By Glyndora Condon MS MFT LPC speaking to parents of adult children.
Parents are not responsible to house, protect, and financially support adult children unlike the trends of this culture are rendering. The hardest for these later generations of this culture is to be financially independent of parental support. Many tend to believe that parents owe them their lifestyle of their choosing or of what they were accustomed to at home when a child. Adult children seem to not be willing to live within their means, learn to budget, have the prudence to save, or the ability of delayed gratification and have poor money management skills. Often adult children also feel that working day end and day out-is simply too hard and a waste of their energy which is best suited for fun, party, games, and like.
More parents have their adult children and even grandchildren in their homes or are paying for them to live elsewhere while also providing free babysitting services as their adult children squander and mismanage time and money that they make. Some adult children are attempting to get their education and be more independent yet somehow still expect their parents to share in their expenses and support.
The parents of adult children often become disconnected from their own interests, spouses, needs, or wants that they had worked hard for-as they are shamed into continued support. Parents are responsible prior to adulthood to teach these life skills and many others prior to their children's adulthood however; are to be able to prepare them and help them to leave the nest and embark upon their adulthood. This does mean that parents have to apply boundaries and allow the children to learn to be self reliant and responsible in order for them to mature. Children will make mistakes with mismanagement which can teach them to be more prudent if they experience the consequence without the interference or enabling of the parents.
This is how they learned to walk...to complete their education, ...to learn how to discern who to be a friend to,...and now...how to be an adult cognitively, emotionally, financially, and like...but Parents cannot continue supporting them yet grumble of being used when their children are not allowed to experience natural consequences (however harsh they are) so as to grow up.
