That’s dope. If your child isn’t an asshole then I think you’re doing a good job.

Currently, I have supportive parents and I’m staying at home for as long as I feel like it and they’re fine with that. They’re paying my tuition and after that, I feel like I can pay for my own stuff with a job I get. I don’t believe I’m an asshole but who am I to judge.

Completely. Why even thrust a soul into this world if you won’t see it through? This world is a demonic world where money is everything, so you’d best be prepared to cough it up.

1. You are a generous and responsible parent.

2. All I can say is that my ex’s parents basically didn’t do shit for him, and his father was very wealthy and his mother got a positively palatial alimony check in those days, and yet he was left to his own devices for higher education and early adulthood, and it showed up in his adult habits in that he did really spiteful things regarding money because those needs weren’t met. I’m sure because you are this supportive your son will feel confident and responsible and be well grounded in life because he didn’t have to think about having his needs met, which is the ultimate wound really.

Everyone I know who was raised like this is an ungrateful horrible person.

Litereally have met so many people like this who get angry their parents didnt’ give them more. Blows my mind how ungrateful, bitter, and miserable they are. The entitlement of grown ass adults who are finanically independent on their parents until they make like 250K+ is insane. I dated a girl once who was bitter her parents only gave her 50,000 for her graduate present. My graduation present was a handshake and 50K of debt.

But what do i know, i paid for my own life since i was 15 years old. I live in a different planet that the wealthy who pretend they aren’t wealthy and yet can spend a few million supporting their children.

I think it really depends on your financial position. If you have the financial means to make your kids’ lives easier, especially if that means paying for things that will allow them to provide better for themselves and their children later on, I would say that’s a good/kind thing to do. However, if you’re just paying for them to live nice lives at the cost of them learning how to provide for themselves, I would say you’re actually doing them a disservice.

If you don’t have the financial means to provide for them to further extent, I would say it’s entirely reasonable to say, “I got you as far as I could, now you have to take responsibility for your own life as best you can, because I have myself to look after.”

I think the complex parts of the issue actually come up when parents retire and can’t provide for themselves anymore. To what extent are children beholden to their parents to provide for themselves anymore in their senior years? I do think it’s moral for children to care for their parents this way, but if your children aren’t willing to do so, I would certainly ask how you didn’t foster a strong enough relationship with them that they feel so little compassion. Plenty of parents out there provide for their children financially but neglect the actual relationship, such that their children don’t actually care that much about them as adults and don’t feel the need to care for them in their old age.

There a lot more that could be said about this but I think this post is long enough.

WOW! Buying your son a house and a car is extremely generous. Financing his education is beyond kind. I personally would be concerned about your son’s ability to manage money once he is on his own. I don’t think you’re doing him a lot of favors in that department. I think sitting him down and discussing how to budget, what a mortgage is, personal loans, and how credit cards work would go a very long way. Also discussing why you budget and don’t live at the edge of your means is important too - too many people who make good money do this and end up in debt forever. My experience when I was 18 was learning to manage money with my parents help came with a lot of life-long lessons. I got a credit card and they didn’t just pay it for whatever I put on it. I remember getting in a lot of trouble once for putting restaurant dinners and expensive clothing store purchases on it. After my parents got the bill for the month, we had a long conversation of needs versus wants. I never ran that card up like that again because I was informed that I would be paying it off with my minimum wage job. From then on it was groceries and maybe dinner out once a week. I also had a summer job and lived in an apartment with a roommate. Boy does that give you some perspective on money and struggled of others when parents are not just paying for it all. Adult children should never assume mom and dad are paying if they mess up. Life can change in the blink of an eye, and I personally feel it is important to be as self-sufficient as possible and prepared for the worst financially.

That’s unfathomable to you because you are in a very privileged position in society. Especially right now the vast majority of people are struggling to take care of themselves let alone an adult child. You must not only be privileged, but completely sheltered from the reality that the majority of people face. You’ve chosen to live in a high income are and only socialize with high income people. The posts you see online are a small taste of the regular world. Every parent wishes they could help their children as much as you have. But don’t be surprised if every time your kid has a huge financial issue that they come to you to solve it, you’ve taken away pretty much every struggle a young adult typically has to deal with.

Not many parents could provide that to their children. Many are not far from not affording their own car and house. I can’t fanthom having the ability to do all that for a child so there is no way I can really give a good answer. You do what you can but you can but that is pretty much letting them live with you if they can’t get a place of their own. Invest in a bussiness??? Buy a car??? I would like to refresh our vehicle and so maybe they can have the old one if we don’t need to sell it to cover the purchase of the replaccement.

To answer the question, I think family feels right when you have each other’s backs whenever you’re able. When you’re young, that’s your parents or older relatives caring for you, and then when you’re older you care for them. It’s one thing that other cultures do better than the (modern) West.

The thing is, it’s also better if rich and loving parents aren’t required to do well, and a long period of prosperity is exactly why families are weak here now. I hope there’s a way to have both.

I see many parents online (especially in North America) talking about kids moving out at 18, paying rent to live at home, and covering their own bills, and it honestly shocks me. That feels unfathomable to me. I believe that as parents, we have a duty to give our children a good life since we brought them into this world.

It’s definitely one semi-socially acceptable option, although if it’s really like “get out now”, in another culture I think those same parents would be hitting or constantly insulting their kids. And at the other end of parental love and support nepotism is very much alive.

Out of curiosity, where are you?

You having the finances to afford this is largely the reason you’re able to do this. Others likely don’t have the finances to do so, so they need assistance from their children. Most Americans are not able to afford what you’re doing (like, even for themselves, if we’re being honest, let alone for their children), so I would suggest you withhold judgement.

Buying them a house seems pretty extreme. A shitty used car and paying for a shitty small studio apartment would’ve been fine, IMO. Sounds like you are providing luxury rather than just supporting them. Idk if going directly into private practice is advisable or not. People tend to not appreciate things given to them as much as what they feel they’ve worked for. Not sure what people should do. What you’re doing is probably better then just putting your excess resources into financial instruments I suppose. I don’t agree with the idea parents should let their kids struggle greatly when they don’t have to either.

You are on the extreme high end of support in my cohort. I know 2 folks getting this treatment. Typical in my cohort (for that age range) is being allowed cheap (or free) housing in the parents home, and some percentage of shared meals. Sometimes car borrowing. Rarely is there enough money for serious tuition support.

If you compute it out, what you are paying is likely more than most couples can reliably have or provide for one kid. In other words, your suggested norms cannot be sustained by the average family.

To the extent that they can, while ensuring that if they have more means than average, the child understands, the whole time growing up, that they are privileged, and they did not work to get these things, and that other people have a much more difficult life.

I think often times people don’t do the rest of this, and end up creating monsters.

I don’t think its the helping your child part that makes the monster.

It think more often than not the people who go the opposite route of withholding support they could give to their child to their child, they just make a hateful shitty relationship for no reason.

I’ve always found it bizarre anyone could contort themselves to the point of believing that not helping your child is helping your child when study after study shows that children with assistance in areas like these do better in life significantly.

Telling kids to move out at 18 is the equivalent of an adult forcing their senior parents in the worst senior home as soon as they hit 65

I like the Warren Buffet quote: “Leave your children enough money so they can do anything, but not enough that they don’t have to do anything.”

Pay some of their rent, give them pantry staple foods or specific gift cards - not cash.