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

Sharing the Wealth: What do we owe our adult kids?

Do we have to share our wealth--be it a dollop from our savings, income or investments--with struggling grown kids? If we don't have to, should we anyway?

Many of us have answered the latter question with a "yes." That is, we want to if we can afford it. (Never mind the Boomer, Gen X or Millenial nomenclature: We are the Wealth Transfer generation.) Some of us have said yes even if we can't quite afford it.  But a woman writing to Slate's Kirstin Wong can afford it. A widow, she writes that her husband left her financially comfortable. She owns two homes, takes one or two cruise vacations a year and cares for two beloved French bulldogs that, in her words, cost more to maintain than a small child, which her only child has as well as a wife, a small apartment in a dicey neighborhood and health-related debts.

The grandmother/mother is in a quandry: Should she help them out if they have not welcomed her into their lives? Should she just write them off.

Before we rush to judgment, let's get more of the details she shared in her letter. 

--She and her son have been "extremely distant ever since he graduated college," she writes, "and especially since he got married. He didn’t even have a wedding to invite me to, and I’ve never met my 7-year-old granddaughter in person." 

--The granddaughter needed surgery shortly after birth and the parents have been paying that off as well as college debt. They would like to send their daughter to a more challenging school in a safer neighborhood but can't afford to do so.

--When she asked him recently why there was such a coolness between them, "I was shocked when he told me he and his wife have always felt that I don’t care about them because I’ve never helped them financially."

--Her daughter-in-law comes from a poor immigrant family, "yet they have a very close relationship with her parents, who watch my granddaughter every day after school. Apparently, if you can’t afford to give them anything, they won’t expect it!"

--She is thinking of leaving her worldly goods to her church instead of to her "greedy and materialistic" son.

The French bulldog reference pushed some hostile buttons for me, but Slate's Wong wisely moved away from the judgmental. Her advice revolved instead around the symbolic meaning of money and the importance of communication. Here are some relevant excerpts:

Money issues are rarely just about dollars and cents. Money holds symbolic value for all of us, and to your son and his wife, financial support could be tied to emotional support, care, or even love. It’s easy to characterize them as greedy and resentful, but consider another explanation: Maybe, given all their struggles and your relative ease, he feels unimportant and neglected.

Money is a resource, and it seems to be one that’s readily available to you, so I can see why your son is interpreting your lack of financial help as a lack of care. He and his wife might not expect the same from her family because they support them in other ways, using other resources, like time and child care—both of which are immensely valuable.

Talk to your son without holding judgment or making assumptions. Figure out what care means to him and what he needs from you to feel it. Chances are, it’s about not just money.

painting: "Bacchus and Ariadne" by Frank Auerbach

On Estrangement: Joshua Coleman's counsel on reconciling with an adult child

What could be more painful than a deep and long-lasting rift with one's adult child? How does one bridge that gap?

 Joshua Coleman, a practicing psychologist who also researches estrangement preaches reconciliation. A key point he makes for parents in search of such a solution is for the parent to step up and make amends:

Parents are often confused by this recommendation, believing that making amends is the same as completely endorsing the child’s perspective. While sometimes that is required, more often amends should be viewed as a starting point; a frank recognition that there is something deeply wrong in the relationship with the parent that needs addressing.

How to go about it? Here's what Coleman advises his patients:

I encourage them to write a letter stating, “I know you wouldn’t have cut off contact unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do.” I say this because it’s true from the adult child’s perspective — even if not from the parent’s — and because it communicates the parent’s wish to understand and heal the distance.

...Yet, even if the cause of the estrangement lies more in the child than the parent, amends are still necessary from the parent to begin a conversation of repair. You don’t have to agree with your child to make amends. It’s about humility, not humiliation. While I don’t presume that a child’s perspective on their parent is accurate, I also don’t assume that a parent’s perspective on their child is either. We all have our blind spots.

For those interested in Coleman's line of thinking, his newest book is  “Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict.”

credit: painting by Bonnard