The first friend I asked about it told me this story.

    Two years ago, when the oldest of her daughter's daughters was having a Bat Mitzvah, she and the GrandPops went up to her daughter's home in Connecticut a few days early. Her son-in-law asked her to take the Bat Mitzvah girl and her younger sister to a particular beauty salon to get their hair styled for the big event. The bill: $140–not something my friend couldn't afford but she resented it. She did not see the value in spending that much money on hair cuts for young girls. So this year when the younger daughter was having her  Bat Mitzvah, she and the GrandPops once again went up to Connecticut for a few days. This time when her son-in-law asked her to take the girls to the beauty salon, she asked him for the cash to pay for it. She wasn't going to spend money on something she didn't value.

    That was a lesson she started to apply to gift-giving. When one of her granddaughters wanted a GoPro video camera for her birthday, my friend thought about it carefully. She was wary at first. GoPro is not inexpensive (around $200 for a simple one) and it seemed like a fad but that didn't drive her decision. "She's interested in photography and film-making. It was something that furthered her interests." my friend says. "I didn't mind buying it for her." When the younger daughter wanted a floppy, fuzzy floor chair for her birthday, my friend applied her value reasoning. "It wasn't something I would chose, but she loves books and I could see this as a cozy place for her to read."

    Another friend says she and her husband applied the value-spend test to a family vacation to celebrate their 50th Anniversary. Where some of their friends have taken their families to luxury resorts to celebrate, they took a different tack, As scientists who've supported a host of environmental causes, they booked a trip for ten–their two adult sons, their wives and four preteen and young teen Grands–to the Galapagos Islands for a week.  They saw it as a chance to introduce their grandchildren to the natural wonders of the world. Expensive? Very. But a worthwhile investment: Who know where the exposure to natural habitats and Darwinian change might lead. To say nothing of an introduction to blue-footed Booby birds.

    Paterfamilias and I are not quite as rigorous as some of our friends. We have been known to indulge American Girl Doll requests (Value? Her interest in a particular point in history was piqued) and a Lego car racing set (Value? Putting it together is problem solving). But we have drawn a personal spending-value line: Jimmy Choo shoes, no; soccer boots, always.

     Related articles

     

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

    Refilled Nests: The angst when a grown child moves back home again

    Bird fight 2

    Her younger son was the better athlete, the more gifted musician, the smarter of her two sons. Where the older son–through trial, error and diligent study–is now on a successful career path, her younger son has failed to launch. So far. After a post-college year of living at home and delivering pizza, he went off to Europe for a one-year graduate school program. But now he's back and once again, living at home and delivering pizza. He won't take his mother's advice about job hunting–at least that is the face he shows his mother. In fact, he won't talk to her about it at all. When he applied for and won an internship at a prestigious non-profit, she hoped it would be an intellectual trigger for possible careers or a  jumping off place for a more remunerative job. She was wrong. He quit after a month–he found the chores he was asked to do distasteful, low-tech and stodgy.

    So now my friend C sits at lunch and says she is "finished" with him. She says she is going  to leave it to her husband to deal with his son and the son's uncertain path forward.

    This of course is how she sees it–her son is secretive and unwilling to share what is going on his life.

    For all she knows, however, he may be diligently networking and checking out every lead he comes across–not necessarily her leads but those of his peers and mentors. Who knows what's really going on.

    I am not unsympathetic to her plight and point of view. It is very hard on us moms and dads when we have to sit and watch our children struggle to find a footing in the grown-up world of careers and work. I tell C to have faith, that her son is smart and talented; she instilled good values when he was growing up. He will find his way. Her problem, I suggest, is that she sees too much.

    My children are older than hers—launched by now into careers, growing families and home-ownership. But back in the day when they were recent college graduates, they headed out for points unknown–she went to California; he went to New England. They were seeking respite from the stress of competitive college courses and wondering what they would do with their lives. Their way forward was far from clear. They had their trials and many errors, some of which we learned about–from a distance. And that's the point I was trying to make to C: We didn't live through their  day to day decisions, distractions and disillusion. We didn't, in fact, see too much, the way we would have had they lived at home.

    When grown-up children are trying to figure out where they fit into the adult world of work and career, watching it up close and personally is anxiety provoking. Why aren't they going down this road rather than that one? Why do they make decisions that seem wrong-headed and counter productive?. And what kind of help or advice do we have that is relevant and meaningful in today's online, social media world–a world in which we may not be literate?

    For C, the situation is too fraught to think much about the larger questions. She says–but doesn't quite mean–that she's "throwing up her hands" and giving up on Son #2. If only her son bunked in with friends–was out of sight and less on her mind– things would be a lot easier on her and on him. He'll get there, but the sausage-making is unnerving.

     

     

     

     

     

    Related articles

    Observations: David Brooks on the post-college struggles of emerging adults
    Money Matters: Giving a grown kid a helping hand without making it a handout.

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

    Observation: Philip Galanes on the limits of our control over our adult children’s choices

    Philipgalanes

    A mother is concerned that her 18-year-old, college-bound daughter is having a baby, fathered by an unstable man who is out of the picture–but his parents aren't. How should she handle the situation?

    Galanes offers a specific answer to the issue at hand, but it applies in general to many of the sticky situations that involve us and our adult children.

    If your daughter’s accidental pregnancy (along with her decisions to carry to term and raise the baby) were not enough to convince you that you are not in the driver’s seat here, I’m not sure what more I can say to hit you over the head with the fact. I get your worry and lurking disappointment. Children having children is heartbreaking. But that ship has sailed. Now is the time for maximizing communication and support for your daughter…..

    Remember: You don’t control this new path you’re on, but with openhearted cooperation, you may all find great joy on it. There will be a baby!

    "

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

    Tech Talk: Don’t flaunt it but it’s true: We’re more tech-savvy than our kids think we are.

    Tao3

     Okay, so it was a retailer's survey , not a rigorously researched one from from academia. Still, it tells us something we've sort of known all along: We aren't tech-dummies but many of our grown kids think we are. 

    The bar is not exactly high. According to Best Buy's Parent-Millennial Child Tech Survey (of 1,000 parents and 1,000 grown kids), fewer than one-third of millennials think their parents are comfortable buying the right personal tech for themselves. Two-thirds of us, however, say we are. Only one-third of our kids give us credit for understanding our gear; 60 percent of us say we know how to get the most from our technology.

    Almost half (47 percent) of our kids say we turn to them for tech help at least once a week. Only 17 percent of us admitted to that–although about half of us 'fess up that we bother them for tech advice roughly once a month.

    There's a gender divide here. Among parents who considered their children to be the most trustworthy source of advice, 64 percent are moms and 36 percent are dads. Dad, it seems, would rather take their advice from expert reviews (60 percent) than hear it from a millennial son or daughter. When Moms turn to their kids for help, more often they call on their sons for tech help (39 percent) rather than  than their daughters (28 percent).

    The numbers came closer on one point: 62 percent of parents say their adult children are happy to help and 58 percent of adult children confirmed that.

     

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

    Money Matters: When do our adult kids grow up financially?

    Monster-money-bank
    Some of us close the Bank of Mom and Dad when our kids graduate from college or when they finish their grad school degrees. Some of us do it even earlier–when the kids have a high school diploma in hand and leave home for college or a job. To each their own.

    Regardless of whether the bank is open or not, at what age should we expect our kids to be financial grown ups? A new research survey in the United Kingdom asked parents that question. The answer was pretty surprising.

     According to the Sainsbury's Bank survey, UK parents pegged financial independence–that is, the age at which the parents can stop having to help their kids out financially–at 29. That's well past the college grad age. The mums seemed to be a softer touch than the dads. Women expected to support their children until they are 30; men saw the cutoff as 27.

    Many of the parents reported taking out loans to help out their kids, half the loans being for their child's education or to pay for the wedding. Other reasons for loans: medical expenses, cars and help with household expenses. The average value across all loans stood at the U.S. equivalence of $14,000.

    Survey analysts pointed out a reality behind the expenses that would seem to hold true here: While it is becoming more common for adult children to pay for their own wedding, the cost has gotten so high that help is needed. Ditto with college and grad school costs.

    Parents in the U.K. aren't just doling out cash. A quarter of adult children aged 20 to 34 are bunking in with their parents, up from 21 percent twenty years ago. Given that shift, it's not surprising the rate of home ownership by 25-29 year-olds dipped from 55 percent in 1996 to 30 percent in 2016; for 30-to-34 years-olds, the change is even more startling, given that this is an age at which married cojuples expand their family size. Home ownership, however, is down from 68 percent twenty years ago to 46 percent today.

    Here's what the author of the bank's Family Finance Report had to say about the changing times in the U.K.:"Today's parents are the first to face the perfect storm of expensive university fees, sky-high property prices and near unaffordable rents in cities, none of which they had to deal with themselves at their children's age. Add in the increased difficulties that even graduates have to get a job and it's clear the situation is far tougher for today's twenty-somethings than it was when they were born."

    These are, of course, first world country concerns–we should be happy to have them. But they also suggest that, though we as parents are stepping in to help, there's a lot of financial unease and discontent among our 20-somethings and their older siblings.

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

    Grandparenting: The rewards of getting to know the Grands, one by one

    Maia museo door smaller

     My friend Gail  babysits three daytimes a week for her son's five children. It's been her non-paying job, off and on, for the past 12 years. She's there when the oldest children leave for school and on hand until her daughter-in-law comes home at 3:00.

    You would think she knows those children well. That's why it was a surprise when she told me how she and Ralph–her husband and the grandpop–babysat together one evening when the parents had to go to back-to-school night. She put the three younger children to bed by 8:30 but the two older ones–two boys, ages 10 and 12–stayed up for another hour and chatted with her and Ralph. They talked about everything and nothing. It was the first time, Gail says, that she got to know them as individuals not, as she put it, "as part of a herd."

    Her words fell on fertile ground. When Paterfamilias and I visit Uber son and his family of three children, we try to pick off one of them for a chat, another one for a walk or one for a drive to Starbucks. But they are all still very much within the magnetic pull of the family dynamic–in effect, the herd.

    As it did for Gail.  that changed for us. This summer, Uber son's older daughter–the middle child who is 13–flew to Washington by herself to visit us for two days. Split from the herd, she was no longer the big sister helping her little sister, or mom's chief assistant, or the younger sister competing with an older brother. She was her own person–an early teen heading for young adulthood and a person whose interests were our top and only priority.

    She has a talent and appreciation for art, so we headed to the National Gallery and spent the day audio-touring some of the greatest paintings in the world. We didn't have to shorten the gallery visit for a younger sister's attention span. During our lunch break, we didn't have to cater to anyone else's conversational priorities–we could talk about the paintings we saw, the history we learned and the artists we liked. When she said she would also like to see  Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot, we didn't have to poll anyone else to see if we should go. Off we went. Ditto for the kind of restaurant we would go to for dinner. That night, when a huge thunderstorm broke over the city, we stood out on our 14th floor terrace for half an hour to watch the lightening explode all around the night sky. She spent time trying to capture a flash of lightening on her iPhone but the roars of light struck too quickly and from unexpected directions. It was nature's fireworks and she didn't have to think about how anyone else in the family was reacting.

    The next morning we flew home with her. Within seconds she was back in the orbit of her family and her usual roles of big-sister, mom-helper, brother competitor. But that didn't change the fact that we had forged a new and different bond with our granddaughter. We had been rewarded with a glimpse of the future Maia: the serious student with a mind for history, an eye for art and a love of thunderstorms–the one who is part of a loving family herd, but is also an independent thinker and her very own person.

    The Grands grow up so quickly. The roles we play with and for them are ever-changing. The visit made us realize we're moving from cuddlers to guides–trusted adults on whom they can test their future dreams and ideas.

     

    Related articles

    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
    Vacations with Grown Kids and Grands: Update on easing the stress of too much togetherness

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

    Observations: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the feel of an empty-nested house

                         Aml3

    Well, it's not Anne herself but Anne as channeled by Melanie Benjamin in her novel "The Aviator's Wife,"  which is told in the first-person voice of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Benjamin read through Lindbergh's diaries and personal papers as part of her research for the book, so these comments on how her child-emptied house in Darien, Connecticut felt to the mother of five grown children  presumably mirror the Aviator's Wife's feelings:

    "It's the quiet that you notice, first, when the children begin to leave.

    And not just the practical fact that the record player is unplugged, the radio turned off. Nor simply the lack of some instrument being practiced behind closed door. Not merely the silent phone, the absence of stampeding feet up and down stairs, the slamming of doors, the constant rush of water in the bathroom.

    It's more than that–less than that, too. It's a hum, a vibration that leaves when they leave. For all of a sudden the very air in the house is slower, duller; gentler against your eardrum. "

    Related articles

    Observations: A Stanford Dean on the effect of helicopter parenting on college students
    Embracing the Ebb and Flow

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

    Bank of Mom and Dad: Should the helping hand be a loan or a gift?

    One-late-payment_MilitaryAuthority

    Some of us have taken a tough love stand: Once they're adults, our kids are on their own: The Bank of Mom and Dad is closed.

    Others take a more nuanced approach: A helping hand is there, depending on what it's for.
    For those of us in that camp, the question is: Should that help be in the form of a loan or a gift.
    The loan would appear to be the less risky way to go. The money will hopefully be repaid and we haven't, as one financial adviser put it, " dampened their drive to become financially independent."
    Call Paterfamilias and me "Mommy and Daddy Indulgence," but we see the risks of loans as higher than those of a gift.
    The loan risks? They won't be able to pay it back and there will be bad blood between the banker (Mom and Dad) and the borrower (the adult progeny).  A Carnegie Mellon survey published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, looked into the terms and consequences of loans between and among friends and family and found that "people’s tendency to confuse what is in their own interest with what is fair is a major source of disagreements between people.” Put another way, ill will develops between lender and borrower. Relationships suffer.
    More specifically, the survey of some 900 participants found that overdue personal loans had wide-ranging negative consequences, such as loss of closeness and loss of trust. Lenders felt that the delinquent borrowers were going out of their way to avoid them.
    73481f52834200da0c6beaa46e3492cd
    Bottom line: If the idea of gifting the money runs counter to your instincts and beliefs, then march your child over to the bank and co-sign a loan. The bank is in the business of collecting on debt. If your child misses a payment or two, let the bank hound them. And if your child defaults on the loan? Well, you're out of pocket, just as you would be if you made a gift.
    This scenario only works if you can afford to lose the money. If you can't, you probably shouldn't be making a direct loan, co-signing a bank loan or gifting the money.
    There's a pithy proverb that fills this bill, courtesy of the Bard on Avon:
    Thinkmoney-shakespeare
     
     

    Related articles

    Bank of Mom and Pop: Wherever they are in the world, parents like to offer their grown kids a helping hand.
    Bank of Mom and Dad: The trend line on supporting grown children
    Should a parent's financial help to children come in the form of a loans or a gift?
    Money Matters: Giving a grown kid a helping hand without making it a handout.