The Paradox of Spending

November 21, 2011

Sometimes it seems like our adult children just can’t win, at least when it comes to media coverage.  Earlier in the month, the Wall Street Journal, in a series called “Generation Jobless,” interviewed parents who lamented the $200-$300 monthly cost to support their adult children living at home. Later in the week, the New York [...]

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Weekly Reader 11.21.11

November 21, 2011

Adult children: international edition In Canada, the figures for live-at-home adult children are just as high as in the U.S. The Financial Post reports that 51 percent of young Canadians in their 20s still live with their parents and that the percentage jumps to 60 percent when narrowed to those aged 20 to 24. The [...]

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A Teachable Moment

November 14, 2011

As our children were growing up, we all stumbled upon spontaneous “teachable moments,” and those opportunities don’t stop because our children are now adults.  In their personal and professional lives, they encounter situations that calibrate on the doing-the-right-thing scale from legally correct to being a good person.  Often they make those decisions on their own; [...]

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Weekly Reader 11.14.11

November 14, 2011

Last week, an undergraduate student asked me what  my college major was and how long it took to find my first job. An English major, I was hired by a Oxford University Press about a month after graduating, and yes it was decades ago! “That’s how much things have changed,” the student said. “No one [...]

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When Parents Text

November 7, 2011

Mom:  Just wondering as to your whereabouts…please check one of the following boxes: dead in a ditch alive in a ditch with broken fingers jail Mars Have you ever been  tempted to send a similar text to your missing-in-action adult child?  One  mom did exactly that and her message, along with dozens of hilarious others, [...]

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Moving Back Home: A Blessing in Disguise

November 7, 2011

M21 wanted a Gen Y perspective so we invited the “When Parents Text” authors to our undergraduate class for an interview. The following was written by a student journalist: It was every college graduate’s nightmare: best friends Lauren Kaelin and Sophia Fraioli found themselves living at home with their parents after college, taking on odd [...]

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Blame the Parents?

October 31, 2011

When adult children can’t find work or when the jobs they do land leave them unfulfilled, who is to blame? The parents, of course, or at least according to two Gen Y authors and commenters in two recent articles. “Are Twentysomethings Expecting Too Much?” in The Washingtonian: If  twentysomethings are expecting anything, it’s only because [...]

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A Pet’s Death Marks a Rite of Passage

October 31, 2011

We welcome a guest post by Aodhan Beire, a senior at Georgetown, who tells the poignant tale of how his beloved dog’s death means going home will never be the same In a boy’s life, there are a number of rites of passage allowing him, in some sense, to become a man. There’s his high school graduation, his [...]

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Meet the Girlfriend

October 24, 2011

“How would you like to meet my girlfriend, Mom?” The words tripped off his tongue easily, but hit my ears like a jackhammer. He’s my 21-year-old, college-senior son. Okay, I know, that’s plenty old enough to have a serious girlfriend.  But I wasn’t ready to hear the word “girlfriend” spoken quite so easily. This wasn’t, [...]

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Weekly Reader 10.24.11

October 24, 2011

Terms of Endearment When our children are little “I love you” and other endearments fly back and forth. But what about when they  become adults.  We say “love you” at the end of a phone call or as they leave for work but how often do we really take the time to make it more [...]

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