My family’s culture is to take care of your family. It is up to my children whether they want to live at home after college, and even after I was married, I lived at my parent’s home for several months to avoid the cost of renting a short-term apartment. And I helped my parents out when I lived at home, just as all my siblings did when they lived at home before they were married.
The way I look at it, if the parents aren’t living hand to mouth and the kids are pitching in on chores as they did in high school (things like snow shoveling and mowing the lawn, raking leaves, cleaning their rooms and bathrooms), what is the harm?
The most important things for my children are:
- get started on establishing credit at the start of college if possible, right after obtaining a full-time job if not
- if they live with us, they help out with housework and other tasks, and also not be a burden in any way (call if you will be really late or will be away for days)
- if they can’t find work in their field locally, facilitate them looking regionally and nationally
The problem is if you have an unemployed child who expects you to pay their bills, and also expects not to work unless they find the perfect job in their field and at the pay they want.
“the way it should be” depends on the family and the values you grow up with. We are now a safety net for emergencies for our parents because they did what they could to support us when we needed it. And I also contributed a lot more money into the marriage than my spouse, and it has been paid back many times over.
As for previous generations having less debt, I don’t think many really poor folks like my spouse went to college so of course there was less debt. Now poor kids are recruited, and there is 100% grant funding available at many Ivies for the poorest.
I know that although my parents and his parents did little to support us after college graduation, we always knew we could move in with one set or the other if we had to. And I did for a few months years after I graduate college. If parents and their kids don’t get along, of course that is totally different. So now people like my friend are extremely hesitant to provide any care at all for their parents, because her parents weren’t there at a difficult time in their life. $50 for a taxi ride or $500 to help for a down payment would have become permanent care for elderly parents, and now there is only animosity.