Roberto, 60, from Santa Cruz, California, has been giving his adult son $2,000 each month since last summer, to help him cover his living costs.
“My son is 29,” he says, “he has a college degree in maths and finished an intensive three-month boot camp in data analysis 10 months ago, which cost $15,000. He has been looking for a job matching his training and abilities but has not found anything so far. He and his wife are renting a small studio, and my payments basically cover the rent. I have been supporting him in this way for the past seven or eight months.”
Roberto is one of scores of Americans who told the Guardian that they are supporting their grownup children financially.
Nearly half of US parents provide some kind of financial support to their adult children, who are grappling with higher food and living costs than they did, according to a new study.
Parents who got in touch shared how their adult children could not afford housing, transport, childcare, medical care or insurance without their help – often despite working full-time in skilled jobs – with a number saying their children’s financial dependency was making their own financial outlook bleak.
Various parents also said their children relied on them financially due to unemployment, health or addiction problems, or because their relationship with a romantic partner had broken down.
While some parents said they were only supporting their children temporarily until their situation improved or with one-off payments for cars, healthcare or housing, others said it was a quasi permanent arrangement as their children were unable to meet their living costs.
Roberto says his son has worked various jobs including as a postal worker since he left college.
“Not having work experience in his area of expertise seems to be the biggest roadblock that prevents my son from getting a job, every place asks for two years’ experience,” he said.
“He could get a job in a supermarket or at Trader Joe’s, but those are not his career goals, it’s not what he is trained for and those are low-paying jobs. I don’t want him to compromise. Fortunately, I can afford to support him. If I didn’t, perhaps he would have a greater sense of urgency to get a job, but the truth is that the jobs he is qualified for are not abundant in this area, despite everyone saying constantly that ‘the future is Stem’. I suppose with Silicon Valley nearby, which has had a lot of layoffs, he is competing against many people with years of experience.
“Perhaps my son is doing something wrong, but it’s my impression that this economy is excluding a lot of qualified people.”
One 64-year-old father and small business owner from the north-west, who wanted to stay anonymous, said he and his wife were struggling to support several of their children in adulthood.
“One of our daughters has significant credit card debt that we are helping to pay off,” he said.
“In 2023 she was $24,000 in debt. She is 29 now and married with one child, works in daycare for $18 per hour. Her husband supports the family’s day-to-day needs, while moonlighting on a second job.
“We provide no-cost daycare for their son and feed their family once or twice a week. We have paid about $700 per month on average to retire the debt for the past six months, and we are currently trying to buy a home for them to live in at a low rent to us.
“Another daughter is recently divorced and raising one grandson – we support her financially by letting her drive one of our cars that we insure and pay the bridge fares for. She works two part-time jobs and operates a small business.”
Two other children still live at home, he said, though thankfully don’t require cash support.
“All this does create stress on our home finances. With negative economic headwinds our small business is barely hanging on, while the drain on our savings for each of the kids has us considering taking money out of our retirement to live.”
Retired attorney Allen, 68, from Minnesota, was among a number of people who said they were propping their adult children up financially because they had money they did not need to spend.
“We gave our daughter a $100,000 down payment for a house and loaned her $450k, half of the remaining mortgage, at 3% interest, so that her commercial loan on the balance of the house would be lower,” Allen said.
“We paid for university for our kids so they have no debt. We don’t need the money, my wife and I are very frugal.”
Despite being comfortably able to support his daughter financially, Allen said he had concerns about whether he and his wife were doing the right thing, as their daughter and her partner were earning decent salaries of about $150-170k annually combined.
“I don’t understand the spending and saving habits of the younger generation,” he said. “My daughter and her partner have well-paying jobs, but never seem to have any extra money. They’re always going out for coffee, going out for dinner, splurging on this and that.
“In contrast, our frugality has made our old age very comfortable. My daughter wants to be independent, but I am concerned they will reach old age with no savings.
“We want to do the thing that’s going to make them healthiest and strongest and happiest, but you don’t always know what that is as a parent, whether you’re enabling them or [holding them back]. It’s a weird dynamic.”
Natalie, a 35-year-old freelance ghostwriter and mother of two young children from Portland, Oregon, was one of several people who said they were in receipt of their elderly parents’ financial support.
She says she has been relying on regular payments from her mother of about $1,000 a month for a little over a year.
“My writing pays as much as my husband’s full-time teaching salary, taking our household income to around $70,000 annually, yet we’re unable to make ends meet. Despite my efforts, I’m forced to reach out to my retired mother for help,” she says.
“After $2,200 rent, grocery costs, a $900 healthcare premium, preschool tuition for one of our children which has risen to $750 a month, and over $1,000 in additional utilities, we find ourselves underwater at the end of every month.”
Her mother, Natalie says, now fully retired at the age of 62 after decades as an ER nurse, is currently contemplating finding work again to support three of her five adult children, all aged in their 30s and 40s.
“We all live in high-cost areas, and our mother is watching her savings dwindle because she is tragically willing to support us financially. My mother is an endless giver and is now finding herself on a very, very tight budget as well. She has been looking at transcribing jobs she can do from home, which breaks our heart. We have a weekly family discourse to discuss how we can pay her back,” Natalie explained.
“I feel every day as if I’m failing, yet given the number of hours in the day, I don’t see what else I could possibly do. My day starts at 6am and ends at 1am.”
For the past six months, Natalie and her husband have been donating blood plasma for cash twice a week, which nets them an additional $450 monthly.
“You’re really run down for a couple of days afterwards, you can get a fever, shakes, chills, that kind of stuff,” Natalie says.
“We talk at least once a month about whether we should move to Portugal, or to France, where my sister lives, anywhere really with socialised medicine and free childcare, those kinds of basic necessities.
“I look at my children, and feel irresponsible to have had them, and I look at my mother, and ache about the position I’m putting her in. I walk my son to preschool, past the tents of homeless thirtysomethings that have started taking over the city, and think, ‘One day, is that going to be me?’”
