When do you stop supporting your children?
March 30, 2009 by Christine Gooding
Filed under Parenting
Do we, as parents, ever stop supporting our children? I know we don’t ever stop supporting our children when it comes to their emotional and moral needs…but financially, when do we turn off the money well?
sxc.hu
You don’t know the gladness in my heart that I feel when I heard the news that my eldest stepdaughter is moving out…it means, child support payments to the ex-wife stops..yippeee!
Before you think that I’m a total b*tch for celebrating the fact that the end of child support is within the foreseeable future, let me give you some background.
When my Husband and I married in 2001, we decided to continue paying for his children’s educational funds that can be drawn down when they pursue further studies after high school. Eldest stepdaughter decided on pursue further studies so she received a reasonable lump sum amount from the Fund and a quarterly allowance since she started university last year.
Now that eldest stepdaughter is moving out, the ex-wife has asked us if we would still like to carry on giving eldest stepdaughter a monthly allowance to help her out.
I’m two minds about this. The educational fund that we have to contributed to for the last several years was specifically to financially help stepdaughter out. Now, we are being asked to shell out more cash. The amount asked is not big so I’m not too fussed about that.
But what I want to know is are we helping eldest stepdaughter become more independent by doling more dollars her way?
What do you think? I’d love to hear your views!
Ok, so we’re taking the ’step’ bit out of the equation. I think as parents, if we are able to, we want to help our children through uni to some degree (pardon the pun). I personally have long since set my daughters expectations that we will pay something towards her Higher Education (if we are in a position to), whether that’s helping out with fees, accommodation or another specified thing. I’m thinking ‘allowance’ is a hard one, would you always be worried that they were just spending it on saturday nights in the Student Union Bar or other periferal (very periferal!) items. If you want to to feel as though your offering is contributing to her education, why don’t you find some way of ensuring that that is where the money is going or arm her with grocery vouchers for her local supermarket to help her support herself. Even if I were millionaire, I would not pay my daughter’s way through uni. At a time when they should be learning responsibility and cause and effect (i.e. if I spend $50 on a night out I will be living on beans on toast for a week!) then you are doing your kids an injustice by bank rolling them.
I stopped allowance at 18. If my daughter wants money, she can get a job. I learned from room mates, that what you think they are spending your money on, usuaally isn’t it. My daughter can’t get grants, she did get a scholarship, and she has a small loan, we pay the rest. Spending money is on her own. She doesn’t ask either, because we’ve told her that and prepared her for it.
Oh, oh, oh dear! My stepdaughter is now 33 (yes, thirty three) and Dad still supports her by paying her rent, electricity and water bills, Channel TV, computer ADSL fees, car insurance and insurance on the contents of her flat. He also “lends” her money on a non return basis when she runs out. She works and has a car – bought by dad. The last time I tried to get him to see that we(as hard working pensioners) should not be lumped with this “debt”, it ended with her writing a letter to him accusing me of a vast array of things – in the hope that I would either vanish to “butt out”…in fact the whole thing was because I stopped him paying her speeding fines by forwarding them to her for payment. I have three adult kids of my own, and was never able to indulge them financially, yet they turned out fine – have always supported themselves – and are wonderful, caring parents and partners. Some people I’m afraid, will always just continue taking!!