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

Telling it like it was about the workplace when we started our careers.

 

artist: Raphael Kirchner

 I've started to write a memoirist take on My Brilliant Career, Part One: The Mad Men Years.

My first job out of college was with Time Inc. This was back in the day when women could not be--were not allowed to be--writers or editors for the magazine. They could be fact checker/researchers or letters correspondents (which I was; I answered a chunk of the thousands of letters a week written to Time by its readers). Researcher was the premium job for ambitious women--one could rise to be chief assistant to and then chief of researchers. Until that happy day, researchers were allotted offices that backed onto the elevator shaft and fronted a dark hallway. The editors and writers had offices with big picture windows that wrapped around the building and took in New York City's Sixth Avenue and the skyline beyond. Each section of the magazine held weekly story meetings to which researchers and letters correspondents were invited. The writers and editors in that section would hash over which news developments deserved Time's fuller (and possibly snarkier) coverage while some of the bigger brains in the room had to sit there mute.

At a time when Jill Abramson's sudden firing as editor of the New York Times reminds us of how far we in journalism still have to go, I feel compelled to share with my Grands and adult children how far we've come, even if we're not there yet.

I spent five years at Time and was no longer around when women were finally promoted to be or hired as writers. I had lunch the other day with a friend who also worked a stint at Time early in her career. What times we lived through--and managed to survive and go forth to prosper. How important it is to share this with our very own up-and-comers.

Emerging Adults: To help or not to helicopter-help their job search

A friend's frustration at her son's job search boiled over one day. He had graduated from college six months ago--good grades, outstanding language skills--but still had no interview nibbles. She had been pushing him to apply for this, apply for that--even called friends for leads. He didn't seem to appreciate her "helicopter" style help. Nor had it produced anything. "I wish," she said, "I could just pay someone to hire him for the year."

That was three years ago, in the heat of the Great Recession. (As this NextAve story suggests, others wanted to go or went further than my friend's wishful thinking.) Are things better in the job market now? Are we better at keeping our distance? Do our kids want our help or not?

A recent survey by Adecco suggests that job-hunt-wise, things are looking up: 65 percent of employed youths (18-24) found jobs within six months; of those unemployed and still looking, only 6 percent said the search had been going on for a year or more. That's progress.

As to whether they want our help (helicopter-style or otherwise), 62 percent say they keep their parents at arms length during the job search. The 38 percent who do welcome a little help from home want us to use our network to find them job opportunities. Also on the list of the kinds of help they like from their parents: rehearsing them for interviews (12 percent) and checking over their resumes (9 percent). There were even a few--4 percent--who wanted their parents to go to their job interviews with them, but to wait outside. One can only wonder at the job prospects of job applicants (1 percent) who want their parents to be part of the live interview. 

On her blog Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan looks at some of the same stats and comes up with an 8-point list of "acceptable" things a parent can do to help a child during this first big job search--things like proofreading resumes and correspondence, brainstorming, researching opportunities and passing on to them connections they might use.

As for my friend's son, a neighbor and friend finally produced a lead for a one-year contract for a data-entry job. He got the job (in the neighbor's agency) and performed so well that the contract was extended and his duties expanded, until he eventually left for graduate school. Job well done--by both of them.

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Emerging Adults: Calling a halt to the helicopter parenting

Why You Should Help Your Kid Get a Job

Dads: The Antidote to Helicopter Parenting

Emerging Adults: When is it time to cut the cord on financial support?

Money Matters: The burden of student debt takes its toll

A friend's son has gotten into the grad school program of his choice. He's not only heading for Budapest to study international economics, he's been offered an 80 percent discount on tuition. He's asked his parents to pay for that remaining 20 percent. They've said no. "We can't afford it right now," says my friend, who told her son to borrow the money. "He doesn't want to," she adds. "He's really scared about going into debt."

He may have to borrow but who can blame him about wanting to avoid student loans. A recent Pew Research Center report finds  student debt burdens "weighing on the economic fortunes of younger Americans, as households headed by young adults owing student debt lag far behind their peers in terms of wealth accumulation."

Here are some stats that my friend might not want her son to dwell on: Four out of every ten U.S. households headed by an adult younger than 40 currently have some student debt—the highest share on record, with the median outstanding student debt load standing at about $13,000. The median loan is equal to about two years’ worth of household income.

Meanwhile, households headed by a young, college-educated adult without any student debt obligations have about seven times the typical net worth ($64,700) of households headed by a young, college-educated adult with student debt ($8,700).

Then there's a new report from the Brookings Institution with some variations on the same theme: between 1989 and 2010, the share of households with student loans jumped from 9 to 19 percent, and inflation-adjusted median student debt rose by more than 50 percent. Put in another perspective, by the end of 2009, student debt eclipsed credit card debt as the second-largest type of debt owed by American households, after mortgages.

As to my friend and her son, she hasn't told him yet, but she and his father plan to help him out with repayments when that part of the loan contract clicks in. He's on his own in paying for grad school, but not completely.

 

Related articles

Emerging Adults: Putting the burden of student loans in perspective

Emerging Adults: Their burdens are bigger than ours were at their age

Young Adults, Student Debt and Economic Well-Being

Student Debt Is Creating A Wealth Gap Among Young Adults (CHARTS)

College grads in deeper debt than nongrads

College debt is still keeping grads from buying homes

Pew: Student loans often mean more overall debt

Leaving a Legacy: Cleaning out our closets before our kids have to do it for us

 

When I think about leaving a legacy for my children, it usually deals with two steps. One is the material--who'll get what treasure; how much of our "nest egg" will be left for them to share and how will we dole out the shares among our grandchildren. The second step is the ways or means for leaving our children and grandchildren a sense of the life we led: what we did of significance or interest; how we want them to remember us.

My thoughts don't usually run to what I now think of as the third step: Downsizing or what is also known as clearing out the closets, garage, attic, basement or any other place we've stored memories and trinkets and other items that are not likely to be of any use to our children. I've got glassware from my mother-in-law that I've never used and my children are not likely to set on their tables. Nor will either of my children want the lovely gold-rimmed 18-place settings of china that were my mother's pride and joy. Or the silver trays or hand-painted tea cups lovingly collected by my parent's generation and anathema to my children's. E-Bay is overrun with the stuff. So are my closets.

There are also drawers full of mementos, from my brother's grade-school report card to my daughter's first illustrated story [grade 3] to charming notes my mother-in-law wrote to me on various occasions. Some of these perishable items need to be digitized into a family memory bank, but some need to be tossed.

The clearing out of closets has been on my mind--well, more on a list of 'things to do someday.' But a recent post on Dr. Kathy McCoy's blog reminded me that acting on this third step is as much a gift to my grown children as the hand-crafted Tuscan bowl or my mother's silver urn. For my children, it would be an exhausting and sad business to clear out my home when Paterfamilias and I have passed on. They may wonder why we kept those old ski boots (circa 1990) or the mold-encrusted tennis rackets.) It will be equally exhausting for us to do our storage places ourselves--but we can pace ourselves (it doesn't have to be done in one day; Kathy McCoy has been doing one space per Saturday) and make rational decisions about what to keep and what to heave; what to save in its paper form and what to scan into our computer--or at least collect in an orderly way for others to scan. A job that would be a sad business for our grown children could be an upbeat trip down memory lane for us. At least that's the attitude-adjustment I'm acting on.

Related articles

Reader's Report: Ray Bradbury's insight on legacies applies to what we leave behind for our grown children.

Money Matters: Slicing and dicing the financial legacy for your grown children

Money Matters: When to shut--or open--the Bank of Dad

   

A friend, whose children are nearing the 30-years-old mark, writes:

  "I just had an interesting conversation with a smart guy who was talking about the 'Bank of Dad.' His kids are "self-supporting," in their mid-30s, making (his words) 'in six figures,' and yet come to him for help on a regular basis. For example, they go to Japan a couple of times a year, a trip that necessitates a visit to DaddyBank. 

My question is this: When does it stop? Unless the parents are seriously wealthy, doesn't there come a time when the parent's ability to fly first class or have the foolishly expensive appetizer outweigh the childrens' ability to take an extra trip or buy a nicer house or a better car, or even to send their kids to the swankiest private school (which, I think falls into a different category--education, in general does, in my mind).

 

What expense do adult children incur that is clearly worth parents making sacrifices, even major ones. I'm thinking of a spectrum. There's no amount I wouldn't spend if it was of benefit to my kids' health (or their kids, etc.). And if they asked for it (so far they have not), education would be something I'd make a reach for. But a trip to DisneyWorld (unless we were there, and hosting) is somewhere further along the spectrum. And dinners out, nicer than the ones I feel we can afford, are at the other extreme.

 

This is just musing. Our children have used us only for trips back and forth from L.A. [where the writer's son lives] to NYC [where the writer lives], which I placidly identify as money spent for my own pleasure--a visit that couldn't happen otherwise. Our daughter hasn't come to us for anything, including her plans for a master's degree, which she calculates she can self-support."

 

So where is the line? Clearly, it's different for each of us, depending not only on what we can afford but our own personal calculus or spectrum. It may be based on the importance or value we attach to the item our grown child wants: Education, yes; a deluxe vacation, no. I tend to be judgmental about "gifts" to grown kids who suffer from a sense of entitlement. One friend is more likely to indulge his son, who pays back whatever money he borrows from his dad, than his daughter, who treats every loan as a gift--even if the son's request is for a high-luxury item and his daughter's is for something more reasonable. Credit rating matters, even at some DaddyBanks.

 

 

 

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The Bank of Mom & Dad: Rules for Borrowing Money From Family or Friends

Fee Creep and High Interest Rates At the Bank of Dad