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

Supporting Grown Children: Jobs, the economy and the future for college grads

07/13/2011

Her son is 24, graduate of a good college where he got good grades and behaved well–well, well enough so that nothing shows on his record. Even his Facebook account is 'clean." But finding a job since he's gotten out of school: tough going. He's in that cohort I wrote about in a previous post: From October 2010 through March 2011, 74.4 percent of college graduates under age 25 had jobs but only 45.9 percent of them had jobs that actually required a college degree.

His mom has been warned–by the hostility of his answers–not to ask him how the job hunting is going. But shes' worried. Not just about how long she's going to have to help support him since a minimum wage job, on those occasions when he has landed one, would not pay the rent in even a group house. But the real concern is about the long-term implications: Will it put him in a lower salary bracket than he might have earned had he come out of college when jobs were available; will he lose his zest and enthusiasm for trying hard and let the lassitude of unsuccessful job hunting bring him down.

Kevin Carey, an education writer and policy analyst, did some research that gives fresh perspective on that particular worry. Carey went back and looked at what happened to kids in 1982–young adults who struggled to find jobs in another difficult recession–and wrote about his findings in The New Republic.

Of the "sad cases" described in newspapers in 1982 [cases similar to my friend's son], he found the formerly under- or unemployed thriving. One of them, a Peace Corps alum with a master’s degree in international affairs,had been toiling away at a “mindless” file clerk job. He went on, Casey reports, "to a series of nonprofit management jobs and, by 2010, was a senior research project supervisor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Health." Another "sad case" is "a senior manager at an international development consulting company that works under contract with USAID. Her recent work includes building railroads in cyclone-devastated Madagascar."

They overcame. They suffered under the recession in which they came of age but they made up for it over time. There's nothing good about an economic downturn–and certainly nothing good about one as deep and prolonged as this one has been. So this is a note of hope to my friend who is struggling with the day to day pain of watching her talented and worthy son struggle and fail in a terrible job market. It will get better, and in his lifetime.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Crossing Boundaries: The fine line between helping out a grown child and being intrusive.

07/06/2011

Paterfamlias and I are arguing. To pull or not to pull the weeds. PF wants to sheer them down–they are almost as high as he is. I say, hands off. The reason: the weeds in question sit on a small plot in front of our daughter's home and, for all we know, may not be weeds. We are there, a day ahead of her return from spending a year abroad. The plan is to meet her at the airport–not just her but the dog, the husband, our Grand and a ton of luggage–and help them settle back into their home. But also to make the beds and buy some basic groceries to see them through the first night and morning.

So there we are at her house–some 400 miles from ours. The tenant-for-the-year has departed and left the house clean. So we don't have to worry about that. And yes, if this were our house, those weeds or whatever they are would be pulled or shorn. But it is not our house. We are not the gardeners in charge. And that's what I struggle to remember. We–PF and I–see all kinds of things we want to do to the house–buy new blinds [the tenant left one ripped], a new cloth for the kitchen table [we can't find hers] and the list goes on: a bathroom rug, new towels for the guest bathroom, chairs for the front porch. It's all we can do to contain ourselves. But we must.

To do all we would like to do would be to put our imprint on her house. It would be to forget whose house it is and that it is an implied criticism to go out and make decisions–and take actions–about her house without asking her.

So we resist. The weeds stand tall;the kitchen table, bare. But the next day, when I mention to Alpha daughter that we had almost bought chairs for the front porch, she says, "That would have been nice."

Maybe I'm too busy worrying about being intrusive and not enough just going with the heart and the instinct to be helpful. Still searching for that fine line.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Parenting Grown Children: A grown daughter returns home from abroad

07/02/2011

A year ago, I was filled with the warring emotions of sadness and joy. Joy that Alpha daughter was leaving on a great adventure: She and her family–one of my Grands and my son-in-law–would be living in Berlin for a year. What an opportunity. What an eye-opening challenge for my Grand who was then eight years old.

But sadness: They would be gone for a year–an ocean and many time zones away. As I wrote at the time, I felt the pain in parting. A friend whose daughter lived in Israel with her first grandchild said I could cheer myself up with visits–which I did, one with Paterfamilias and one by myself, which had satisfactions of a very singular kind, as I posted this winter. And then there was Skype and more Skype to make a connection feel like a real drop-in visit.

And now, Alpha Daughter returns in a few days. She'll move back to her house in a city that is only a few hundred miles from us. I am filled with warring emotions again. The joy is in the return–she and her family will be in the same time zone as we are. We still won't be able to drop in whenever we want but visits will be much easier to do and more frequent.

But I feel a sadness as well. The adventure is over. Yes, it was her adventure not mine, but there were vicarious thrills for me: hearing about the friends she made, the colleagues she got to know, the trips to Paris and Prague, the little and big adjustments to life in another city and another language. The fun of learning German sayings. We ended our Skype talks with a cheery 'tschuss' rather than 'bye.'

So there it is. That cheery Tschuss is now a fond and final sigh of 'auf Wiedersehen.'
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The Anxiety Brigade: When does the parental worrying stop?

06/29/2011

They may not live in our houses anymore. They may have families and responsibilities way outside our ken. But we're still their parents. And we're still their children's grandparents.We may not worry about them on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, but there are still times when that old anxiety rises. Since we're usually called on to be the ones who serve by waiting and watching–we're not usually in a position to do anything about what's happening to them–our worry meter can start to run as soon as we smell trouble or a challenge of any kind. A friend's email spells out the complexity of the worries that can storm up in our role as parents of grown up children:

"Last weekend [my son] Marty went to the emergency room in the a.m. with chest pains. Jaycee [his wife] called me to come over and watch the kids [9 and 11 years old] as she would be in the ER with him all day while the doctors did loads of tests. I was taking the kids here and there to their activities and had such anxiety I was operating like a robot. Marty's chest pains turned out to be pleurisy–coming after a really bad chest cold which he is prone to get fairly often. The doctors were able to rule out all other possibilities and pleurisy is very treatable with, of all things, Advil. He is feeling much better now, and he and Jaycee and the kids are on their annual RV trip.

"What absolutely amazed me was how vulnerable I was. I carried the remains of that anxiety the rest of the weekend. Thank God for pills. [My husband] Dave was feeding me Elavil like I was an addict. Apparently the mother-kid thing lasts forever.

"I forgot to mention, that [my granddaughter] Alice tried out to become part of a dance company at a local dance academy where they choose kids to be part of a troupe that enters competitions and does recitals. She loves jazz and ballet and is quite good. So I took her to the tryout since Jaycee was at the ER room with Mike. She would find out the following Monday if she made it. Bottom line is, she did get in. But let me tell you, the anxiety over whether she would or not was the same as when I thought poor Marty might be having a heart attack."
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Money Matters: A graduation gift that keeps giving

06/24/2011

Let us now praise our college grads. Grown ups at last. Let's not minimize their accomplishment. They may have had their wild moments on campus, but they've made it through at least four years of academic rigor, learned something and matured.

Some of us want–and can afford–to reward that accomplishment with a gift that will give them a lift or leg up the ladder of life. Some parents deposit a check in a bank account. Some buy their college grads a car. Those thinking really big have come up with an even greater gift: an apartment.

For the parents whose children are moving to a big city, it's a two-fer. They give a gift and they rest easy, knowing their child is living in a safe place. For others, the gift of an apartment–which alleviates the need [or cuts the cost] for their child to pay rent or make mortgage payments–frees their child to take that nonprofit, do-good job that they couldn't otherwise afford to take. Or to take their time job hunting for the right slot. Whatever the reason, the New York Times reports that New York City realtors, in particular, are seeing a surge in such gifts–from native New Yorkers as well as parents from other parts of the country whose children are heading for a bite out of the Big Apple. For the latter, the apartment is part gift to themselves–it's potential pied-à-terre when the child decides to move on or it can be a place to crash when they come to the city to visit.

A condo can be a straight-out gift, sweetened by the current generous tax exclusion. Or it can be an investment in which the parents retain ownership.

No good gift goes without rules to consider. Do the parents have a right to stay there or drop in whenever they want? Who pays for maintenance? Who makes the profit when the unit is sold? One simple scenario: the parents buy and keep the apartment in their name and agree to pay the monthly carrying costs. The grown child lives there as a family member, not a renter.

And of course: We, the parents, are always welcome.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
Supporting Grown Children: The story in stats

06/20/2011
While many of us came of age without financial help from our parents, that has not been the case for the past generation or two. Many of us have been helping our kids pay off their college debt, buy cars, put a downpayment on a first home. For the most part, it's been a way to share our good fortune with them–to cushion the first few years of career-building or to give them a boost until they come into their own. But with the Great Recession, that helping hand has taken on a new width and depth.

Here's the toll the Great Recession is taking, according to a study this spring by the National Endowment for Financial Education and Forbes.com:

–59 percent of parents are still providing financial support to their adult children who are not students, many of whom are living at the family home–either they were never able to leave or they have had to return.

–50 percent of the parental support is for housing; 48 percent for living expenses and 41 percent for transportation.

–75 percent of grown children living at home say they are helping to defray their parent's costs, with 52 percent chipping in toward food expenses, 34 percent helping with utilities, 31 percent putting gas in the family car and 29 percent helping with the rent or mortgage.
–43 percent of parents say they are supporting their kids because they are legitimately concerned with their child's financial well-being; 37 percent do not want to see their children struggle the way they had had to; and 32 percent say their children are worse off than they were when they left home.

"Parents are continuing their [financial] involvement longer than we expected," Ted Beck,the president of NEFE, said. "The general sentiment is that financial pressures are higher for this generation."

Here's a nifty chart on where the parental support goes:
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grandparenting: The legacy of the soccer pitch.

06/16/2011

Hello soccer moms and dads out there. Or, rather, soccer grammies and grandpops. If it's spring, here we are again, out at the soccer pitch, only this time we're watching our grandkids swarm the ball, miss a kick, pick daisies, then suddenly, dribble down the field and score a goal. We went through this with our children when they were young and now we get to do it again–with these caveats.

We have been warned [and I use the "'we" both literally and figuratively] not to shout at games, not to coach our grandkids from the sidelines, not to be critical of their play after the game, not to rob them of the joy that participation brings. In short, keep our competitiveness in check and remember who's the parent and how those parents are choosing to handle this rite of passage in their child's life.

Along with those admonitions, though, there is a special bond in passing a sport or art–be it piano, acting, painting or anything else–down to our kids and then on to their kids. We are there to share the excitement and–given our vast past experience–understand the nuances of accomplishments small and large. For those of us who live far away from our grown children, we find that they take time from their busy lives to send us photos of special moments [see above: a grandson executing a move he has been practicing]. It comes with an email detailing the excitement of the parent. After all, who can he share it with? His parents (or more precisely, paterfamilias, his former coach), who have been there when he was just a kid and struggling to learn the finer points of the game. We are there now in spirit and consultation as his son and his daughters go out on the soccer pitch and learn to play as a team.

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

Money Matters: Who pays for what on vacation?

06/13/2011

His son-in-law proposed the idea: The two couples–the daughter and her husband, the father and mother–plus another daughter would go on a short vacation together. They would rent rooms at a resort they all liked. Each one would pay for their own room and each night, one of them would be responsible for dinner–whether it was ordering pizza, buying food for a picnic or going out to a restaurant. Great idea. The son-in-law even took responsibility for figuring out when everyone would be available and for booking the rooms.

Then came the vacation. Unfortunately, in between the planning and the date, the son-in-law was accepted into a grad school course where he had been wait-listed, which meant he was tied up for the first part of the vacation.

And that changed the dynamics of the trip. One room was canceled until the son-in-law could arrive. The two sisters bunked in with each other. "Softie that I am," dad says he paid for that room. He also didn't have the heart to ask his daughters to pay for dinners. He picked those up, too. When his son-in-law showed up, he let him cater the pizza party.

It's a fine balance. When the best made plans go awry, the softie in us rises. The Dad enjoyed being away with his grown daughters–he hadn't vacationed with them since they graduated from high school. He'd like to do it again. The unplanned expense? Well, it didn't break the bank, and he doesn't feel it set a precedent for future trips.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
Grandparenting: The sin of interfering in our grandchildren’s upbringing

06/10/2011
"So our first grandparenting challenge is how to be involved in grandchildren's lives, without committing the grandparenting sin of interfering."

That's one of the opening lines in an English study on 21st century grandparenting. Based on 46 in-depth interviews of English grandparents, the University of Manchester study comes to the conclusion that most grandparents feel that interfering means they aren't being a good parent or grandparent. The study summed up the grandparents' opinion this way: "Grandchildren might be confused if they get mixed messages from parents and grandparents, and they might question their parents' authority."

Yes, we here in the U.S. don't want to be guilty of the mixed message, either. But what makes not interfering a challenge, according to the study, "is that grandparents naturally want the younger generations of their family to turn out well which can make it hard for them to stand back if they disagree with how their grandchildren are brought up."

So true. The stakes are high. And we know the parent is the disciplinarian-in-chief. and yet, it takes a saint–or a very evolved grandparent–to hew single-mindedly to the non-interference track. So hard to see the right path and not share that wisdom.

But even among the English grandparents in the study, there are times when they found it appropriate to interfere: if they thought that grandchildren were being brought up in a way that could cause long-term damage, or if the parents were divorcing or splitting up and needed more support.

And if their grown children ask them for advice? "In this case," the study says, "interfering is more likely to be described as offering support."

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

Supporting Grown Children: The job market they face

06/06/2011

Consider this an addendum to my last post about the frustrations parents of grown children feel when their newly minted college grads can't land a job– any job, no less one for which those college years prepared them. The generation has won such unattractive terms as The Lazy Generation and Generation of Slackers. And why not: there they sit, living at home with mom and dad and not seeming to lift a finger to get a job. Or so it seems.

But not to economists, who have a little more sympathy for the crowds of kids getting out of college but not into the kind of job they would ordinarily merit.

Here's the New York Times' Charlotte Rampell taking note of the job market for recent college grads, based on data from the labor economist Andrew Sum. From October 2010 through March 2011, 74.4 percent of college graduates under age 25 had jobs but only 45.9 percent of them had jobs that actually required a college degree. The rest of this group were bar tending or waiting on tables, looking for work, or out of the labor force altogether–perhaps because they were back in school.

Sound like anything that's happening around your once-empty nest? Rampell goes on to compare today's numbers to those from a decade ago. It's quite a shocker.

Andrew Sum; Bureau of Labor Statistics

Source: Andrew Sum; Bureau of Labor Statistics Numbers for 2010 refer to January through October of that year.

Rampell's bottom line: "The damage this recession will do to these young people may be permanent, too. Starting one’s career in a lower-quality job or one with low pay places workers on a worse pay trajectory for years to come, as research from Columbia’s Till von Wachter (among others) has shown."

We may need to shower our "slackers" with a little tough love–but a little tough understanding, too. And this little reminder from an observer of human nature: When the economy is bad, we (the older generations) tend to blame young people when they can't find a job.