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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.

    Emerging Adults: Giving up the old adolescent tics and other annoying habits

    One of my children–he shall go nameless–was a mess as an adolescent: a mess in the sense that his clothes (clean and dirty) littered the floor; his school papers (due and past due) lay in disarray on his desk [this was the pre-computer era] and his organizational skills were low to none.

    None of that is true today. Was it something we the parents did? Not to hear Carl Pickhardt, the psychologist who specializes in adolescence, tell it. "It never ceases to amaze parents, who have long since given
    up urging adolescent reform, to see that young person go through a
    positive growth reversal, often in young adulthood, and suddenly give up
    bad habits or correct wayward ways," he writes in a blog post, "Positive Adolescent Growth Reversals in Young Adulthood."

    So the good news for us as our children come through the Emerging Adult stage is that much of the adolescence annoyances will fade and be replaced by their opposite: careless to careful, messy to neat, disorganized to orderly, scattered to focused, and–my favorite on Pickhardt's list–aimless to directed.

    What accounts for this breath of fresh air–and feeling we've done a good enough parenting job that our child is set up to succeed at living an independent life? Pickhardt's take: onset of maturity, loss of the need to rebel,
    life-course correction, and actualizing a parental imprint. (So we had a role, after all.)
    It is not a one-way street–this reversal thing. When our kids reach their 30s, Pickhardt tells us, they describe growth reversals in their parents. They find we've mellowed
    out, don’t worry so much and are not so easily upset. They report we're more
    patient and less controlling, even laid back. We're fun to be around! We are not, in short, like we were when they were growing up. "It’s amazing," Pickhardt observes, "how the shedding of parental responsibility, with all its attendant
    stress and worries, can relax older folks around adult children who now
    have children of their own."

     

    Related articles

    Emerging Adults: Another view of that hard-to-find-a-job issue
    Positive Adolescent Growth Reversals in Young Adulthood
    Emerging Adults: When is it time to cut the cord on financial support?
    Emerging Adults: What to do with the anger when our kids make us mad

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

    Parenting Adult Children: When we’re faced with a crisis, our grown kids show their mettle

    We worry about them. We get angry at them. Our grown children sometimes do things that disappoint, exorcise or frustrate us. And then, all of a sudden, they're there when we need them. They're the caring, mature, responsible people we always knew–hoped–they would be.

    Two friends just went through difficult experiences. What struck me was how incredibly helpful, caring and mature their grown children were when it really, really counted.      

                     Here's what happened to Lucy. She and her 30-something son were hiking in Yosemite Park in California–a four day hike with overnight stays at refuges. Lucy's in great shape, though she worried that she hadn't done a big hike like this for nearly 20 years, when she'd done it with her husband. Her husband died recently so she and her son were hiking to a meadow in Yosemite to sprinkle his ashes. A hike with a purpose. Day one, 9 miles to the tent campsite. Day two, even longer and hillier. Day three was a "rest day" since day four would be the longest and most challenging part of the hike–and the spot where the ashes would be scattered. Lucy and her son decided to pack their books and spend the "rest" day at a lake that was a 3-mile climb from the refuge hut. When they got there, Lucy stepped out on a rock to get a better view. The rock was surprisingly–shockingly–slippery. Black ice slippery. Lucy fell and couldn't get up. Everytime she tried she was overwhelmed by dizziness and nausea—and pain. When her son and another hiker were finally able to help her to a rock where she could sit, the pain subsided. But walking down was not possible–the pain was too intense whenever she moved. Her son went down to the refuge to get help. By the time he got back, a helicopter was hovering nearby. EMTs carried Lucy by stretcher. But her son couldn't come with her. Moreover, he had to complete the hike back to the rental car.

    Lucy was helicoptered down, transferred to an ambulance and taken to a hospital. Not only was she worried about the pain in her leg and hip, she was worried about her son making the long hike by himself without a cell phone–they had left their phones in the car. A nurse at the hospital called her son's cell phone to let him know where his mother was. When mother and son were finally reunited, the doctors at the hospital had figured out what was wrong: The femur was broken. Lucy needed surgery to put it back together again–either in California or at home on the east coast.

    That's where Lucy's other grown chidlren come in. Her son called his sister, who is a doctor, who talked to the doctor at the hospital about what they planned to do, why and where it should be done (in California or at home). He then called his other sister who lived in Hong Kong to let her know what was happening. The sister knows a lot about travel–she does a lot of it for her job. She knew exactly how she could help: She used her frequent flyer miles to have Lucy's travel status upgraded to first class for her post-surgery flight home. As to Lucy's son, he stayed with her, taking his meals at the hospital with her and watching TV with her –the summer Olympics were on–for the four days until she could leave. When he finally got her home, Lucy says, "I'm sure he was glad to be rid of me." True or not, he had been there when it counted, and so were her other children–doing whatever they could do to make things go smoother and better for their mother.

            LInda's experience was more mundane. Her husband, Dave, was about to undergo open heart surgery. With no warning–he had simply changed doctors and the new doctor insisted on a cardiogram for all new patients–he went from a man who seemed to be slowing down naturally to one who had a life-threatening situation hanging over him. Linda's son –her husband's stepson — started researching and adding to the information Linda and Dave were gathering about doctors, types of surgery [robotic or hands-on], which hospitals were best. It was a comfort to have his suggestions and informed opinions at a time when it's difficult to think straight–and you absolutely need to. Dave's son [Linda's stepson] flew in for the surgery, to be with his father and keep Linda company. When Dave was finally home from the hospital, Linda was feeling depressed and shut in–Dave couldn't be left alone; progress was measured by the one or two minutes he could sit up in bed. Her son had a suggestion: send out an email to the rest of the family and friends who live nearby and ask for an hour of their time so she could get out each day. Worked like a charm. Linda would probably have thought of a similar approach for a friend, but when we're in the midst of a crisis, it helps to have someone else thinking about solutions to the day-to-day problems. And who better than her son.

     

     

    Related articles

    Vacationing with Adult Children: The mini-agonies of togetherness

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

    Money Matters: When we help out our grown kids, whose hand pulls the purse strings?

     My friend Cathy's middle son graduates from a local college in May but he has a lease on an apartment that runs through August 1–at a cost of $1,000 a month for his share of the rent. Cathy has made it clear that he should find a sublet for his room and move back home to save the family the $2,000 in rent. Her son has countered that he doesn't want to live at home. She told him that was too bad but "we can't afford the rent and neither can you." He repeated his argument: "I don't want to live at home."

    It's at this point in her "he said/she said" story that she tells me, "He'll probably tap his dad for the money. [The dad] can't afford it either but his pride will kick in and he'll do it."       

    Cathy does not say this with admiration for her husband. All through their child-rearing years this has been the pattern: She takes a tough stand on financial matters and he's a soft touch. It drives Cathy crazy.

    She might find comfort in a recent Ameriprise survey, Money Across Generations II that reflects her family's dynamics: It found that mothers are more likely to chat with their grown kids about money, but the dad is more likely to dole out the cash–for certain things. The "certain things?" Anything having to do with a car.

    Here are the numbers: Of the 93 percent of baby boomers who say they’ve provided financial
    support to their adult children, 58 percent of fathers (versus 48 percent of mothers) have helped by putting up cash for a car; 51 percent of dads (versus 43 percent of moms) have
    paid for their grown kid’s car insurance; and 37 percent of fathers (versus 29 percent of mothers) helped with car payments.

    There was one outlier: 42 percent of dads (versus 32 percent of moms) co-signed a loan or lease agreement.

    Cold comfort, but there you have it: Dad's are likely to pony up the cash, especially if it has anything to do with a car or their adult child's ability to live on their own. The mom: She gets to talk about why she's saying No.

     

    Related articles

    Emerging Adults: When is it time to cut the cord on financial support?
    Emerging Adults: What to do with the anger when our kids make us mad
    Supporting Adult Children: The line between "Yes" and "Not Anymore"
    Hands off the purse strings! Women don't trust their chaps with money

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

    Parenting Adult Children: Feeling like an outsider when we visit.

    On our way home from a recent visit with Uber son–his is a family of five that lives some 350 miles away from us–Paterfamilias and I were in accord: The 2-day visit had been bittersweet.

    The sweetness was in the welcome when we arrived; in observing how grand our three Grands are, each in their own way; in seeing the closeness and strength of our son's marriage; in marveling at the way he's built his career and in our daughter-in-law's ability to build a warm home around challenging demands.

    We spent almost all of our "Blitzkrieg visit" (in one day; out the next) at indoor soccer games (a Saturday night tournament, no less) and hanging around the house. When the sun shone, we were outside with one or all of our Grands, the wee-est one riding her trike, the biggest heaving a football to his dad or Gramps and the three Grands building a snowman with the remains of an early-Spring snowfall. All of that comes under the general category heading of "Sweet."

    So what was bitter? Maybe bitter is too harsh a word. But what had us feeling a good deal less than warm and fuzzy about the visit was the feeling of being excluded–of being on the outside looking in. It was likely not intentional, just the reality of not being part of the in-group of a very tightly knit family.

            A few days after we got home, Uber son posted on his Facebook page a description of a game he and his family had just taken up: Sardines. It's a variation on the theme of hide and seek. They go down into the basement. One person turns off
    the light and hides. Everyone else tries to find him/her and when they
    do, they hide with him/her. The last person left still looking is "it" next
    time. Uber son noted happily that "My three kids ALL love it and how many things can keep an 11 year old
    and a four year old happy? All of them would choose it right now over a
    movie pretty much hands down."

    It struck me that Sardines was the perfect metaphor for what we experienced. They huddle together and we can't really find a way to be part of them.

    We are not alone in feeling this way. I know that–from friends who've experienced similar visits to their grown children and from therapists who offer advice to those parents of grown children who are feeling their way through the unhappiness of exclusion. Dr. Kathleen McCoy, a psychotherapist who blogs on midlife and beyond, noted that some parents complain that they feel they are "on a socially accepted ice floe when it comes to their adult offspring." or that they are "bit players in the lives of their adult offspring."

    McCoy suggests that we reframe the feelings of being on the side lines. "Instead of feeling
    diminished and left out, one can get in tune with the rhythm of life. We can
    reframe being a "bit player" to "having a front row seat"
    or "cheering them on."  Letting the pleasure of generativity
    flow over you as you marvel at the accomplishments of your children and grandchildren
    can be life-changing."

    She admits there
    may be times when you miss being central to your children's daily lives.
    "My Aunt Molly used
    to say that, as you age, 'you're welcome at the party, but the party isn't
    for you.' " McCoy adds, "participating in
    the party, minus the burden of being the central focus, can be even more
    satisfying."

    Intellectually I know she's right but it doesn't feel that way when we're in the moment. Her Aunt Molly's line is a zinger that reminds us of our deepest feeling: Most of us don't necessarily want to be the life of the party but we do want to be part of it. And when we feel somehow pushed away–however unintentional it may be–it's bittersweet. And a reminder that we did the same thing to our parents. So much for the pleasures (and guilt trip) of generativity.

     

    Related articles

    Parenting Adult Children: No one says it's easy–nor do they have to say why it's hard..
    About Family

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

    Parenting Grown Children: Praise, criticism and the relationship with our relations

    There it is as one of my Notes to Self, running down the left hand column of this blog: "Be enthusiastic. It beats being critical."

    Easier said than done, of course. But it raises the question of praise
    versus criticism and the role the tension between the two play in our
    relationship with our independent and grown children.

     If we're always saying something is wonderful, that someone is terrific, that this is the best of all possible worlds, then how can we be taken seriously? But if we're critical scolds, who wants to hear from us no less be around us–no matter how right we may be? (See Note to Self: "It's better to be liked than right.")

    So there should be a balance somewhere between the two. A recent post on the Harvard Business School blog has not only found the ratio but put some numbers on it: 5:1. That is, to bring out the best in a business work team, the most effective balance is five instances of praise or positive feedback to one negative comment. Here it is in chart form (a favorite means of HBS communication):

           

    The blog's authors also addresses research on what the praise-criticism ratio
    looks like in successful marriages versus unsuccessful
    [separation and divorce] ones.The balance is about the same: roughly 5:1. So, if that ratio works in the work place and in marriage, why not in our relationships with our grown children.

    Here's some of the thinking the praise-to-criticism blogger offers in the post: 

     –"Negative feedback is
    important when we're heading over a cliff to warn us that we'd really better
    stop doing something horrible or start doing something we're not doing right
    away    . But even the most well-intentioned criticism can rupture
    relationships and undermine self-confidence and initiative. It can change
    behavior, certainly, but it doesn't cause people to put forth their best efforts.

    –"[In] John Gottman's analysis of wedded
    couples' likelihood of getting divorced or remaining married     …once again,
    the single biggest determinant is the ratio of positive to negative comments
    the partners make to one another." For those who ended up
    divorced, the ratio went upside down to something like three positive comments
    for every four negative ones.

    –The key in negative feedback is to "keep the opposing viewpoint rational,
    objective, and calm — and above all not to engage in any personal attack (under
    the disingenuous guise of being "constructive").

    I read that last line and remember my mother always using a variation on the "I want to be constructive" theme before prefacing a critique, be it of my housekeeping or my children. I am so sensitive to it–just seeing the printed word makes the hair on my neck stand at mock attention–that I can only assume (hope) I don't visit that particular approach to negative commentary on those I care about–or work with. I'm just putting it out there as another Note to Self–beware the tides of constructive commentary when we go negative, as sometimes we must. That's what the ratio says!

     

    Related articles

    Parenting Adult Children: No one says it's easy–nor do they have to say why it's hard..
    The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio – Bloomberg
    The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio
    Do I Trust You Anymore?

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

    Vacationing with Adult Children: The mini-agonies of togetherness

    "Why do we do it?" This is the question I pose my walking buddy. Why do we invite, look forward to, and lay elaborate plans to have our grown children–and their children–join us for a vacation? I'm asking her because she, like me, admits to having pre-trip anxiety.

    Some of those anxieties revolve around the relationship between our children. Like me, her son and daughter do not live near each other. They see each other at various family events–and only occasionally plan a visit to each other's homes. Her daughter, she says, doesn't have much in commonwith her sister-in-law; ditto son and son-in-law. Though there's good will between the two young families, there isn't a strong bond pulling the families together. The reasons for that can become all-too-clear when everyone's on vacation in a big house on a small lake in an aging town in Vermont.

     

    My friend talks about one regular sore point. Her daughter is not a morning person. That is, mornings don't mean a march out to the mountain for a vigorous hike. They mean an extra hour or so at the breakfast table, flipping through magazines, having a second cup of coffee, letting the kids amuse themselves. Her husband takes himself off to the golf course.

    Her son and hjis wife are early risers who see the morning as the best time to get out into the fresh air and hike, row the boat around the lake, play tennis and ride bikes with their kids.

    My friend says she can feel the tension between the two families–feelings not exactly of disdain but of, well, mutual non-admiration. She can feel her daughter feeling guilty but unrepentent about lingering over coffee and wondering why her brother and family are in such a hurry in the morning. It's vacation, isn't it?

    She can also sense her daughter-in-law's disregard for her daughter's morning routine. There's so much to do, so much energy to expend–time is awasting. How could anyone sit around when the air is so fresh and the outdoor activity so inviting? Shouldn't her niece and nephew be paddling a canoe or playing tennis or doing something invigorating outside?

    It's not a big thing. It's a little nagging worry that my friend has that her daughter might feel resentful; that her son may look down at his sister's "laziness;" that the two of them are never going to be buddies. By extension, does that also mean they won't lean on each other in times of emotional stress? The week together only emphasizes the differences, even as it builds family traditions and mutual experiences. 

    As she sits and watches it, my friend feels her inner aggravation rising–even though there's no one to be angry at or disillusioned with. It's just the reality of the family dynamic. Not bad. Just not all that she could wish it could be. I have a different set of specifics but a similar dynamic. I second the emotion.

    Related articles

    Parenting Adult Children: A special anxiety reserved especially for us
    Holiday Togetherness: Tales of three Thanksgivings before Christmas is upon us
    How To Save On Family Vacations
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  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Grandparenting: Finding a place in the busy lives of our grown children and their children

    What has the grandparenting life come to? We had to make an appointment to telephone Happy Birthday wishes to a 10-year-old grandchild. Okay, it wasn't like a business apppointment but we did have to txt and e-chat to find a moment when the phone would be answerable and the appropriate child available to hear good wishes sent her way.

                                      There is a back story. Of course there is.Our grandchildren have aged out of toddler-hood and preschool–those were the days when we sent balloon bouquets to great huzzahs of excitement on their part. They are now primary and middle-schoolers. There are soccer practices, piano lessons, gymnastic classes, play dates, homework and who knows what else. In the case of Uber son, whose family lives in a city far from ours, those activities–and the coordination of said lessons, practices and playdates–are multiplied times three children and would take an excel sheet to map and execute if my daughter-in-law didn't manage it all in her head.

    The busyness is understandable. Therefore, so is setting a time when there's a break in the child's day and she or he can come to the phone. It's when we finally get through–appointment kept!–that we find  the conversation not very satisfying. It is the end of a long day. The Grand is tired. She has a date with her dad to read a book together before bedtime. She's very polite but we can sense how–well, what a drag this call might be. It was so much easier when air-blow ups of Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty were an option.

     

    So why do we persist with the telephone call? I have been thinking a lot about this. First off, we love our grandchildren. We want to remind them that, though in our case we don't live nearby, we are another set of adults who care deeply about them, that they are very special to us and very special. In short, it's a reminder that we are there for them.

    But there's another part: I think we do it to remind our grown children, whose lives are even busier than their children's are (and certainly than ours are, now that the child rearing is done and our careers are winding down), that we are part of the family–the part that shares the deep and constant love for the most precious aspect of their lives, their children.

    That's as good a reason as any to make the appointment, if that's what it takes to send the message.

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    Grandparenting: A home run with the Grands and the Grown Kids
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  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Emerging Adults: Another view of that hard-to-find-a-job issue

    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 years with respectable or better
    grades. There have been lots of internships–some paid, though at a very low rate–but those only last a year and few of them have led to future employment. Some of the college grads have taken waitering, receptionist or babysitting jobs to earn money, but the struggle to find a foothold in the type of job for which they were educated has been elusive–not non-existent but few and far between. A recent New York Times article's headline said it all: It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job as a File Clerk.

    So it's tough out there–for the young adults and their parents as well. (We also suffer who sit, watch and wait.) But the New York Times Economix blog has another take on the situation–with lots of graphs and charts to give worried parents some insights into the job potential for their college-educated kids and the ultimate value of that college degree.

    Here are some of the high points.

    According to a recent report
    published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the job prospects of new
    college graduates,  the
    graduates of the class of 2011 had an unemployment rate of 14 percent as of October 2011. But
    that number refers to joblessness just a few months after graduation.
    The unemployment rate drops sharply for all recent college graduates in their 20s. It is especially sharp when
    compared with the jobless rate for all high school graduates in the same
    age group.

    Sources: October School Enrollment Supplement, Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics; Thomas Luke Spreen. Sources: October School Enrollment Supplement, Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics; Thomas Luke Spreen.

    The next chart looks at comparable numbers for
    the employment-population ratio, or the share of people within each
    population who have a job (as opposed to being unemployed or not looking
    for work at all).

    Sources: October School Enrollment Supplement, Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics; Thomas Luke Spreen. Sources: October School Enrollment Supplement, Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics; Thomas Luke Spreen.

    So, while many of our college-educated kids are getting jobs well below their education-skill level, they are at least finding work, unlike their less-educated peers.

    "As the economy continues to improve," Catherine Rampell, the NYTimes economic reporter who penned the piece, writes, "those recent college graduates
    will be better situated to find promotions to jobs that do use their
    higher skills and pay better wages."

    From her mouth to the Corporate-God-Who-Hires ear.

    Related articles

    Emerging Adults: When is it time to cut the cord on financial support?
    College Costs: Are your kids getting your money's worth if you help pay the bill?
    Money Matters: There's still a positive ROI in a kid's college education
    Recent college graduates in the U.S. labor force: data from the Current Population Survey
    Rick Haglund: Why is a college education worth it? 3 words: lifetime earning power

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

    Emerging Adults: What to do with the anger when our kids make us mad

    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 her son may 
    remember–not, at this point in time, in a good way, tho it likely will be a funny anecdote some time down the line.

                                                       

    We may have thought that all the anger-inducing struggles with our adolescent kids were a thing of the past–now that they are adults. But they can still press our emotional buttons and make us really, really angry. Especially when they move back home for a while and fail to behave like the independent adults we thought they'd become.

    Not that there's anything wrong with getting angry at them. Anger has an important function. It's part of our "affective awareness system," that is, psychologist Carl Pickhardt points out, it lets us "identify when something significant is happening in our internal or extermal world of experience, something that feels like it deserves our attention."

    So anger isn't the issue. It's the lashing out that's a problem–with especially long-term consequences now that our children are grown and no longer dependents under our control. As Pickhardt points out, "in the heat of the moment it
    can obscure loving feelings causing unloving words or actions to occur."

    Pickhardt recommends that we–as well as our grown kids–learn to, in effect, take a "time out" to cool down, and then talk
    further "when we can choose our words thoughtfully, and
    not emotionally.”

    He  lists characteristics of people who are anger prone to the point of popping off in an unhelpful way:

    –They are highly judgmental and need to be right.

    –They feel strongly entitled and expect to get their way.

    –They take events personally that are not personally meant.

    –They use fresh offenses to revive memories of old grievances.

    –They attack what’s wrong with anger by blaming others when problems arise.

    These apply to both our kids and to us. For us, at this stage of parenting, there's a lot more at stake than there was when our kids were younger. My friend Cathy certainly expected to get her own way when her son was living under her roof again. And, of course, she didn't mean that tap on his door to be a surprising invasion of his privacy. But that little kick probably had a lot of lash-out fueling its power.
    Related articles

    Food for Thought: A lesson from adolescence that carries over to grown children
    Emerging Adults: When is it time to cut the cord on financial support?
    anger
    Anger Management

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

    Emerging Adults: When is it time to cut the cord on financial support?

     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 which brings up the question: Should we help support our struggling young adults and if so, for how long?

                                                      
      

    The question is discussed in a recent column by Carl Pickhardt who writes about adolescence but often about the upper end of a still-turbulent age–the 18 to 23 year olds. Here are some his observations about extending their financial dependence on us:

    –Some of us may "enjoy parenting and don’t want to
    quit or don’t know when to quit or believe a period of older adolescent
    struggle is no time to quit or that a good parent never quits or they
    have an older son or daughter who doesn’t want them to quit."

    –"Just
    as parenthood doesn’t come with a set of directions for how to get
    started, there is no fixed schedule for financial letting go. Thus many
    parents continue their parenting by offering extended help, often of the
    financial kind, until a firm hold on young adult independence is
    finally gained."

    –"What age should young people be expected to live
    dependently at home before leaving and beginning their actual
    independence? There is so much cultural variation. In the United States,
    we seem to have a common parental expectation that after high school
    graduation age, young people should be ready to move off more on their
    own. …The
    point is: there is no universally fixed schedule for when the departure
    from home and the undertaking of full financial independence should
    begin."

    –"In one sense, the young
    person who claims the inability to “afford” to live independently on the
    little money they can make may not exactly be speaking the truth which
    is that they can’t live as comfortably as when living with parents. In
    fact, electing comfort they may be missing out on learning some pretty
    powerful survival skills such as doing without, scraping by on less,
    prioritizing fundamental needs, buying cheap, sticking to a budget,
    making ends meet, living within one’s modest means, and maybe working
    more than one job to get from one week to the next to support a fragile
    independence. So if your son or daughter is up to the hardship, don’t
    automatically jump in and try to spare them the challenge."

    –"You want parental help to foster self-help,
    not discourage it. This is why the helping contract must be
    conditional: 'Before we help you, we need to see efforts (actions, not
    words) of self-help from you first; and once we start helping you, we
    need to see evidence that you are gathering more power of
    independence as you grow.'”

    –"[P]arenting
    is a lasting commitment — to be there for your children whatever their
    age, not only in constant love, but in times of need. Life is an
    unpredictable journey, what Thomas Wolf called “the groping accident of
    life,” where happenstance for good and ill plays a huge role in the
    challenges that arise and must be met. It is a source of security to
    know that membership in family is life-long."

    To end this post on a more mundane note, here's a chart reflecting a study by Pew Research Center on the change since 2005 of the percent of us who are helping to support our young adults.

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