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

We're the Aging Parents Now: How do our grown kids see us?

Another weekend in June, another grandchild is graduating from high school. We are winging our way thither for a pre-ceremony celebration. While we sit on the airplane waiting to land, we wonder: What will we look like to our son and his family? We haven't seen them in person in a long time (thank you, Covid). Will they see how we've aged? We're slower walkers now. Sometimes we forget to stand up straight. Will we look like old people to them?

A vanity, yes. But still. We want to be seen as energetic, as parents who have come to visit, are helpful around the house and are able to play ball with the kids. That's how we see ourselves, even as we know there are limits on how physical we can be. (Kick the soccerball with a granddaughter? Maybe a few touches.)

What we learned on this trip is that everything's relative. Yes, we've aged. Yes, we're slower than we were. Long walks with our son and various family members are no longer three to four miles; more likely to be one or two. On this trip, we arrived on the heels of our daughter-in-law's parents. They had been there for a week and left three hours before we arrived. They too had slowed down a step or two. Fiercely independent and hardy folks, they live a nine- or ten-hour drive away from their only child--and, unlike us, with no easy airline flight back and forth. They had always maintained --not in these words but in words to the effect--that "over my dead body" would they move from their beloved Maine to live near their child. And yet, health issues were threatening their well-being; they, too, are getting older. On this visit when their daughter brought up the subject of their moving to her city, they were receptive to the idea.

My daughter-in-law was part relieved--if they moved she could be on hand when they needed help. But also part alarmed: There was the recognition that her parents were aging and struggling to maintain their independence. It made her sad to realize that change was coming and soon. It made me sad, too. When my mother became frail and ill, I remember feeling that there was a turnaround in our relationship. In effect, I had to become her parent. That's the direction we parents of older grown children are heading--if we're lucky or healthy enough to get there.

photo: Sunset by Maia Lemov

 

Observation: A dad realizes his daughter is all grown up. So does his mom.

"And then suddenly you turn around and they are all grown up..."

This is the lament I found on Facebook by a dad who posted a photo of his daughter dressed up for her high school's Senior Ball, looking sophisticated and ready to take on the world. The posting seemed to capture the moment the dad realized what lay ahead: His daughter had become an independent young woman who, come September, would no longer be living at home with her parents.

But here's the thing about that plaintive sentiment: It was posted by my son, about my 18-year-old granddaughter, and I couldn't believe how far both of them had come. Suddenly you turn around and....

 

 

Covid, Us and Our Grown Kids: We're a luckier generation.

With the possible exception of newborns, I can't think of an age group that hasn't suffered terribly during the pandemic. Certainly, school-age and college-age children have had their worlds turned upside down; many are struggling with mental health issues from social isolation and screen-learning difficulties. Young adults may have lost a year of finding a career and an independent lifestyle. Older adult children may have had their careers curtailed, their job safety undone, their incomes lost.

Our generation is at the further end of the generational arc. Many of us are retirees or older parents who may still be working but whose careers are no longer on the mega-growth path. Overall, we seem to be doing better than our grown kids and grandkids. We were starting to slow down anyway; the pandemic accelerated that trendline. So long as income hasn't been an issue, we've suffered mainly from isolation and the inability to hug our grandkids or enjoy the pleasure of having an adult child drop by for an in-person visit.

I'm not the only one to think our generation has been luckier than others in this pandemic. Surveys over the last year show that, despite being at higher risk of contracting Covid and suffering severe complications,  we've managed to stay relatively happier than younger generations.

Why is that? Here's what researchers at Stanford University's Center on Longevity, who surveyed some 1,000 adults, aged 18 to 76, reported:

Age was associated with relatively greater emotional well-being both when analyses did and did not control for perceived risk and other covariates. The present findings extend previous research about age and emotion by demonstrating that older adults’ relatively better emotional well-being persists even in the face of prolonged stress.

In other words,  compared with young adults, people aged 50 and over score consistently higher, or more positively, on a  variety of daily emotions. We tend to experience more positive emotions in a given day and fewer negative ones than the generation of our adult children.

 

In a similar study, psychologists at the University of British Columbia exhaustively surveyed some 800 adults of all ages in the first couple of months of the pandemic and found the same thing.

Their investigation of  daily life amid the outbreak, found,

Older age was associated with less concern about the threat of Covid-19, better emotional well-being, and more daily positive events.

There's more than curiosity associated with the findings of this research. It has policy implications.  As Susan Charles, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine, told the New York Times,

“I think the older generation now, as much as it’s been threatened by Covid, they’re beginning to say, ‘My life is not nearly as disrupted as my children’s or grandchildren’s,' and that is where our focus on mental well-being should now turn.”

 

Vaccine Hunters: Who can helm our search for Covid protection?

I got a shot today. My state tells me I am of an age where I qualify for the Covid vaccine. My husband I--both recovered Covid patients--had hoped to go together for shots. We signed onto various pre-register websites, but it became increasingly challenging (that us, impossible) for us to find and make reservations for shots at the same time and place--no less for even one of us to get a shot. Yesterday, I received an "invitation" from one of the lists to make a vaccine reservation for the next day. My husband, on the same list, did not get an invite. Go figure.  Since the vaccine site was only 2 miles from our home, I decided to accept the invite and continue working on an invite for him, somewhere, somehow.

Some friends of ours have managed the "together" feat (see this post ) even though it's meant driving an hour or two each way. The appointments came courtesy of a technological lift from their grown children. What I saw happening with a handful of friends turns out to be a nationwide phenomenon. Adult children, who are more nimble than their parents with their phones, laptops and iPads, are finding places and times for mom and dad to get immunized. 

How universal is this phenomenon? One New York resident reported to the Washington Post, "My group texts have really shifted from swapping horror stories about managing kids in virtual learning to getting vaccination appointments for our parents." 

I consider myself moderately adept on the Internet--I use my desk and laptop computers for writing, editing, researching and communicating. I use my smartphone and iPad to zoom into courses and meetings; I can even set up a short meeting. But when I read about the manipulation of multiple devices that the younger generation executes in their search for parental vaccine shots, I realize I am way below novice grade.

Here's what one daughter did to secure shots for her parents: She learned a supermarket in her parents' county was going to schedule 1,500 vaccinations and would open its website for appointments at 6 in the morning. At 5:55 she had the website open on her laptop and "fired up a second page, this one in incognito mode. Then she pulled up two more browsers on her phone. 'I'm using my thumb on my phone and flipping between pages, and clicking through on the computer.' "

She lost me at "incognito mode."

Another recent report took note of how a lack of access to computers and smartphones is shutting out many seniors who are eligible for shots. The main way to book an appointment is by the Internet. There is a phone number to call but good luck getting through. That makes older parent totally dependent on their adult children to help them out.

There has long been a technological gap between generations-- oil lamps to electric lights; radio to television. (For a fun look at adjustments to new technologies, see Doonesbury on bringing Joanie, Zonk and others into a zoom room.) It's just that in the pandemic world, the stakes are too high not acknowledge our Internet illiteracy. If we have to tap into our kids or grandkids to bridge that gap, we are lucky we have them and they are there for us.

 

Daddy Indulgence: If we're guilty of over-helping our young-adult children, is that bad?

Scratch someone who doesn't have children and they'll probably tell you: Too much. That would be in answer to the question: Do parents do more than they should for their adult children. I had a single co-worker who dubbed my husband "Daddy Indulgence" for such "crimes" as paying for our children's college tuition. (We had saved up for it for years.)

My co-worker's teasing was good-natured. (She hoped our kids appreciated the gift.)  But still, the "daddy indulgence" trope persists as a reflex reaction.  There's a reason for its apparent growth recently: Although our children's march toward financial independence moves forward, it's doing so at a slower pace than our generation's.

According to a Pew 2019 survey, financial independence is

"one of the many markers used to designate the crossover from childhood into young adulthood, and it’s a milestone most Americans (64%) think young adults should reach by the time they are 22 years old....But that’s not the reality for most young adults who’ve reached this age.

The reality is: In 1980, roughly one-third of young adults were financially independent by the time they hit age 22; in 2018, that was down to one-fourth. When Pew looked more broadly at young adults ages 18 to 29, though, the survey found financial independence has been largely stable in recent decades, with women closing a gender gap.

There are other markers that suggest our adult children are less independent than we were. Here's Pew again. (This was based on a 2019 survey in those halcyon pre-pandemic days; Covid-19 has likely skewed a lot of the numbers and not in a positive direction):

 Today’s young adults are staying in school longer and are marrying and establishing their own households later than previous generations. A growing share are living in their parents’ homes well into their 20s and even early 30s. (See this Parenting Grown Children post.) Some of these changes are linked to economic challenges, while others may represent a realignment of goals and priorities.

As to the indulgence side of the equation, the Pew survey found we were helping out our kids with the basics-- groceries and housing--plus tuition. 

Aside from the question of whether these 'indulgences" augur good or ill for our adult children, where does the finger of blame point? Pew is quite unequivocal: The majority of the public says, as my co-worker teased, parents do too much for their young-adult children and most parents of adult children disagree.

How do our kids feel about the aid and assistance? Pew asked that question as well. Turns out we're in sync with our kids on this one:

Young adults themselves are largely satisfied with what their parents are doing for them. A majority (65%) say their parents do about the right amount for them – similar to the share of parents of young adults who say they do about the right amount for their kids.

 

Empty Nest: Why are we happier than our young adult kids are?

Economists who study happiness--yes there are such folks out there--have found that happiness (or, as they define it, satisfaction with life) is high when we're 16 years old then drops off into a U-shaped curve that doesn't peak again until we're nearly 50 years old. For many of us who are parents, 50 coincides with the dreaded unhappiness of the suddenly empty nest. So what gives?

That's a point a Freakonomics program called No Stupid Questions, posed in its discussion of happiness and when we feel the best about our lives. You can read (or listen to the podcast of) that discussion for yourself and delight in its quirky good humor. Or you can scroll through some of the highlights I've picked out. The dialogue is between Stephen Dubner, who wrote Freakonomics, and Angela Duckworth, a psychologist. Here are some highlights:

The Empty Nest effect:

DUCKWORTH: ...., one of the findings from marriage research is that so many married couples with children fear the empty-nest syndrome. But actually, on average, people tend to be happier once they’ve sort of gotten over the initial crying of your last kid being dropped off to college. I think there are other explanations, though.

Why our young adult and 20- and 30-something kids are not as happy as we think they should be:

DUBNER: Are you suggesting — and I think there is research that suggests this — that young people are unrealistically optimistic? And even if the answer to that is yes, can you really say that it is unwise, because maybe one of the things that you need a surplus of when you’re starting out is optimism, because in fact, it can be hard.

DUCKWORTH: There is a psychologist who I love named Don Moore. He’s a judgment and decision-making scientist. And he believes that not only the young, but people of all ages, can be recklessly optimistic. And he thinks that this overconfidence is actually a problem. ...

I think that these high aspirations that young people have — rose-tinted movies in their head about what their wedding is going to be like, and how their children are going to be beautiful and perfect, and all these projections into the future — which are probably a little naive. I think you could ask the question whether they’re really unwise or not. I do think that if you reach higher, you’ll get farther, but you might be less happy doing it. .......

And there is this gap between what we are achieving and our aspirations, not because we’re achieving less. We’re probably achieving more. I’m mean, we’re learning more. We’re having, in some cases, higher-quality experiences. But our aspirations are growing faster than our objective achievements.

The angst young adults feel as they become independent

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, I think what teenagers experience is actually, high highs and low lows. And there’s a lot of scientific evidence for that, too. I’m a university professor, so I see lots of 18- to 22-year-olds who have their fair share of angst. And they are experiencing the decrease in happiness. They have memories of being carefree children. And I think that downward slope, my guess is, is feeling the difference between what it was and what it is today.

We’re very sensitive to changes. And to feel that everything was so simple then, and that you could eat an ice cream cone without guilt. They’re all of a sudden burdened with the weighty responsibilities of adulthood – their first career choices, their first disappointments professionally, or maybe major ones romantically. And when you’re sad it’s really hard to be convinced that you’ll ever not be sad. I like to tell young people who are in emotional turmoil, or experiencing the decrease in their emotional well-being, that life is long and that they won’t feel exactly this way forever.

Is schadenfreude the reason we're happier as we hit the higher age numbers?

DUBNER: [Some researchers]...suggest that one potential reason for the upswing in happiness around midlife is that you’ve seen people that you grew up with having really bad fortune, dying and whatnot. As you said, your gratitude may start to kick in a little bit more.

DUCKWORTH: I mean, the cynical interpretation of that is it’s all downward social comparison. You look at people who, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe that happened.” And that somehow makes you feel better. I mean, just having some perspective, right? .... The wide-angle lens on life that allows you to appreciate a good cup of coffee and, wow, nothing went wrong today.

DUBNER: Wow. You really have lowered your expectations, haven’t you?

DUCKWORTH: I guess that’s why I’m so happy.

Shedding unhappiness

DUBNER: .... How would you suggest people try to get rid of the things that make them unhappy and increase the ones that work?

DUCKWORTH: ...one of the most reliable interventions to increase happiness is called the “three blessings exercise.” And you simply think of three good things that happened, usually in the last 24 hours. And you rattle them off. I’ve gotten so good at it. I can do it usually in 10 or 15 seconds: Lucy, Amanda, the avocado was ripe.

DUBNER: Wait. Just naming your children fulfills the three? That’s what you’re saying?

DUCKWORTH: I know you’re going to say that’s a cheat, or how is that possible? But when I bring my kids to mind, I’m like, “Lucy’s healthy, Amanda finished her midterms.” I mentioned the avocado, I don’t want to put that on the same level as my children. But it was a miracle of God that the avocado was actually not too ripe and not underripe.

photos: Maia Lemov

Politics in the Time of Coronavirus: How it could effect Thanksgiving civility.

When economists philosophize, they'll tell you that the young start out liberal and as they gather worldly goods and status they mature into conservatives. In a maxim variously attributed to Winston Churchill, Victor Hugo and a slew of others, the thought bubble goes like this: "Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." (A French philosopher put the line of demarcation at 20 years of age!)

It could also be true, as  two decades of Pew Research Center surveys have found, that generations carry with them the imprint of early political experiences. That is, those of us who came of age during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations (we're now in our 80s or older), have fairly consistently favored Republican candidates, while those of us who turned 18 under Bill Clinton and his two successors have almost always voted more Democratic than the nation as a whole.

All of which is a long way of saying, it's not unusual for our political alignments to be out of sync generationally.  That's what's led to many an unpleasant political conversation at Thanksgiving dinner. For those of us holding out hope for extended-family reunions around the Thanksgiving table this year, we may find the political divide is not so much generational as geographical. Compounding our differences is the unusual depth of feeling many of us hold about the current political situation and the deep divide between the left and the right. There is no longer any middle ground.

In a recent blog posting,  Carl E Pickhardt  writes about young adults and their rejection of their parents' political beliefs--and how hard that can be for parents to bear.

In these deeply partisan times, how can parents of one passionate political view come to terms with an older adolescent or young adult who is firmly wed to its opposite persuasion?

How indeed. And the same holds true for aunts and uncles and cousins by the dozens. This year, many of us may easily avoid dinner time chats with relatives with whom we disagree--social distancing and difficult travel protocols may intervene. But that doesn't help when we sit on opposite sides of the political divide with our grown children whom we may see everyday or Skype several times a week.

When it comes to politics, what does Pickhardt suggest in terms of keeping the ties that bind intact and conversations civil.

*Rather than treat a political difference as a barrier to getting along and listening with their mind made up, treat it as a bridge, as a talking opportunity to better understand each other. 

*Rather than take personal offense, respect the individuality and independence of their grown child’s political convictions and the bravery to assert themselves in this displeasing way. 

*Rather than treat political differences as primary, keep them in perspective as only a small part of a person, and appreciate the abiding commonalities they still share.   

Solid advice. Good luck implementing it.

painting: Romare Bearden, Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1967, National Gallery

Our Generation's Gift to Our Daughers and Granddaughters

Renoir: Mother and Her Children at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

We came out of college ambitions ablaze. This was the 1960s and 70s. We weren't going to be our mothers. Even though the culture and our parents told us otherwise, we went out and got interesting jobs--jobs our mother's couldn't even dream of. One of my college friends got a public relations job at Lincoln Center. Another did research for a consulting firm. I was a letter's correspondent for Time Magazine, answering reader complaints about Time's coverage of the Vietnam War or its cinema reviews.

Then we married, had children and realized how easy it had been to be trailblazers when we were young and unencumbered. When, and if, we tried to go back to work, there were no supports for us--no reasonably priced day care or after-school programs, no cultural acceptance or parental encouragement.

I had coffee the other day with my friend Sue who I've known for decades. We reminisced about how it had been in the 1960s and 70s. She talked about how, when her first child was 8 months old, she decided to take a part-time job. Although her husband was supportive, her parents and his parents were not. They drove from their homes in suburban New York to her apartment in downtown Washington D.C. to dissuade her, telling her that her baby son would suffer from her "neglect," that she was being a bad mother. "I was part of a woman's support  group--we were 5 neighbors who were also stay-at-home mom," Sue recalled. "We talked through the guilt and conflicts we faced if went to work or to graduate school, and that's what saved me."  She took that part-time job, had another child and went on to start her own successful management consulting  business. Two of the women in her group became lawyers, another also started her own business.

When Sue's sons married, one of the brides was in medical school; the other, an investment banker. When her daughters-in-law had children there was, Sue says, no question they would continue their careers.

In my family, my daughter, like Sue's daughters-in-law, never questioned that, once she had my beautiful little Grand, she would take her hard-earned PhD and continue to become the professor and writer she wanted to be. My daughter-in-law took a different path: She had been a bank manager but now she loves being a stay-at-home mom to three children. She takes her work as seriously as my daughter takes hers.

We have come a long way, even if our daughters and granddaughter are sometimes knocked about by glass ceilings and under paid or are dismissed for being a homemaker. One proof of how far we've come: When our daughters and granddaughters hear about how it was for us, they can't believe it was ever so. But it was. We moved the needle a little bit. That's our gift to them.

READERS: What sort of experience did you have as a young mom re-entering the work world or deciding to be a stay-at-home mother. I welcome your comments here or send me an email.

                                       Stone: Mother (mine) with her two children, 1940's

 

When should our adult children be able to stand on their own financial feet?

By the time they're 22, our children should be financially independent. It's a milestone most of us think they should reach as young adults. At least, that's what a survey by the Pew Research Center finds.

The reality (now it's U.S. Census analysis doing the finding) is that only a quarter of today's 22-year-olds have met that milestone. That's a much smaller percentage than 40 years ago when many of us were young and in our 20s. Then, one-third of 22-year-olds had crossed over the point that is supposed to distinguish childhood and the comforts of the parental home from stand-on-your-own adulthood.

This slippage in independence raises the question: Are we over-coddling our kids, offering too much helping hand and not enough tough love? Pew finds that the public perception is that, yes, we're we're doing too much for them. Here's what those in the Pew survey had to say about today's parents of young adults:

When those who say parents are doing too much for their young adult children were asked in an open-ended format in what ways they are doing too much, 43% pointed to financial assistance. Some 37% said parents are trying to solve their children’s problems for them or are afraid of letting their children fail. About one-in-five (23%) said parents are doing too much for their adult children by letting them live with them. And 4% pointed to providing babysitting and child care for grandchildren as examples of how parents are doing too much for their adult children.

A lot of us are guilty as charged. Pew found that roughly six-in-ten parents with children 18 to 29 gave their children a lot or some help in the past year. While some of that assistance was a one-time shot, a good deal of it was for recurring expenses, like household, medical or housing assists or educational expenses.

In fact, educational expenses loom large in the breakdown of the reaons we give, though it reflects parental income. According to Pew:

High-income parents are more likely than those in lower income groups to say the financial help they gave was related to education. Two-thirds of parents in households earning $100,000 or more a year say the support they gave their adult children was tied to educational expenses, compared with 53% of parents with incomes between $75,000 and $99,999, and fewer than half of those earning less than $75,000.

To give those educational dollars some perspective, in the past forty years college tuition has grown four times as fast as inflation and eights times more rapidly than household income. The amount owed on student debt--whether it's the students or taken on by their parents--is estimated to be $1.5 trillion. That's more than what we Americans owe on our credit cards and auto loans combined. If our kids are one of those 45 million owing that debt, they're starting out their adult lives with a lot of I.O.U. on their shoulders. No wonder today's parents feel pressured to help out if they can.

(You can see more details on the Pew survey here , including the definitions the foundation used for financial independence and gender differences in the findings.)

Generational Divide: Life styles of our grandkids versus our generation

Then

And now

We shouldn't compare. But a recent Pew Foundation study gives us the ammunition to do it. It's our Silent and Early Boomers Generation (born in the 1940s and 50s) vs their Millennials (born in the 90s and 2000s). We're 50 years apart in terms of entering those young-adult years. So how's it going for them versus how it went for us?

Here are some of the major differences the study catalogues:

Today’s young adults are much better educated than our generation was.  The findings in chart form:

During the young adult years, they are more likely to be working (71 percent) than we were (58 percent).  This shift to more women in the workplace ratcheted up in the mid 1980s, when Boomers were young.

They're marrying later than we did. In 1965, the typical American woman first married at age 21 and the typical man wed at 23. By 2017, first-marriage ages hit 27 for women and 29.5 for men.

In our day, men were more than 10 times more likely to be veterans than young men today. Millennials can thank the all-volunteer army for that. Men of our generation came of age during the Korean War and its aftermath.

More of them are living in cities than we did. In 1965, around two-thirds of young adults lived in a metropolitan area. Today, nine-in-ten live in metro areas.

Source: Pew Research Center tabulations of the 2017 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS).