Parenting Grown Children: What Dr. Spock Forgot to Tell Us

Money Matters: The long arm of parents who help their kids.

"We are spending so much money on our kids," a friend tells me. "They need to be rescued every once in a while."

The kids in question are hers from her first marriage and his from his first marriage. One of her sons went through a painful and devastating divorce, including court battles over child custody and support. He lost his job. My friend, her husband, her other son, the father of her son and an uncle all pitched in to help the divorced son. It took several years before he was back on his feet. And now his eldest son--one of my friend's three grandchildren--was ready for college. He had to choose not the best school he got into but the least expensive one. My friend and her husband dipped into their retirement savings to pay tuition--her son couldn't afford it and neither the ex-wife nor her parents (the other grandparents) were willing to help out.

My friend could live with the choice of the lesser school. That's life. It made her angry that the other grandparents weren't willing to help. That's life, too, but more emotional, verging as it does on fairness.

Now, she's got another financial anxiety: Her stepson--a man in his late 40s--has always been self supporting and single. And has always been shy around women. So, when he started dating a woman his age and then announced he was getting married, everyone was thrilled. But the new wife came with old and huge debts from her life with a former boyfriend. The new husband is helping his wife pay off those I.O.U.s--the credit card debt keeps compounding like crazy--and now everyone's helping out. It's another drain on my friend's dwindling retirement resources.  

"It never ends," she says. "It seems like one of our kids is always having a money crisis." A few years ago--just before he retired--my friend's husband paid off the mortgage on their house. "So we are lucky," she says. "What would we do--how could we help our kids--if we had a $2,000 a month mortgage payment to meet?" It also raises the question of how long you help out your grown kids. When does the rescue line end? And maybe even more to the point: How do you define crisis?

Does it help to know she--and by extension we--are not alone? The Brits are experiencing similar pressures. Here's a news story I just came across. In Great Britain, "millions of grandparents are cutting back their spending because they feel under pressure to fund their grandchildren." Research also found that the majority of grandparents regularly spent cash from their retirement savings on clothing, toys and other treats for their grandchildren. Others helped pay for essentials, such as shoes and school uniforms, to help their own children balance their finances.

Here was a key finding that hit home: "Although some children did ask their parents for financial help, much of the pressure to provide for grandchildren comes from the grandparents themselves." 

Re-filing the Nest: An economist looks at the phenomenon

While families struggle with the financial and emotional impact of having grown children move back home--and take up residence in their old bedroom--there are some interesting macroeconomic effects.

Here's how a Mark Thoma, a well-respected economist, blogged about the implications of re-nesting. First he looks at a phenomenon he calls "Family as insurance:"

The parental home as unemployment insurance

"It is well known that in Spain and especially Italy, people in their twenties and even thirties stay with their parents until they find a job, and they often wait for the "perfect" job. This looks like an unemployment insurance with infinite duration with substantial moral hazard, which has lead to sky high youth unemployment rates in Europe.

Greg Kaplan is documenting that something similar is happening in the United States. ...many of those who do not attend college return home during unemployment spells, much like college students return home over the Summer. This analysis is very nicely done with an estimated structural model that features a repeated game between children and altruistic parents. In particular, this allows us to understand why the savings rate of young people is so low. As they have the option of returning to their parents, they see no need to build up any precautionary savings. This means also that programs like unemployment insurance have little impact for them."

Then Thoma comes up with his kicker: "Just thinking of all things parents do to provide the insurance, yet minimize the moral hazard problem. The last place I would have wanted to live at that age was with my parents, and I'm pretty sure the feeling was mutual."

Health Coverage: Even if they're married, you can help.

Maybe it's because it was such a sore point for paterfamilias and me: When our children graduated from college and set forth to various parts of the country to figure out what to do with their lives, neither of them figured they needed health insurance. Never thought about it. We, of course, did, and we had to scour plans in the states where they had wandered to find catastrophic coverage for them--to make sure that if something terrible happened, a doctor and hospital wherever they were would take them in and that we wouldn't be stripped of our assets when the bills came due.

I blogged about this a while ago. The big news then was that a few states were allowing parents to keep their grown kids on their health insurance policies until those kids were 25 or 26 years old. Now, it's easier. The health reform law that finally inched and sighed and crept through Congress and onto President Obama's desk this year has important provisions for parents of young adult children. Not only can we keep our adult children on our health insurance plan until those children are 26, we can keep them there even if the kids get married. However, if your child's employer decides to offer coverage, all bets are off--your child can no longer stay on your policy.

The other news? Some states are expanding that age-of-coverage to 30. Given the current employment picture--hard to find a job; growing trend toward contract work, which doesn't offer health coverage--that could be invaluable.

Boomerangers Move Back In: The New Yorker cover says it all

A picture is worth a 1,000-word posting. Amidst the joy and celebration of graduation time, the May 24 New Yorker cover has a message for all whose grown children are heading home after getting their higher-ed degrees. There he stands, the returning son, hanging his PhD diploma on the wall of his childhood bedroom wall--right near the rock n' roll poster and sports trophy. Note in lower left corner, the suitcase and in lower right, the box of college paraphernalia. While the magazine usually comes up with an archly clever title for its cover art, this one leans more to the simple and direct: "Boomerang Graduation."

Well, for those going through it, the cover art makes it clear: You are not alone. So does the Shouts & Murmurs column, "Your New College Graduate: A Parents' Guide"  Here's an excerpt:

"How do I teach my college graduate independence?

Good question! Experts have differing opinions on the subject. Some suggest a “firm” approach: assigning housework, banning marijuana, requesting politeness, etc. Others suggest a “liberal” approach: cooking and cleaning for them, praising their “poems,” etc. Unfortunately, neither approach works."

The Big Hurt: When our grown children won't talk to us

It's the great What If and the core fear of parents of adult children: What If our grown children cut us off--wouldn't answer our phone calls, emails or letters? Just wanted to have nothing to do with us?

This traumatic issue is not something I've dealt with in this blog--it's too deep for someone without therapeutic training. But there was a piece in the New YorkTimes recently that explored the issue briefly and relied on the wisdom of Joshua Coleman, a psychologist who has been through the trauma himself. The estrangement, Coleman says, appears to be happening more often, even among families where there has been no obvious cruelty or cause such as drug abuse or addiction. "This is not a story of parents who have made egregious mistakes," he says. "It's about parents who were good parents, who made mistakes that were certainly within normal limits."

If you're suffering through this trauma, check out some of the Web sites of professionals like Coleman--there are also a number of online chat rooms devoted to the subject--and take heart: Time and patience, persistent effort and small contacts, can pay off. That is how, Coleman reports, he was able to slowly repair his relationship with his daughter.

Missing the Kids: Grown children move away but are not forgotten

For those of us of a certain age--especially those of us whose children have grown up enough to leave the nest--there are some pithy, witty and heart wrenching observations of our condition in a new book,The Three Weissmans of Westport.

The book is not about empty nesters--though one of the characters, Annie, is one. It does, however, have a lot to say about that empty feeling, and the author, Cathleen Schine, manages to offer insights with words that fly along the page--even while they point a dagger at the heart. Take this one, describing Annie's sadness--she's a 50-ish single-mom--that her grown sons could not come home for the Christmas holiday, which she was spending with her mother and sister.

"For the first time that she could remember, Annie felt alone, truly and desperately alone. Even when her husband had disappeared and she had been left to fend for herself with two little boys, there had been the two little boys. Now they were gone, too. They loved her and called her and sent her e-mails and would still snuggle up to her to be petted when they were in the mood, but they were men, and though they would always be at the center of her life, she was no longer at the center of theirs."