
Most Americans Say Parents Do Too Much for Their Young Adult Children - benryon
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/10/23/majority-of-americans-say-parents-are-doing-too-much-for-their-young-adult-children/
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anon1m0us
> most Americans (64%) think young adults should reach [financial
> independence] by the time they are 22 years old... Census Bureau data finds
> that, in 2018, 24% of young adults were financially independent by age 22 or
> younger, compared with 32% in 1980

This divergence is symptomatic of a broken society. It's easier to divide a
bigger pie. The pie was bigger in 1980 and now we are dividing up the crumbs,
so it's harder to get enough.

Parents helping their children longer in life is really the only solution.
It's basically like, those who achieved financial independence in 1980 did so
by taking from future generations, their own children, and are now being
chastised for giving some of it back.

It's nonsensical to admonish parents for helping their children overcome the
burdens society has placed on future generations by having already taken too
much from the planet.

Let's just look at the burdens:

    
    
      College education costs are soaring
      Housing costs are soaring
      Healthcare costs are soaring
      Jobs are diminishing
      Salaries are flat
    

Of _course_ parents have to help their children longer.

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seemssilly
At the age of 28, I still receive help from my mother. She buys me food
periodically and has given me well over $1500 this year to help survive.

That being said, I grew up in an abusive household, followed up by one that
was incredibly unstable. I was incarcerated from most 16-21, with very little
time out in the real world during that time.

Another person responding to this mentioned that parents "either pay for it
now or later."

I find that to be incredibly true. I think that my mother helps me so much now
because she sees how much I've struggled and how some of that struggle is
inevitably due to her choices. I don't blame her, but(and this may sound
incredibly entitled to some)I don't think she has too much of a right to throw
me to the wolves so to speak. I can't remember a time I've been stable outside
of the past 2-3 years and even now, I'm actively using IV opiates. A large
chunk of my life seemed very much outside of my hands at a younger age and I
don't necessarily know how much more I could've done for myself other than get
to the point I'm at now.

I think a lot of people are messed up and need a lot of help. I think that if
you make the decision to bring someone into this world, you don't stop being
responsible for them after an arbitrary amount of rotations around the sun.

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DGAP
I'm pretty sure 90% of my friends and peers in the 21 - 25 cohort receive
financial help from their parents. This is due to the fact that they're either
still in school, which is increasingly expensive, or that they can't find
full-time jobs in their chosen fields, or that they've chosen to live at home
to save money.

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jakelazaroff
The past 30 years have been marked by the Great Recession, rising inequality
and stagnant wages. What a surprise that the current young adult generation
needs more financial help than their forebears!

~~~
refurb
As opposed to say the prior generations who lived through the Great
Depression, WW2, the decade long stagflation of the 70’s.

We like to think we do, but we don’t live in unique times.

~~~
seemssilly
I would've loved to go to college and buy a home during those time periods.
Please don't act like it's the same as nowadays. Sure, there were struggles
but the dollar was simply worth much more, education was much cheaper, and a
house cost way less than it does now.

~~~
halleonard
Not to mention healthcare costs!

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dangle1
As a parent of a 24 year old, it's easy for me to see how it can be hard to
determine when it's time for your child to become financially independent.

Our decision making was made easy by a child who happily entered our least
expensive state school, didn't mind living with us during school, and interned
while in college straight into a stable job/career the day after graduation.

In rocketry terms, we had a good main engine burn to put him in GTO, now he's
the ignited second stage, and we had a nominal launch.

Subtract any of the above (ideal) values, and I can see how a parent/child
group can devolve into a possibly unhealthy situation.

Even with a plan for independence, the vagaries of life can easily lead the
parties to want to alter the deal in light of adverse events.

~~~
leetcrew
sounds like you did a good job with yours. I'm 26 now and had a very similar
path to independence.

provided the family can afford it, I think it's perfectly reasonable to help
your offspring with stuff like food, clothing, and housing until they start
making enough money that they can reasonably handle it themselves. my parents
supported me enough that I never had to worry about making ends meet for
essentials on top of my coursework, but it was modest enough that I was able
to increase my standard of living quite a bit when I got my first full-time
job and became independent.

I knew a couple people at college that would get $1000+ deposited in their
account at the beginning of every month. they had a meal plan and a dorm on
campus so this was just straight disposable cash. those kids had a really hard
time adjusting to life after graduation. I honestly doubt they're actually
independent (financially) even now.

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musgrove
As the parent of a four-year-old, I'm especially aware of what's happening
among parents and children. And as a 50-year old, I've seen several
generations grow up. What this situation involves is: pay now, or pay later.
Doing everything you can and giving your child 100% when they're young and
growing and learning is the time to teach them to be independent and
confident. Not when they're 20+ years old. It's too late; you missed the
train. And what parents say they do vs. what they do in reality is quite
different. I watch it at playgrounds, kids' events, and each time I go with my
daughter to a place with a lot of kids and their parents. The parents likely
are looking at their phones or talking to one another, taking a "break" from
parenting. I see parents bring their little kids to playgrounds, and they'll
stay in their cars, and let the kids go run around with the playground and
want me to push them in the swings and play with them, because their parents
are in the car on their phone, smoking weed, listening to music, or just
"taking a break." I see it all the time. And if that's the encouragement and
attention they're giving them in public, it's likely even less back at home.
But when they grow up to be helpless and have no coping skills and all the
rest of the many characteristics that need to be instilled into a human to be
a successfull adult, they scratch their heads and ask "what went wrong?" And
usually try ot find fault with society, government, or some external factor
that's responsible. They blew it.

~~~
Negitivefrags
So you are saying that the problem with young adults not being independent
enough is that they were too independent of their parents as a child?

That doesn't sound right to me.

~~~
atroche
It might be that the skills involved in being independent (e.g. good habits
around money / food / exercise / socialising / working) don't just come
naturally but need to be inculcated from an early age at the cost of
significant parental investment.

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crawfordcomeaux
Most Americans don't know what humans need to thrive, believe in Independence
over interdependence, and think denying children their needs is what's
necessary.

My mother in law thinks we're raising a self-centered child because we
immediately meet their needs. She's ignorant of trauma and the effects her
parenting style had on my partner. She's only now learning about body
autonomy. We had to ask her not to make our child the butt of jokes,
especially those that play on our kid's lack of understanding or difficulty
communicating clearly.

Our child only just turned one. I'm pretty sure the grandma who insists on
investing in Bitcoin despite its environmental impact to further her own
wealth is projecting a lot of nonsense.

That's what happens when someone raises a child to deny reality and believe in
their own projected judgments: you get a confused old person who is
unintentionally advising others to harm children by denying their needs.

There is nothing new to me about how she thinks. It's the norm for almost all
the adults I grew up around.

~~~
halleonard
> Our child only just turned one. I'm pretty sure the grandma who insists on
> investing in Bitcoin despite its environmental impact to further her own
> wealth is projecting a lot of nonsense.

How does this relate to your point about parenting?

~~~
danaris
I suspect it's intended to speak to self-centeredness.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
Right. Her perspective has no basis in the reality of our family. She has no
evidence for it aside from old notions of "spoiling" children by giving them
what they need, which she conflates with extraneous desires.

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fzeroracer
I mean, I wasn't financially independent from my family until I was 25. Living
with my parents for free and using the savings to afford college was the only
reason why I was able to get a college education and become a developer.

I think the idea of kicking people out the moment they hit 18 isn't realistic
anymore. Wages are not even high enough to be self-sufficient, let alone
afford college without taking out exorbitant loans. Most of my college
experience was spending hours past-class completing projects and doing
extensive homework, so fitting in a job along with taking care of my disabled
parents and trying to manage depression would've been a herculean effort. I
already had to sacrifice quite a bit of my personal health in order to gamble
on my college education leading to a good career.

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MagnumPIG
Am I the only one to notice the questions in the graph don't have a logical
correlation? If you translate them, most _older_ adults think most _younger_
adults should be independant, while most _younger_ adults aren't.

This is just the complicated version of "youths are lazy". I find it
intellectually dishonest to put the two questions in the same graph, as if one
generations expectations _should logically_ influence or be informed by the
other's actions.

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Animats
Middle-class parents are desperately trying to obtain a middle-class life for
their kids, in the face of a shrinking middle class. Many of them will fail.
They'll blame themselves, or their kids.

Some of the kids are on the track from career to job to gig to homelessness.
Or jail.

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journalctl
Maybe those same people shouldn’t have voted for politicians who gutted public
education and unions and made it impossible to build housing near any
desirable jobs.

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itronitron
I actually think most twenty-somethings should live with their parents as I
believe that is a particularly perilous age range.

~~~
leetcrew
I don't know about that. I lived with my parents through most of college and
commuted 20 miles to campus. it made a lot of sense financially, but you
definitely miss stuff commuting.

students who live on campus tend to make plans very spontaneously just based
on who's around. I would often get invited to do stuff fifteen minutes before
driving home, and I would decline a lot of the time since I knew my parents
were already halfway through making dinner. it's hard to have full agency in
your social life when you live with your parents.

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Spooky23
In other news, old man shakes fist at cloud!

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mileycyrusXOXO
Americans have a very weak sense of family. We think our children should be
independent the moment they turn 18 and then put our parents in homes instead
of taking care of them ourselves.

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sys_64738
If you're in your mid-20s and still get help from your parents then you really
need to figure out what's going wrong. A parent's responsibility is to give a
child the tools to succeed on their own as soon as possible. But most people
are lousy parents who think their method doesn't suck and those flaws survive
from generation to generation.

~~~
antisthenes
Turns out the tools to succeed are just called _money_.

I hate to post low content but 'surprise_pikachu.jpg'

