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

The App World: Should we be tracking our grown children?

Am I showing my age and my app ignorance? Well, I certainly felt the former and learned a lot about the latter from a Carolyn Hax column. The column dealt with a reader's query about tracking her young adult children--children who are in college and no longer living at home.

The parent wrote that "EVERY single one [of her friends] still tracks their 'kids'! Including one with a married 24-year-old daughter."

The tracking is done via a phone app and/or by airtags (I had to look it up; in case you do too, they're the tags you can use to track where your keys, laptop or lost airline luggage are hiding.) The Hax correspondent writes that when her oldest child (now 20 years old) went to college, "we took the app off their phone but could see where they were through AirTag/item trackers." Now the 18-year-old wants their phone to be tracker-free. The parent's question for Hax:

"I rationally agree and would have been horrified to be “tracked” in college by my parents. Am I in a bubble with my other midlife anxious friends who are parents of newly launched adults? I will deal with getting rid of the app, but I wonder if we are outliers with this technology."

Readers, am I the only one shocked by this tracking of adult children, of being able to see where they are every minute, of this intrusion on their independence and privacy?

Evidently not. So was Hax. The opening sentence of her answer was this:

I don’t care whether you are outliers with this technology. Or inliers, downliers or fierypantsliars. Stop tracking your kids. It encourages more anxiety than it eases, at the cost of their independence and your trust in one another. And yourselves.

She also makes this important point that underlies almost everything we do vis-a-vis parenting our children:

The part of child rearing where you control your kids starts ending in utero and ends-ends when they’re 18. It just does. Your job thereafter is all relationship, which is equally at your and your kids’ discretion.

Hax summed up her long answer (which tackled the role the reader's anxieties play) with this bit of perspective:

Yay to trackers for wilderness adventurers, solo travelers, at-risk minors, people with developmental, cognitive, memory issues that make wandering a serious risk. When trackers help families in hard circumstances, great.

But a typical launch isn’t a hard circumstance. It’s life. So please stop grasping for access on an it-won’t-help-to-know basis. You all will be fine, or won’t, and it 99-point-whatever won’t hinge on this.

Hax is a sensitive writer attuned to her audience. I picked up a similar sentiment on an impersonal  Q/A post about tracking apps.  It, too, said all there is to say about tracking our adult kids.

AirTags Can Negatively Affect Parent-Child Relationship

Things can also get tricky when it comes to older kids and teens. While it can reduce your anxiety as a parent, tracking without consent can erode trust.

painting: Emma Amos, Self Portrait

 

Observation: Why it's so hard to launch 20-somethings.

In an interview with Laurence Steinberg, NPR reporter A Martinez asked the psychology professor about challenges we parents face in dealing with our 20-something adult children--children who should be more independent than they are or than we were at their age.  Here's Steinberg's observation.

STEINBERG: Parents don't fully understand how hard it is to be in your 20s or 30s today. And so in some senses, a lot of the issues that parents confronted when their kids were teenagers are still surfacing during the young adult years. And I think that that's very surprising for parents.

MARTÍNEZ: But we were in our 20s and 30s once, Laurence. What's so different?

STEINBERG: Well, the economy is very different. The labor force is very different. I mean, the challenges are huge, and it just takes so much more time and money to make the full transition into adulthood. And people nowadays are making that transition at later and later ages. And so a lot of the things that people in our generation did when they were in their mid-20s, let's say, have been pushed into the 30s. And I think this takes parents by surprise.

painting: Roald Dufy

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Observation: Michelle Singletary on adult children still living at home

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about a relatively new trend: Our adult children--college graduates and/or employed adults in their 20s--have been moving back home and staying there for longer than, say, we would have at their age.  Since my children have long grown and flown, mine was an observational piece about economic pressures as a possible cause.

More recently, Michelle Singletary, the Washington Post's "Color of Money" columnist, put a more personal face on the phenomenon. Her 20-something children, she writes,

"all live at home, and, despite it being the smartest move in a high-cost area, they often feel the need to explain their living situation to avoid the twisted lips of condemnation that they should be more financially independent."

As a parent, Singeltary wonders if those twisted lips are pushing young adults too hard to meet certain money milestones.  AS part of her argument, Singletary notes that in a previous column addressing financial tips for graduates, she had laid out the path as she saw it for reaching financial independence. Hers was an unhurried one. The more recent column carries readers reactions to her tips. Several wrote to disagree with her suggestions, which ranged from holding back on buying a house and tackling college debt before putting money into savings to realizing that debt can be destructive if overused.

Singletary closes out the back-and-forth discussion with a quote from a 28-year-old reader:

"From my perspective, it's helpful to hear the wide-ranging perspectives folks have about these hot-button topics. I have always thought of personal finance as very cut-and-dry as if there was only one right way to do things. But there is a laundry list of learnings of what's not the best idea. Finance isn't always so cut-and-dry."

And neither is the decision for a young adult to move back home till they've got the wherewithal to move out and on.

painting: Pierre Bonnard, "The Conversation."

 

Doomed: Our adult children's concerns about our drag on their future

Our adult children are worried about us. Not necessarily about our health and well-being. It's more a generation vs generation thing and the fear that the aging population (that's us) might doom their economic future. That is, we'll drain the purses that support  Medicare and Social Security and leave them working without a future safety net and in a disrupted economy. Here's why: Those of us who are currently working pay into a fund that pays benefits to those who are retired. Since we're living longer than our parents and their parents did, we're using up those funds faster than they can be replaced. The math is not in Gen Z's favor.

To sum it up with brief factoids:

The share of Americans age 65 or older is expected to grow faster over the next 30 years than the share of Americans between the ages of 25 and 54, the so-called “prime working age.”

The labor force participation rate is expected to dip over the coming decades.

With more people in need of care and fewer people working, economists see a potentially crushing burden on the U.S. economy and welfare system.

All is not doom and gloom. There are economists out there who see an alternative reality. A 538 story  reports on three scenarios that tackle the labor part of the problem and one that takes a less gloomy look at the financial side.

Encore Careers: Jim Johnson, a professor at UNC's business school, sees us--America’s 70 million or so baby boomers --as an asset that could help build “the longevity economy,” which is what the economy will have to look like to accommodate an aging population. Here's how he puts it:

“Everything has to change in both the built environment and the social environment to accommodate an aging population. ... Given the labor market challenges that we're facing today, post-COVID, ‘encore careers’ [beginning a new vocation later in life] are something that we're going to have to pursue in a major way.”

Immigration Boost. Higher rates of immigration help countries experiencing population aging because immigrants tend to be younger and therefore more able to work than the domestic population. Many economic forecasters assume that by 2030, population growth from immigration will supersede that from natural increases (births minus deaths).

Recruiting Workers. Only two OECD countries spent less than the U.S. on programs to encourage labor market participation — like job training programs and employment subsidies — as a share of their GDP. Economists suggest that we (theU.S.) invest more in such programs to get more people working.

We Have Assets: We may not be the drain on the social security purse that everyone fears. As retirees, many of us have saved for our so-called Golden Years. What sets us apart from our European counterparts is the share of income we older residents draw from assets, rather than government transfers, in our old age. That means we may not be the burden Gen Z fears we will be.

painting: Heidi Malott

Compassion for Today's Adult Kids, Part 2: Parenting and the fearful world of "canceling"

We more senior parents are somewhat removed from the modern-day stresses our adult children and grandchildren are experiencing. (see my post last week) That list did not include one of the most pernicious stresses: A cancelation and self-censorship culture, particularly on college campuses.  You may know all about it but I had only the vaguest of notions until a recent visit to an adult son and his family brought the threat of "canceling" or public shaming into focus.

During my visit we were talking, casually at first, about social media and its effects, how social media platforms are touted as free speech forums but do some of the postings go too far in that direction? The conversation veered into social media and its role in self-censorship and, in effect, a loss of free speech. Now we were talking about whether the threat of being the object of a social media storm keeps students from expressing non-mainstream opinions.

I asked a grandson, who's a rising senior in college, whether he felt free to express his opinion in classrooms or socially on campus. He answered without hesitation: He did not.  It was too dangerous. It could cost him friendships and his social standing.

Was he over-reacting? Was his experience an anomaly? I turned to Google and it didn't take much of a search to see that he was smack dab in the mainstream.

Two years ago, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE,  reported the results of a survey of nearly 20,000 undergraduate students from 55 colleges and universities.

60 percent of students have at one point felt they couldn’t express an opinion on campus because they feared how other students, professors or college administrators would respond.

A year later a 2021 survey from College Pulse and FIRE of some 37,000 students at 159 colleges reported an acceleration of a negative atmosphere on campuses:

80 percent of students said they self-censor at least some of the time.

48 percent of undergraduate students described themselves as “somewhat uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” with expressing their views on a controversial topic in the classroom.

66 percent said it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus, and almost 25 percent said it is acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech.

In a 2022 essay for the NYTimes, a University of Virginia senior wrote that self-censorship at her college was common. Among the points she made about the situation in the classroom were these:

--Backlash for unpopular opinions is so commonplace that many students have stopped voicing them, sometimes fearing lower grades if they don’t censor themselves. 

--Criticism can quickly transform into public shaming, thereby stifling learning.

--She asks: "Is it brave to risk your social standing by saying something unpopular? Yes. Is it reasonable to ask college students ...to solve this problem independently? No."

--Her conclusion: "My college experience has been defined by strict ideological conformity. Students of all political persuasions hold back — in class discussions, in friendly conversations, on social media — from saying what we really think.

As parents, what advice do we have for our college students or our adult children who are the parents of these students? Do we repeat the homilies we believed in our day: Speak up. Be rigorous in debate. Explore the ideas of others. How else can we reach a ground of common understanding? For those of us who've ventured out of our pandemic-created cocoons, we're learning that such words may be true but they no longer apply.

It feels odd to hark back to a U.S.President who failed to rise to meet the moment, but in a 1928 presidential campaign speech, Herbert Hoover talked about  “ 'the American system of rugged individualism' — the notion that America was a place of free markets, individual thought and a dogged skepticism of state-imposed conformity."

Is it safe to say, Good Old Herbert Hoover?

Work of art: Rodin's The Thinker

Compassion for our adult kids who are parenting in today's world

When I first became a parent, my mother would chime in with kid-raising tips. Some of it was helpful; some annoying but for the most part there was little in her experience of raising my brother and myself to clue her in on how to deal with such modern-day (modern for my generation) issues as Saturday morning cartoons on TV and the ads that accompanied them.

I am my mother now. My Saturday morning TV issue pales compared to what my adult children have been dealing with in raising their children: Limiting screen time and keeping them safe from the Internet's pernicious access to pornographic, violent or misinformed material. The pandemic came along and made everything worse. And now comes an unpredictable economy at a time where school shootings aren't rare and classrooms are political battlegrounds. Even if my children wanted my advice on these issues (they haven't asked), I would have no previous experience from which to draw.

"There's almost not a word to express the stress parents are under right now. 'Overwhelmed' doesn't cut it. It's beyond anything we've ever experienced." This is what the founder of the Parent Coaching Institute told a reporter at an Axios newsletter.

The newsletter takes note of the specifics of what may be overwhelming the parents of our grandchildren (Click on the embedded links for more details):

The rising cost of gas, groceries and other daily expenses. These top the list of stressors, according to a March poll

Children have questions about the world's wars.

Sadness about the relationships and opportunities the pandemic is robbing from them.

Fear and anger about the planet warming.

COVID

Clashes over teaching about racism and U.S. history

A renewed debate over gun control

Having issues that affect kids and parents at the center of American politics.

If there is a silver lining, Axios tells us, it's that "hard times can be opportunities to strengthen relationships." That's backed up by census data that reports that parents say they've become closer to their children during COVID lockdowns and that they are eating more meals together; parents of younger children say they are reading to their kids more often.

All of which makes me feel that the pillars of our old-fashioned age of parenting--bedtime stories as a nightly ritual; dinnertime together as a daily tradition--are relevant. Plus, we still have one piece of timeless advice worth offering our stressed children: Take care of yourself. Your children need you rested and ready--or at least somewhere close to that.

Painting: Ivan Canu, Ferryman

We Are Style Setters: TikTok says our comfy ways meet the moment for adult kids and their peers.

Stunning news on the older-parent front: The Washington Post tells us that our grown kids, their kids and the generations in between are embracing the comforts of the grannie style--a trend the Post describes as "billowy linen pants, slipcovered sofas and chilled sauvignon blanc." Dubbed coastal-grandmother, the style (see TikTok's Lex Nicoleta), "taps into a collective craving for simplicity at a time when everything feels painful and awkward. It's the analog antidote to our Zoomed-out lives."

The avatars of the style?  Oprah in a cozy beige sweater. Diane Keaton in a Nancy Meyers movie. Ina Garten making cosmos in the Hamptons. Clothing guru? Eileen Fisher.

So yay for us for being the zeitgeist.  And for being ageless. That's also what the Post writers tell us:

You don’t have to live near a beach, or even have adult offspring, to get the lifestyle. “Coastal grandmother” isn’t an age or even a gender. It’s a state of mind.

Those of us aging out of pencil skirts, low-cut jeans and too-close-to-the-floor Italian sofas can take comfort in our blowzy look that offers the warmth of acceptance of all body shapes and physical challenges. We barely have to read the article to understand the essence of the style.  It is us. Why everyone else wants to look like us--that's less explicable.

painting: Degas

 

 

Parenting Young Adults: The realities and the risks of today's "lifestyle stress"

When my oldest granddaughter started college this year, I asked her the usual generic questions: What courses was she taking, which professors seemed dynamic, how was her dorm. I also asked her how she liked going to an all-girls college in a busy city. She ticked off her pros and cons but I was stunned by one "pro" in particular: She felt safe at her school. It was "not the kind of campus that would attract a mass shooter."

Our children and grandchildren are growing up at a very different time from us. The stresses--from social media onslaughts and the pandemic to the fear of a Kalashnikov-toting classmate appearing in a school hallway--are far beyond anything we experienced or worried about at their ages.  Where our schools had fire drills, theirs have mass shooter drills.

 As Peter Catapano wrote of parenting his daughter, "As she grew, the gentle life lessons she’d absorbed from Elmo and Dora the Explorer faded and gave way to the constant drumbeat of a 24-hour news cycle, social media and a culture driven almost entirely by the internet." The violence of the times in which she was coming of age "had all become undeniably woven into the fabric of life."

It's no wonder young adults today are operating under what psychologist Carl Pickhardt calls "the risk of lifestyle stress." In one of his newsletters, Pickhardt writes about the excessive demands on youngsters who are starting out their years of "trial independence." He offers some parental guidelines on the causes, how to assess if your child is struggling from stress plus some tips on how to help them deal with it.

His practical advice for parents is to guide your child with self-awareness pointers like these:

--Treat occasional stress as expected.

--View ongoing signs of stress with attention.

--Make regular self-maintenance a priority every day.

--Don’t pursue tempting changes at the expense of maintenance.

--Set your goals, standards, and limits to avoid constant over-demand.

--Try not to make resorting to stress to accomplish daily tasks a regular habit.

As for Catapano, he writes that it had become impossible to look his daughter in the eye and

"tell her everything was going to be OK. It wasn’t, not really, and she knew it. Yet, somehow,  our family found ways to keep a sense of enjoyment and purpose in our daily lives, and an openness to possibility — even optimism — about the future. Regardless of the circumstances we face, it’s what humans do.

painting: Picasso: Dora Maar with Cat

 

 

 

 

 

Observation: Emma Thompson on the ties that bind grandmas, grownkids and the moms in between

During the pandemic, actor and screenwriter Emma Thompson hosted both her 22-year-old daughter and her 89-year-old mother. In The Guardian she wrote about the links between generations, on what we mean to and do for each other and of what she found to be "the miraculous luxury of three generations together."

Here are some of her comments:

My daughter has tattoos. I like them, which surprises me. I understand the urge to mark life’s more seismic events upon your body. ...

My mother’s body bears witness in more traditional ways – watching her navigate its frailty and bentness is a daily learning, a meditation. ...

Living between these bodies is an odd mixture of joy and grief. My daughter thrums. Her life force changes the atmosphere in the room as soon as she enters. We all receive the electrical charge and, once again, we dance....

Or my daughter comes in upset, chaotic, spinning out and sits by my mother and receives a calming nod – no questions, I note – and the chaos subsides.....

But the meeting of these life forces now feels more essential than ever. We are constantly exchanging ever-altering resonances, and balance occurs. Not perfectly – nothing’s perfect – but, consistently, we change and reset one another’s state. So instead of grieving my mother’s ageing, instead of envying my daughter’s youth, I find I am buoyed up and calmed down by turn.

 

Parenting Memories: Stolen moments with our grown children, and they with theirs.

My daughter is aglow. We are on a FaceTime call but I can see the happiness radiating from her face. Her daughter, who started college this year, came home for a day. They took a drive into the country, went on a short hike, stopped to book shop, had lunch out. They talked about everything and nothing. No pressure, no agenda. Just a stolen day together.

How I remember--and still feel--the joy of spending a day or even a few hours alone with a grown child. Usually, when I see my grown children they come encumbered. In their young adult years, it was with friends or by papers to write or places to go. As the years flew by there were spouses and children. To have a grown child to myself for a few hours is a treasure that's hard to describe: A special warmth, a comfort, a feeling that all's right with the world--or will be. It's not a mom thing. Their dad guards his moments alone with his children as well.

To hear my daughter last night--and a few weeks ago my son--bask in the glow of spending time with a child who no longer lives under their roof is to relive those companionable and spontaneous moments. The cycle of life is repetitious and reassuring. With so much in the world collapsing around us--our weather cycles,  public discourse, ability to compromise--this is one small thing to feel good about: Our grown children will treasure these moments with their children as much as we did and still do with them.

photo: Maia Lemov