Parents could just charge their children for the security services, housing, financial assistance, meal preparation, vacation planning, party planning services, etc.
Then when the child came of age it could make student debt look like a rounding error.
In the traditional model of society, that's exactly what happened. A major reason people raised children was that children were obligated to support their parents when the parents grew old.
In the 夷堅志, a collection of fables from 12th-century China, there is a whole large genre of stories like the following:
- A man was wealthy, but refused to support his parents in their old age. The man was struck by lightning and died.
- A man who didn't listen to his mother or support her in her old age died, and he was sentenced to hell.
- An official who was traveling home to pick up his mother to bring her with him to the city was attacked by a tiger. He begged with the tiger for his life, saying he needed to support his mother. The tiger knew that his intentions were good, and left without eating him. Later, when the man's mother died [no longer needing support], the tiger came back and ate him.
A lot of the stories in that book are alien to us, but the message in these is pretty clear.
Then when the child came of age it could make student debt look like a rounding error.