Support or Enable: When to Help Adult Children
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Reading the Sunday paper recently, there was column from a parent asking when it is appropriate to help adult children. In this case, both son and daughter in-law were unemployed. Their landlord was going to sell the house they were living and they won’t have a place to stay. The parent who wrote in had numerous health issues and financially wasn’t able to support these families members.
Even if you have the financial resources, is it always wise to help or bail out your adult children when they are in need? I have a retired friend whose husband was recently diagnosed with a terminal illness. He may live for a long time and they have been reviewing their finances to make sure they will have enough resources to see out his life, as well as hers. This is a second marriage and he has a daughter who has a history of addiction. She is supposedly clean, but is struggling to keep a job and wants them to pay her mortgage.
What are parents to do? It becomes even more difficult when parents retire and are concerned about their own retirement income. The hardest thing in the world is to watch your children struggle and suffer, even if they are forty years old. A number of years ago, my daughter had a difficult time financially. She had been in an abusive relationship, changed jobs a number of times and ruined her credit. She called me to see if I would lend her money. At the time, it was quite a bit of money she need and I didn’t have it. Therefore, I told her, “No”. It was an incredibly difficult thing to do and if I’d had the money, I probably would have sent it to her.
Many years later, we were talking about that time and she confessed it was one of the best things we ever did for her. When we said we didn’t have the money, she said it forced her to come up with a creative way of solving the problem. Which she did. As a result, she became more self-reliant.
It doesn’t always work out way. Parents have watched their children end up on the street or worse if they are involved in criminal or addictive behavior. The most difficult case is when irresponsible children have children they are not taking of.
As parents, what are we to do? How do we know when to say, ‘no’ and when to help. Everyone has to weigh all of the factors, but here are some guidelines to consider. Never provide resources to your adult children if it is going to put you in need. If having a child move back to your house is going to cause you harm, financially or otherwise, don’t let it happen. If sending them money is going to put you in dire straights, you have to say ‘no’.
Many of us have the resources, financial and otherwise to help our children. Is it wise to help a child if you have the ability so? Look at the situation and determine whether assistance will help them to move forward or enable a bad situation? Sometimes, that’s difficult to assess. Few parents would argue that helping children with their education is a bad investment. My parents loaned us money for the down payment on our home. We’ve always been grateful for the assistance.
Being an adult means learning to take responsibility for your life. Sometimes that is a difficult lesson to learn. Helping your adult children to learn it is valuable whether they are twenty, thirty or forty.
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