A Family Cut-off as a Gift of Love

 

In my second book for psychotherapists, Deciphering Motivation in Psychotherapy, I discussed how therapists can uncover the hidden motives for dysfunctional behavior patterns by looking critically at what patients say about them as well as by looking at how the patient behaves while saying it. Ambiguity is inherent in all languages; any sentence and most words can mean two or more different things. Sometimes they can mean seemingly opposite things. To get an idea of how this can mislead you, take a look at clues in crossword puzzles. In one New York Times Sunday crossword, the clue was “unlocked.” The answer was “bald.” With patients discussing family issues, I usually found that the seemingly less obvious answer to the question of what something means turns out to be the right one. Thinking about that possibility then shaped my further questions.

I came across a good example where such might be the case in a recent column by advice columnist Dear Abby.

DEAR ABBY: As a young mother, I endured a difficult marriage filled with domestic abuse. In the midst of that turmoil, I struggled to be the parent my children needed. They are adults now, and I find myself distanced from them. It pains me deeply to know they want nothing to do with me. I can't help but feel I ruined their lives, and the weight of that thought is unbearable. I miss them dearly and long for the chance to reconnect and heal our relationship. I'm at a crossroads and unsure of how to move forward and mend the bonds that have been strained. I deeply regret my past mistakes and want to make things right, but I'm uncertain where to start. Thank you for your guidance. -- LOST

DEAR LOST: … I wish you had mentioned why you think you "ruined your children's lives." Were you physically or emotionally abusive? Did you abandon them? If that's what happened, reach out. Apologize and offer to join them in family counseling if they are willing. It might be a healthy first step toward reconciliation.

Of course we have no way of knowing for certain the reasons behind the cutoff between the writer and her adult children just from this letter. Most people, if they had to guess, would guess that they are angry at her for not protecting them from their abusive father.  I’m sure those kids would be somewhat angry if that were the case, but if I had to guess, I would say that it is not the main reason for the cutoff.  I would suspect that instead there’s a little “pathological altruism” going on here.

Mom’s letter practically reeks with references to the mother’s guilt over her parenting failures (“I can't help but feel I ruined their lives, and the weight of that thought is unbearable”). Usually in cases like this, I would strongly suspect that the mother flagellates herself for her failings in front of them quite a bit whenever she sees them, just like she does in a letter that might be published. They may feel that Mom's misery is their fault. They may avoid seeing and communicating with her to avoid making her feel even worse than she already does. Staying away from her would then seemingly protect her from some of these “unbearable” guilt trip she puts herself through.  They might think they are doing her a favor with what is called “A gift of love.”

Unfortunately, the children avoiding her like this does her more harm than good. She’s already feeling a ton of guilt anyway, and now she’s now cut off from her children to boot! And as much as the kids dislike Mom,s overwhelming guilt, they really would like a better relationship with their mother. As a therapists, I worked with patients on strategies for empathically addressing such interactions and putting a stop to them.

Blame, Guilt, and Family Dysfunction

public domain

 

When I discuss family dysfunction, the question of “who’s to blame”– the adult children or their parents – frequently arises. Emotions then tend to run wild. I believe this is the wrong question. The fact is that all family members are beans in the same soup, acting out patterns that have been building up for generations and are being passed down. The right question should always be, “How do we FIX this?”

The question of blame is often the subject of vehement defensive reactions by the community of parents in the US, who gripe about anyone who engages in“ parent blaming” and “parent bashing.” They want to believe that they have absolutely nothing to do with their children’s problems, which they like to think are all genetic or all caused by peer groups at school.

Many mental health practitioners have sided with these nonsensical ideas. I’ve written before about a time when, at a nearby child and adolescent psychiatric hospital, juvenile delinquency and even suicidal thoughts were blamed entirely on heavy metal music. That way, parental guilt could be assuaged so they would pay for their kids to get “treated” for listening to Judas Priest. Well, at least until their insurance ran out.

So are these folks saying that even physical and sexual abuse by parents has nothing to do with children’s insecurities? Or their acting out? Even here, the answer seems to be a sort of yes – people falsely opining that the incidence of this abuse is actually minimal and that almost all of these accusations of such are false. Really?

It is true that if a therapist makes a parent feel guilty, they are less likely to look critically at their own parenting practices or seek help, so therapists have to figure out a way around this paradox. My therapy model attempted to do just that with patients who were adult children facing this conundrum.

I have also written about the massive increase in recent years in parental guilt caused by cultural changes in gender roles. In reaction, this has led to an epidemic of so-called helicopter parenting. That this type of interaction is a major correlate of adolescent depression, which means probably with the rate of suicide as well, has been recently demonstrated in studies (for example: Wattanatchariya K, Narkpongphun A, Kawilapat S. The relationship between parental adverse childhood experiences and parenting behaviors. Acta Psych. 2024(243).  While correlation and causation are two different things, I believe on the basis of my wide clinical experience that in this case these studies are indeed about causation.

Another complication of parent guilt was described in the 2/27/24 column by advice columnist Carolyn Hax.  A mother described herself as being wracked with guilt because her teenage children suffered from anxiety and depression, despite her and her spouse loving them immeasurably and doing their best every day to support, listen to and nurture them. Ms. Hax of course tried to tell her that she did not screw up because “kids everywhere are having an extraordinarily difficult time right now” and that “depression and anxiety are way up, stress is up, mental health resources are strained, and schools are overburdened, underfunded and understaffed.”

My fear is that Ms. Hax’s advice for her to stop beating herself will fall on deaf ears. As I have described in previous posts, parental guilt has become more widespread, and parents often feed into the guilt of other parents – especially if the parents try to set limits with their kids instead of helicoptering. I can recall other families giving us a hard time when we wouldn’t give our kids away at college unlimited funds to do whatever they wanted.

Besides stopping parents from setting appropriate limits with their kids or disciplining them properly, another big problem is one that I have seen clinically but which is not described in the mental health literature: the kids see their parents feeling guilty all the time even when there is no obvious reason for it, and take this to mean that their parents need to feel guilty. They may therefore act like they are more impaired than they actually are so that the parents can continue to indulge this need. The fact that the guilt remains omnipresent in this situation confirms their beliefs!

In a column the very next day, Ms. Hax answered a letter in which a wife in an abusive relationship will not leave for fear of harming the kids.  The letter says “But I read so much about how kids thrive in stable families and are damaged by splits or divorces other than in highly abusive situations. My partner is not physically abusive but checks a lot of other boxes: yelling, vicious anger  name-calling, silent treatments.”

How anyone can possibly believe that subjecting kids to this sort of abuse is better for them than coping with their feelings about a parental divorce is beyond me. And kids are smart enough to wonder about that themselves. So how do they then interpret Mom’s refusal to leave? Perhaps mom is using the kids as some sort of excuse because deep down she thinks she needs or deserves her husband’s abuse? I know that sounds bizarre, but you would be surprised.

In fact, although obviously I can’t say in this particular case on the basis of a letter to an advice columnist, there may even be an element of truth in this idea. The answer to what might be going on can often be obtained by a therapist using the Adlerian question: “What would be the downside of successfully getting out of this bad relationship?” A common answer: "My parents would blame me and tell me I should go back to him and be a better wife." I kid you not! Maybe because those parents themselves are in a similar relationship. If so, we’d have to find out whether this is indeed the case, and then ask the Adlerian question to the grandparents about why they continue their relationship.

When people feel guilty, it leads to defensiveness, which can lead to fight, flight or freeze reactions which cut off conversations about how to solve problems. Since the problems go back many generations, I have always suggested that we just put the blame on Adam and Eve, and be done with it.

 

 

 

 

 

Parents who Feel Both Guilty and Angry About Their Parental Performance

I recently received an e-mail from an irate reader of my blog on Psychology Today. It was in reaction to a post I wrote about parents who were cut off by their adult children acting as if they had no idea why that happened, when in fact the majority of them (but certainly not all of them) have at least a pretty good idea. She told me I was an a**hole who was automatically calling all such parents “dicks” and “a**holes.” I of course actually made no statements like that in the piece.

Of course, if a history of child abuse is involved, which it may or may not be in such cases, parents have the responsibility for that and not their children, at least before the children grow up and have minds of their own. But this was not the subject of the post.

I wrote back to her:

Sorry if the piece sounded like I was calling the parents a**holes. I don't believe that. And of course not all families that have problems like the ones I describe [in the post] are in denial about what's going on. I view everyone in the whole family as all caught within a devilishly-difficult problem to solve that is created by a variety of external factors over at least three generations. 

I never recommend cutting off parents -  even when the parents actually were (unlike you) physically or sexually abusive - and take a lot of heat for advocating that they try to work things out for everyone's eventual benefit (not that it is at all an easy thing to do this).

I of course have no way of knowing anything about particular families like yours without ongoing in-person evaluation and therapy, so what I'm about to say may or may not apply to some degree to your situation. In some families in which parents, in the estimation of the adult children, seem to be frequently beating themselves up with guilt about their worth as parents, the kids worry that they need to fix that. And what they then do is start to piss the parents off on purpose to make them feel angry at them instead of guilty. Hatefulness as a gift of love, as it were..

That last bit referred to how, in the patient with borderline personality disorder’s spoiler role, the adult child is regulating their parents’ de-stabilizing internal conflict over having children (described in this post). When the parent starts to feel too guilty, their children make them angry. When the parents start to get to angry, they lay guilt trips on them.

As I said in my reply, I don’t know if that dynamic applies to the writer and her children or not. So what made me think that it might very well apply? Well, there were certain sentences in the writer’s original inquiry that seemed to indicate a lot of guilt as well as a lot of anger:

Implying guilt:

• “I have admitted and apologized for the times I was a bad parent, naming specific incidents and listening to them to tell me other times they were hurt by me. I try as hard as I can to listen, be supportive, and not be overbearing.”
•  “I don’t know that any parent who needs to be told they’re a dick would accept that from you. It made me feel defensive and hurt, all over again. Trust me, most of us a**hole parents don’t realize we’re being a**holes.”  
• “I really do not know why my kids, especially my younger daughter, hold a grudge against me.  They have never said anything that I didn’t acknowledge, apologize for, and try to make right.”   

Implying anger/defensiveness:

 

·         Calling me an a**hole for allegedly implying she might be an awful person when I hadn’t actually said anything of the sort, and accusing me of “taking sides.”

·         “If they are mad because I turned out not to be perfect, but downright human and not always the best decision maker when it came to parenting, well, I at least know I always loved them immensely and would have, & still would, die for them.”

 

You be the judge.

 

Parental Guilt: a Double Edged Sword Inside a Conundrum

When I write about dysfunctional family dynamics on my blogs, in response I often get parents and adult children reacting in completely opposite ways to the very same post: the parents think I am putting the blame all on them, and the adult children likewise feel I’m singling them out. Of course, the parents had the issues that are creating difficulties before the kids ever came into existence, so this makes them somewhat more responsible, but they are reacting to binds that they themselves were put into by their own  parents. In turn, their parents were reacting to their parents, and so on.

Of course, when people feel blamed for something they don’t really like, but sort of know they had something to do with, they tend to feel guilty, which tends to make them defensive. Defensiveness, in turn, causes them to tune out discussions of what they might be able to do differently in order to fix the family problem. That would be bad enough, but there is something else that amplifies this problem even more. The fact that they felt guilty even before reading my stuff is often the main problem that caused them to give off destructive double messages to their kids in the first place.

The women’s movement was great in terms of opening up fulfilling opportunities for women for which they are more than qualified. However, it is also a big factor in creating a lot of parental guilt as when both parents are working, this has made many of them feel like they are neglecting their kids. As I have written, the Phyllis Schlaflys of the world pile on the guilt. This cultural argument has two effects on the parents: anger at their kids for complicating their lives, and attempts to make up for their frequent absences by overindulging their kids and trying to be friends with them.

The latter behavior creates all the issues that parenting columnist John Rosemond has been writing about for years: it makes the kids feel inadequate. My view on this is slightly different than his: I think the kids start to believe that the parent’s constant need to cater to them is evidence that the parents need to be caretakers to remain mentally stable, so the children start to act as if they are inadequate so the parents can continue to feel needed.

If the parents’ anger predominates, this can lead to acting out by the child to provide the parent with a feeling of justification for being angry and therefore not as guilt-ridden.

If the parents go back and forth between compulsive caretaking and anger, the child develops one of the major characteristics of borderline personality disorder: spoiling behavior. When the parent gets too angry the child tries (and usually succeeds at) making the parent feel guilty, but then when the parent feels too guilty, the child finds ways to make them angrier.

Because the issue of parental guilt is so central, this creates a conundrum for anyone trying to get the family to discuss what is really going on so that it can be stopped or at least minimized – including any family member attempting to do this, a therapist trying to help the family, or a writer of blogs trying to get people to focus on real issues rather than looking for scapegoats or facile explanations for the self -defeating behavior of family members. When any of these folks bring up what the parents are doing “wrong,” this tends to make the parents feel even guiltier, which is the source of the problem in the first place. The problem then gets even worse rather than better.

When I had such a parent in therapy, I was able to find a way to finesse this, by discussing how their child may be mis-reading them, which tends to be a less guilt-inducing way to put it. Also, I can empathize with the bind that the parents are themselves feeling, having formed a preliminary hypothesis about why their own parents acted as they did.

This is much more difficult to accomplish when writing for the public, because readers tend to quickly focus more on anything that seems at first glance to be less than empathic with their own plight. I do talk about how the problems have been passed down from prior generations, so if we have to blame anyone, let’s blame Adam and Eve and be done with it. I also make use of a great quote from John Rosemond: "Taking responsibility for something and self-blame are horses of two entirely different colors. The former is empowering; the latter is paralyzing." However, I can’t discuss these ideas in detail in every single post or they would all be twice as long as this one. And anyway, disclaimers like that are often ignored in the heat of the moment.

The Myth of the First Three Years

Obviously, people of any age can learn new information and change their behavioral responses to a wide variety of environmental contingencies. If that were not true, and people could not adapt to changing environments throughout their lives, it is highly unlikely that homo sapiens would have survived as a species. After all, we are relatively small, not particularly swift runners, have no natural armor or large talons with which to defend ourselves, and can die from extreme temperatures at either end of the thermometer. And yet, here we are.

The entire practice of psychotherapy is in reality predicated on the view that change is possible. If people become immutable at a certain age, then how would therapy ever help them change?

Ironically, however, somehow schools within the field of psychology often like to insist that most of our habits are completely fixed during childhood. According to the early psychoanalysts, for example, our personalities are completely developed by the time we are 5 years old. People with borderline personality disorder were thought to have “fixated” at the age of two! This meant that any psychological development after that completely stopped.

Neuroscience data is frequently cited by people who like to think they have neuroscience expertise but really do not – like many of today’s “biological” psychiatrists. In doing so, they often make assertions based on study results that have limited applicability to the psychological phenomena under discussion, or have no basis in findings from studies whatsoever. A book (recommended by parenting columnist John Rosemond) that came out way back in 1999, The Myth of the First Three Years by John T. Bruer, Ph.D, describes a particular heinous example of pseudo neuroscience that took hold with the participation of several politicians and celebrities. The misinformation is thoroughly dissected by Bruer.

The dumb idea goes something like this: the neurons in the brain develop hundreds or even thousands of synaptic connections per second until we reach the maximum number of such connections at age 3. The connections then start to be pruned. This means that the number of synaptic connections decreases over time. Therefore, kids under three need to be properly stimulated. They must be read to, learn their abc’s as early as possible, attend pre-schools, and listen to a lot of classical music. They need to become “scientifically correct.” If not, a window of opportunity will be closed forever.

This idea has led to a lot of parental guilt and anxiety, which my readers will immediately know that I think is far more damaging to kid’s psychological development than missing too much Mozart. Because of kin selection, we are probably more affected by the emotional state of our attachment figures than pretty much anything else that isn’t crazy severe like being under constant physical threat by one’s government. 

Parents who feel they may have damaged their child by, say, putting them in the wrong day care program (or heaven forbid, not putting them in any day care program at all) often become emotional wrecks who then overindulge their children, trying to prevent them from experiencing any or all emotional stress. When they seem to failing at that, as they must, they may then at times react with fury and even strike out physically with a child.

In reality, synaptic pruning probably leads to much higher brain efficiency in reacting to the environment in which the child is raised, but some people got the insane idea that the loss of neural connections after age three means something entirely different. They think that the period between ages 0-3 determines your IQ among other things, and if we want smarter and more resilient kids we must provide the proper stimulating environment or the development of our future abilities will be compromised severely. 

It is true that some aspects of the nonsensical idea may have  limited applicability to some of our psychological abilities - like learning a second language without having an accent. Almost impossible to do after the age of 12-14. But to think that somehow all of our abilities are like that is patent horse crap. Undoubtedly some of the neuroscience described in Bruer's book has become out of date due to increases in our scientific knowledge base in the last decade, but I think his basic premises remain intact.

What may get fixed in the first three years is that children become permanently much more responsive to their attachment figures than to anything else in the environment. The “serve and return” process described in an earlier post is probably related to this. Most neuronal tracks in brain are plastic in that they can form, or become stronger or weaker, over one’s entire lifetime. However, certain nerve tracks in the limbic system that are conditioned by one’s environment to respond with fear are highly resistant to major alterations. Certain faces – faces of kin – may trigger and reinforce a lot of automatic social responses to different people and situations.

The idea that children who are exposed to one environmental event or another develop immutable brain changes - other than those exceptions just listed - has even affected the highly important research in adverse childhood experiences like child abuse. Researchers do brain scans of abuse victims as adults and compare them to control subjects who had more loving childhoods, and differences in the size and activity of certain tracks remain. Hence, these researchers state, these brain changes are now irreversible.

Well they may be, but we still don’t really know. I kind of doubt it. There is some limited evidence that some of the changes can modulate with therapy, as described in a recent review article in the German journal Nervenarzt (November 2018) by  Schmahl, Niedtfeld & Herpertz. Their conclusion:

Although the overall database is still sparse, clinical improvement in psychotherapy appears to be associated with modulation of brain structure and function. Frontolimbic regulation circuits including the amygdala, insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and other prefrontal areas appear to be involved in these changes. An important finding is the eduction of initially increased amygdala activity after successful Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

Interestingly the last author, Herpertz, tended in the past to over-emphasize biogenetic factors over interpersonal and other environmental factors when I have spoken with her at meetings.

The folks that do the studies on untreated adults seem to think that, because they are no longer being actually beaten or molested, that the involved brain tracks are no longer being strengthened through environmental reinforcement. That also must mean that continued negative interactions with the attachment figures have come to a complete stop. Nonsense. These children continue to be around them throughout their lives, or in some cases do cut them off, but hear about them through other relatives. The “different” brain structures are thusly maintained. If that reinforcement were to be corrected, maybe those tracks would start to revert back to the size and activity levels seen in the control subjects. 

In order to know, scientists have to take into account whatever happened in childhood plus everything that happened afterwards.

Adult Children Who Cut Off Their Parents: an Interesting Variation on This Theme.

My posts on this blog (May, 27,2014) and on my Psychology Today blog (November 17, 2014), Are Parents Who are Cut Off by Their Adult Children Really That Clueless, generated more comments than almost any of my other post (37 and 163 respectively). Additionally, the post itself on this blog has had more hits than any of the others.

In the posts, I reproduced letters to newspaper advice columnists from parents who had been cut off by their adult children, and who claimed to have no idea why their adult children felt the need to do this. I also printed one letter from the adult child of one of those letter writers telling the other side of the story. Without addressing the issue of who's "fault" it was that the cutoff took place, or who was "wrong" and who was "right," I opined that the apparent cluelessness of the parents was in most instances feigned. They usually knew to a greater or lesser extent exactly why what had happened had taken place.

Well the comments from readers came fast and furiously from family members on both sides of this divide, and they were very predictable. Adult children who had cut off a parent generally wrote about all the bad things their parent had done to them and how the parent would never admit to any of it. Parents came back with a vengeance saying, in so many words, "I didn't do anything wrong," and they accused me of parent bashing.

Here's a typical exchange:

Anonymous: Yes, you are correct. Virtually all of the time, when people cut off parents, or anyone else in their immediate family, you can bet there's a damn good reason. The parents will act like the poor victims. Don't believe them. There's actually a forum on the Internet where they can all get together. At first they maintain their innocent victim stance, but you will soon see their vicious hatred expressed toward their children.

Emelu: Not so. I have done nothing wrong. I've been in counseling. Been open to understand if I did wrong. Been totally honest with myself. And there is nothing I've done wrong.

I always find it interesting that whenever I write posts - particularly on the family dynamics of borderline personality disorder - adult children with the disorder who make comments often seem to accuse me of blaming them, while the parents of such children often accuse me of exactly the opposite: blaming the parents.

In most of these cases, I think the reason for these opposite reactions has to do with selective reading of the posts. This, in turn, is triggered by guilt and defensiveness. Or, occasionally, some of these folks just hate it when I give away their secrets.

In general, both of the positions "It's all my fault" and "I had nothing whatsoever to do with this" are, equally, both irrational and cowardly for any of the involved parties. 

In cutoffs, however, can it sometimes be that the parents really are completely clueless about why their children are avoiding them? That they are absolutely at a loss to understand what has happened? Some commenters said their cut-off children even accused them of things that they know they did not in fact do. Is that always denial?

As everyone was taught in school about true-false tests, beware of any question containing the words "always" or "never." I do think that, in a very limited proportion of these cases, the letter-writing parents are indeed genuinely flabbergasted at their adult children's negative responses to them and the phony accusations. In these cases, IMO the adult children are hiding their real reasons for the cutoff.

So why would a child cut off a parent who was not guilty of any significant abuse, neglect, or invalidation?

One common reason occurs in situations in which the parents feel tremendously overburdened and overwhelmed by the responsibilities of child care, or feel that the child's needs are preventing them from doing other things that they really badly want to do. They feel guilty when they admit this, even to themselves, and they always take care of their children when they are supposed to, and do so appropriately for the most part. They do not usually take their internal frustrations over being exhausted directly out on the children to a major extent, and genuinely love them.

They think that somehow their children are not aware of how tired and frustrated they are, but they are kidding themselves. The attachment theorist John Bowlby theorized that children observe their parents very carefully, without attracting too much attention when they do, and become experts on what their parents are all about and what motivates them by the time the children are just two years old.

In videotapes of family therapy sessions with small children in the room that I have seen, as the therapist speaks with the parents, one may observe the child playing with a toy in the corner. The child seems to be oblivious to the adult conversation. But then, when something concerning them comes up in the conversation, the child suddenly makes a comment about it. Without even looking up. Clearly, they are listening the whole time.

Parents in the situation under discussion in this post do in fact give a lot of clues as to how burdened they feel. They might for instance constantly and compulsively complain to their friends and anyone else who might listen, saying something along the lines of, "I'm always there for my kids! They're my #1 priority. I respond to everything they need, even though I have to work full time. I so wish my boss would understand this better. There's just never enough time. And I'm sooooo tired. I used to have hobbies I really enjoyed, but I've had to put them aside. I sure do miss those days!"

Even after their children reach adulthood, parents like this may have a very hard time trying to not cater to their adult child's every need - or even his or her every whim. While still complaining about it to everyone else.

In such cases, children may get the impression that the parent really wants to be free of them, but just cannot admit it. In response, they sacrifice their own desires for a good relationship and make themselves scarce. They cannot tell their parent the real reason for their doing that, because they know that this will make the parent even more miserable than he or she already seems to be. 

A truthful statement would make the parent feel even guiltier for wanting to be free of any family burdens. The parent would probably deny these feelings anyway, because the parent is under the mistaken impression that admitting this would drive their children even further away.

In order to avoid causing their parent to feel this way, the adult child may in difficult cases volunteer to be the villain in the piece. They may purposely make it look like they are cutting off the parents because they are selfish or narcissistic. If that does not work, they can escalate. They up the ante by making what they know are false accusations about parental misdeeds. That way, the parent can easily maintain the belief that he or she had nothing to do with the cut off. 

As an alternate strategy, or in addition, they may influence their spouse to make it look like the spouse has taken control over them and is domineering and purposely creating trouble with the parent and enforcing the cut off. For more on this, see the post, Your Spouse's Secret Mission.

Anything to help parents avoid looking at their own conflicts!

This is a sad state of affairs because, ironically, if the parents could admit to their ambivalence and negative feelings, any problematic resultant family conflicts can in most of the cases be fairly easily resolved through metacommunication and negotiation. The children's efforts to "help" the parents to deal with their guilt backfires and prevents a solution.

I know that many readers react to these kinds of formulations by thinking I am giving people too much credit, and that most of them do not operate with this level of sophistication. When it comes to fitting in with one's kin, church, or ethnic group, I strongly believe that they not only can, but they do. 

The Culture Wars, Parental Guilt, and Out-of-Control Children: The Dilemma

 

The following post comes mostly from chapter 2, Don’t Blame Us,  of my last book, How Dysfunctional Families Spur Mental Disorders:

The women’s movement in the United States, combined with economic changes that made surviving on only one income increasingly difficult for families, led to one of the fastest and most massive cultural shifts in history. Almost overnight, women entered the workforce in huge numbers. Female ambition was fully unleashed for the first time ever, and flourished. However, women who wanted to get to the top in their field in business or the professions ran into a roadblock. 

They found that, in the business and professional worlds, they were expected to act just like the men in one respect. They could not use the needs of their children as a reason for refusing to put in the long hours necessary in today’s economy to climb the corporate ladder. The United States had during this same period of time grown to become the most workaholic country on earth, eventually surpassing even Japan.

         

Women who wanted to and who were told that they could “have it all” by the ambient culture found that doing so was not as easy as some famous women made it look. Since their husbands were only just beginning to share in child care, and were as much or more involved with their careers as they had ever been, who would be around to take care of the children? Horrific stories about bad things happening to children left to their own devices and locked in their homes without parental supervision after school (deemed latch-key children by the media), began to circulate widely.

Debates over working mothers became one of the most important theaters of operations in the culture wars that continue to rage on to this day. Reactionary forces that never believed in equality for women in the first place began to spout off about all the damage being done by working mothers to their offspring. The voices of people like Phyllis Schlafly, a career woman who made a career out of attacking career women, became louder and more shrill. Unfortunately, researchers in major academic centers began to give more ammunition to voices like hers.

Widely publicized studies showed that children in families in which at least one parent stayed home with them did, on the average, better in life on some dimensions than those children from families in which this was not the case. Of course, many children from two-career families do splendidly or even better than many of their more closely parented peers, while many children of stay-at-home mothers often fail spectacularly in life, but the press ignored the scatter and put most of its focus on the “average” end result.

Of course, many families were able to negotiate the cultural changes successfully and continued to calmly set limits with their children while encouraging them to have egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles. Many others, however, were just feeling overcome by too much guilt to do that.        

The most devastating source of guilt: Many career women found that they were faced with considerable criticism about their choices in life from within their own families. The baby boomers, who were the first large wave of career women, had themselves been raised by parents from the World War II “greatest” generation. This earlier generation of women had been, on the whole, raised to conform to the old female gender role stereotypes. 

They were taught that they supposed to be totally fulfilled by being nothing but wives and mothers, as their mothers had been before them. However, as I described in the post of 9/21/11, unlike their own mothers, some of these women had had a taste of career fulfillment during the war, but had to give it up at the end of the war. 

Since these women had been raised from birth to believe in the old roles, they accepted their fate, at least on the outside. Inside, many of them subconsciously resented having to give up the excitement of their careers. Some carried this covert resentment with them for the rest of their lives. As parents are wont to do, they tried to vicariously experience what they were missing through their children. 

When they had daughters, they often pushed the girls to go out and get what had been denied to them – a satisfying career. Perhaps it was no accident that the baby boom generation was at the forefront of the feminist movement of the1960’s. Feminism had been an undercurrent in society for decades before then, but “women’s lib” virtually exploded.

As the female boomers hobnobbed with one another and talked among themselves about how women could now do anything they wanted, many faced a rather disturbing negative reaction from both of their parents when they spoke about this at home. The parents would suddenly become hostile and/or withdrawn, sometimes for no apparent reason.

Many male boomers, on the other hand, were the objects of some strange reactions from their parents as well. They had started to realize that sharing the burdens of being the family breadwinner was not such a bad idea after all. However, their fathers seemed to think less of them if they were not dominant over their wives, especially if they earned less money than their wives. 

In the meantime, some of their mothers acted helpless and dependent around them at times, but because of the mothers’ covert resentment at males for keeping them from pursuing careers, emasculated the sons who tried to take care of them in any way. 

For example, one of my patients told of an incident in which his World War II generation grandmother fell in the bathroom and broke her hip. When my patient tried to come to her aid, she refused to unlock the bathroom door. She said that she "did not want to be a bother."

These parents were not being mean-spirited when they acted like this. The parents had grown up with certain gender role expectations and believed in them. They also worried, because of their own experiences, that successful women might have a difficult time finding a mate. They believed that men would find feminists too aggressive, and in any event would be threatened by any female who might be too able to manage her own life and finances without a husband. 

These fears were stoked to near hysteria among both the boomers and their parents by a story in Newsweek in 1986, since discredited, which purported to show that college-educated women who were still single at the age of 35 had only a 5 percent chance of ever getting married.

More important than the possible reactions of male chauvinist peers, the parents of the boomers, just like their children, worried about what might happen to their grandchildren if one of their parents were not in the home to raise them as much as in past generations. How would such children fare in life?

In addition to this concern, a covert but pernicious issue lurked in the back of the minds of a significant number of the former riveting Rosies. When their daughters became successful in business, the mothers were reminded of what they themselves had given up right after the war. They had pretended for many years that having given up their jobs was really no big deal to them. Some became quiet, some became depressed, and others became actively critical of their daughters’ ambitions, especially when grandchildren came into the picture.

Boomer females were extremely confused by their parents’ mixed message that seemed to say to them, “I’m so proud of you for your career success, but stop doing what you’re doing.” Many were left with a highly unsettling feeling caused by this strange lack of support. They wanted and planned to go on with their careers, but somehow they did not feel quite right about it. They became somewhat confused about exactly what their role in life should look like. 

Men found that they were criticized by their girl friends if they opened a car door for a woman - or if they did not. Accompanying the role confusion for both sexes was the nagging, unnamed sense of guilt about their children that was mentioned above, which was then further increased by the other cultural developments.

Paradoxically, the existence of parental guilt of this magnitude had effects on parenting behavior that may be the real reason why children of two career families do slightly worse on average than those with stay-at-home mothers. Changes in parenting styles driven by guilt are probably far more destructive to children than the fact that both parents are working per se.

All of this confusion and ambivalence created two different groups of women who, while superficially polar opposites from one another, shared the exact same conflict. One group had careers but covertly envied the stay-at-home mothers, while a second group stayed at home with their children but covertly envied the career women. The latter group also had quite secret - or so they thought – deep-seated urges to escape the drudgery of doing housework and shuttling children around all day long.

Many parents in two career families worried covertly but obsessively that they were short-changing their own children. Some stay-at-home mothers, on the other hand, subconsciously worried that their hidden resentment over their burdens and their choices in life might adversely affect their children. In response, both of these groups began to monitor their children carefully or any sign of distress that might indicate even the slightest parental failing. A good percentage of them became so obsessed with their children that they spent every spare moment with them, often at the expense of their marriages.

This popular Facebook meme advocates gross over-parenting, and following this advice often leads to disastrous results.

For the career women, the guiltier they felt, the more concerned they became with turning any time they did spend with their children into “quality time.” They tried to make up for their frequent absences to their children by catering to their every whim. The stay-at-home mothers began to do the exact same thing. They also became overcome with guilt as their resentment over the perceived drudgery of their life, as well as their hidden desires to escape from it, built up over time.

Everything that happened in the home began to center around the children. John Rosemond’s nightmare world of non-traditional parenting was born.

Freddie the Freeloader and Minnie the Moocher Update

In my post of August 10, 2012, Freddie the Freeloader and Minnie the Moocher, I described how family members often enable other family members – usually adult children but any family member really – to be deadbeat no-accounts who refuse to grow up, get jobs, and move out on their own. The Freddies and Minnies continue to mooch off of the enabling family member with that family member’s almost compulsive and enthusiastic cooperation - in many cases while simultaneously being criticized unmercifully by them all the while they are being enabled by them.

Well, if letters to advice columnists are any indication, this problem continues to expand in a variety of interesting ways. 2012 seems, in fact, to have been a banner year for Freddies and Minnies. Below are some examples of letters by concerned outsiders, and sometimes from the clueless enablers themselves, from the advice columns Dear Abby, Carolyn Hax, Ask Amy, and Annies’ Mailbox.

The root cause of this enabling in a majority of cases of such enabling is, IMO, parental guilt over having their own lives separate from their children in situations in which the enablers' own families of origin frown on individualistic pursuits.

I considered turning this post into a game of Are the Freddies/Minnies just doing what is expected of them by their enablers, or are they in fact mentally ill? That issue came up in some of the letters. I decided against doing this because it would not be much of a game. None of the Freddies and Minnies described in these letters is bipolar!!

I apologize in advance for the length of the post. I like to illustrate all the different ways a phenomenon I discuss can present itself (and also illustrate how common it is), but they all do kinda boil down to the same thing. Read as few or as many of these 35 [!] letters as hold your interest.

1.      1/19/12.  Dear Annie: I am in a relationship with a widower. He is a thoughtful person and works two jobs. His two adult sons live in his home with their girlfriends. Neither of the boys pays rent. Nor do they buy groceries or cleaning supplies. They never offer to take their father out to dinner or do anything special for him. Their father buys their vehicles and pays their insurance. The house is in shambles. The boys' only responsibility is to take the trash to the dump and mow the yard in the summer. They do this grudgingly and not very well. The boys show little respect for their father. They leave beer bottles and dirty dishes all over the kitchen and their shoes, dirty clothes and trash all over the house. No one cleans a bathroom or vacuums a floor. They are busy working out, doing what they want with their friends or going out drinking. One of the girlfriends is always broke and looking for a handout, but she has money to get hammered every weekend. She doesn't lift a finger around the house and has the nerve to tell my boyfriend what he needs to buy to make her more comfortable.  My boyfriend thinks that this is normal behavior and that I am the one with the problem. He believes it is his responsibility to take care of them, because they don't have "good" jobs that pay a lot of money. He would never kick them out.  We don't live together and never will under these circumstances. My boyfriend reads your column every day. Will you tell him I'm not the only one who thinks this situation stinks? — Kick 'Em Out!

2.      1/25/12.  Dear Annie: I have two sisters. They never have been financially savvy, especially when it comes to saving money. They start and then decide it's a waste of time and end up spending everything they set aside. I'm the opposite. I have always saved for whatever I needed or wanted. My grandfather got me into the habit when I was 10, and I kept it up long after he passed away. Over the past 15 years, I managed to save quite a bit. But when my parents saw what I had, they demanded that I share it with my sisters. I absolutely refuse. This is my money. I earned it. I saved it. And I told them that. Since then, I've been receiving messages from my parents that "families help each other out" and "families share." My parents have always given my sisters money whenever they needed it. When I was in high school, I would always give them money when they needed it. Now that the folks are retired, they say it's my job to help my sisters. I say it's not. Why should I give them my hard-earned income because they can't be frugal? I feel as though I am being punished for being financially responsible. My sisters haven't saved a dime toward their own retirements, so this is only going to get worse. What can I do? — Stuck in the Middle

3.      2/7/12.  Dear Annie: After 40 years of marriage, my wife came home from work one day and said she was leaving. I decided then that I would never marry again. Four years ago, I met "Lynn." Now, of course, I am madly in love with her. She never ceases to amaze me with her big heart and infectious smile. She accepts that I don't want to marry, but I have noticed that when someone gets engaged, her mood changes dramatically. She becomes depressed and cries, and I can see the hurt in her face. I've decided I do want to marry Lynn, but the problem is her 20-year-old son, "Mike." He is bipolar and uses that as an excuse to sleep all day and play video games all night. He once said he can't get the mail because he is bipolar. He lives with multiple friends, each of whom eventually kicks him out because he won't help out and he steals from them. When Mike lived with Lynn, he stole from her, screamed at her, snuck out at night and got into legal trouble. They went to counseling together, and Lynn was on serious depression medicines until Mike moved out. When Mike calls, Lynn breaks out in a nervous rash. Mike stayed here for two weeks last year and hacked my computer, watched porn all night and stole from us. Lynn and I are scared to death that he will run out of housing options and she will have to take him in. My heart says to marry Lynn, but my head doesn't want to take on the issues with Mike. What do I do? — Confused

4.      2/28/12.  Dear Annie: My wife and I have been married for 20 years. She has a grown daughter from her first marriage. I watched "Lori" grow up and love her as my own. My wife always has been fiercely defensive of Lori. I can't say anything remotely negative or critical about her without risking a big argument. Even the suggestion of having Lori help around the house or clean up her room would cause a fight. Lori is a good kid, but she has never wanted for anything. My wife makes no secret of the fact that Lori comes first in her life. Lori is now in her early 20s and is a senior in college. Even though she is taking only two classes a week, she doesn't have a job and is unmotivated to get one. My wife makes all kinds of excuses for her. Meanwhile, we pay all of her expenses, including her rent. I'm disabled and on a small fixed income, and my wife is self-employed. We struggle with our finances while Lori lives a carefree life. It is causing friction in our marriage. We tried counseling, but my wife refused to discuss anything related to Lori and quit going. Lori calls her mother every hour, and my wife encourages it. Lori has no other friends, and all of my wife's attentions are focused on her daughter. I get very little. Is this normal behavior? — Concerned for Our Future

5.      3/18/12. Dear Annie: When I married my wife last summer, her son was living in the basement with no intention of getting a job. "Terence" is 23 and not exactly bright. We tried offering advice to help him move forward with his life, but he likes things his way. My wife excuses this, saying it's his generation's lifestyle. She told me her co-worker's daughter moved back home with her husband and baby, and they accept it. I know there are a lot of parents in the same situation. Terence has decided he wants to move back to a town where he used to have friends, but my wife still wants to support him. So she is willing to continue paying for his car insurance, rent, spending money and trips to fast-food restaurants. He doesn't save a nickel. As soon as he gets money, he spends it. I get the impression that my wife doesn't want to cut the apron strings. Terence likes having his mother support him. Money isn't the issue. It's that we won't be around forever, and at this rate, I don't see him ever growing up. He'll be the same when he's 50. Counseling seems useless. I've been married with stepkids before. They didn't want me in their lives and acted as if they knew everything. Am I wrong to expect young adults to be independent? I love my wife, but she wants me to be quiet and not say anything. — Perplexed and Stifled

6.      3/19/2012.  Dear Abby: My brother has systematically taken over my parents' lives for the past 20 years. He uses his depression and agoraphobia as an excuse not to lead his own life. He lives on government disability payments, and the majority of his support comes from my parents, whom he lives with and mooches off of. He doesn't help them around the house or contribute in any way. He refuses to get treatment for his disorders. How can I help my parents finally be free of him? They are fast approaching 70 years old. Talking to my brother is useless, as he becomes extremely hostile and threatens to kill himself. My parents deserve some rest at their age. -- Anonymous in NYC.

7.      3/31/12.   Dear Abby: My cousin "Carla" just had a baby. She's in her early 20s, unemployed and living in a condo her parents bought her so she won't be homeless. Her deadbeat boyfriend lives with her. They smoke pot and love to party, although Carla has abstained since she got pregnant.  When I received an invitation to her baby shower, I declined. I don't think her having a baby is a good thing, and I didn't feel comfortable celebrating this "good" news. I have not offered my opinion on the subject, but when my sister asked me why and I told her, she called me selfish. Do you think she is right? -- Principled cousin

8.      4/6/12.  Dear Amy: I have been married to a wonderful man for the last four years. We are both in our 60s. Recently, his 23-year-old son moved back into the house we share. He has a part-time job and goes to school two days a week. His dad is putting him through school and spends money on groceries. My problem is that my husband is lenient with him and is letting him get away with things. I wrote down a few house rules that needed to be followed. Since he has moved in with us, he hasn't done things his dad has asked him to do. He comes up with a lot of excuses, but he spends time with his friends. On one occasion, he spent three days not leaving his bedroom because he didn't want to do what we asked. I have asked my husband to be firm dealing with him. My husband keeps ignoring my pleas, and the sad thing is that he wants me to get some help because I am bothered by his son's behavior. How can I encourage him to be firm with his son?! I don't want him to grow up to be irresponsible. -  Desperate

9.      4/23/12.  Dear Abby: My wife and I are 50-year-old professionals who have paid every penny of the cost for our two daughters' four-year college educations. Our oldest, "Lana," went on to law school and has incurred well in excess of $100,000 in law school loan debt. She has struggled to find a job as an attorney, and I'm no longer sure she still wants to practice law. Lana is married to a medical student who also has significant student loan debt. Two nights ago I made the mistake of telling Lana that her mother and I would help her pay off her student loans. I regret having opened my mouth. She and her husband spend their money on frivolous luxuries and are not responsible financially.  My wife and I live frugally. We withdrew money from our retirement accounts to help fund our daughters' college educations. We now need to increase our retirement contributions and pay for maintenance and repairs to our home that we delayed while paying for their tuition. Although we have always helped our children financially, we can no longer afford to trade our future financial security and our present standard of living to support them. I would appreciate some advice. This may be an issue affecting a lot of parents at this time. -- Spoke too soon

10.  4/24/12. Dear Annie: "At the End of Our Rope" described a common problem: having a young adult child who does drugs, still lives at home and doesn't work. A friend dealt with this well. When their son was 19, they refused to let him live at home unless he found a job or went back to school and took a drug test once a week. He refused and was ousted, although he was allowed to come home to eat, shower and do laundry. After a year of sleeping on friends' couches and in his car, he was arrested for DUI. It took several more months before he finally agreed to the drug testing and found a job. This young man now rides his bike to work, tests clean and is building his life again. — It Can Work

11.  5/10/12.  Dear Annie: My 25-year marriage is falling apart. My husband's 40-year-old daughter, "Sally," has been living with us for eight months. She occasionally buys a few groceries, but otherwise pays nothing. She does no work around the house. I've asked her to help clean the shared bathroom. She says she doesn't think she should have to do any cleaning because she doesn't mess anything up. She uses the bathtub more than we do and has all kinds of junk in there. She says her father also has stuff in there, so it's my job to clean it. I refuse.  Meanwhile, my husband says Sally is right. He agrees that she shouldn't have to do any work around the house because she has a full-time job. (We are retired.) She also never cleans up after herself in the kitchen and doesn't help with the dishes after eating the dinner I cook. This is causing major problems between my husband and me. He isn't interested in counseling. What can I do about Sally? — A Sad Marriage

12.  5/16/12.  Dear Carolyn: My 46-year-old, divorced son is working full time and lives within walking distance of me in his own apartment. To compare, his 50-year-old, divorced sister who works full-time also lives within walking distance in her own apartment. She is independent and lives responsibly. We all three get along quite well about most things, but my son has shown limited financial responsibility. He plays the slot machines at a local casino and spends extra money on social drinking and in pursuit of women. He spends the money to show off as if he actually had the money to spare.My sole income is Social Security, and I have to pay my normal monthly living expenses. My son, who earns twice what I do, has no money left over nearly every payday. He then goes without decent food and other necessities. Too many paydays he asks if I can buy him some food and has even borrowed money for his rent. I’ve always told him he needs to be responsible, but he just gets defensive and confrontational. How can I tell him that I cannot afford to bail him out anymore and that he has to start right now taking ownership of his finances? As his mother, I just can’t let my son go hungry — he’s still my “little boy.” - Exasperated Mom

13.  5/21/12. Dear Annie: My brother and sister and I had an amazing childhood. Our parents stressed the importance of hard work and education. The three of us got advanced degrees, and my sister and I entered the workforce after graduation. Our brother, "Dennis," however, seems content to live with my parents, working a seasonal minimum-wage job. He was unable to find employment when he graduated and has not bothered to look since. That was seven years ago. My parents do not charge him rent. They cook for him and take him on weekend excursions. They pay a portion of his student loan bills. Dennis doesn't seem to have any ambition to move forward. It has created a lot of resentment. The last time I saw Dennis, he made a snarky comment when I revealed that I was a month behind in my mortgage payment. I was amazed at his nerve, and it resulted in no contact between us for almost a year. Resentment is also building toward my parents for continuing to allow him to mooch off of them. They are now in their 60s and nearing retirement. They deserve better. And I admit that I'm a bit jealous that Dennis gets handed to him the same things my sister and I have to work so hard for. I will be bringing my fiance to visit my parents for the first time, and we will be staying with them. I'm already dreading it. My fiance says to bite my tongue, that it's my parents' decision. But every time I see them, I notice how they have aged. Any suggestions? — Frustrated in Ft. Worth

14.  June 21, 2012.  Dear Annie: I am engaged to a man who was divorced 20 years ago. He has three grown sons. The first two are doing well, but the third is still not financially responsible at the age of 30. His father has to pay off his automobile and credit cards. My fiance also helps out his siblings, who seem to be quite irresponsible and alcoholic. I come from a large family, and we each were told that at age 21, we were on our own. We all obtained professional degrees and now help our parents. At what age does a parent allow a child to grow up and become responsible? It appears to me that my future will be forever intertwined with relatives who are begging us for money. My fiance won't discuss this matter with me. What should I do? — Engaged but Having Second Thoughts

15.  6/22/12.  Dear Abby  My husband and I separated two years ago. For the past year, I have been dating one man exclusively. We have a wonderful relationship that has great potential. Never have there been two people with more in common. There is one problem. I have no children and he has three. Two are adults -- responsible, good people. The youngest, "Erik," is 18, and he's the problem. He dropped out of school, doesn't work, refuses to even try to find a job and doesn't have a driver's license. Erik has stolen money from me and also from his father to buy drugs and alcohol. Basically, the kid is good for nothing. He doesn't even have any friends left. My boyfriend realizes his son's problems, but has essentially given up on him. I can't blame him. It has reached the point where I can't even stand to be around the kid. It doesn't look like he'll ever get a life and move on. Please tell me what to do. -- At a loss in Nova Scotia

16.  6/24/12.  DEAR ABBY: My mother-in-law, "Lisa," is 50 and married to husband No. 5. I'll call him "Steve." He is 38. (Lisa's son is 31.) The problem isn't the age difference. It's the fact that her husband refuses to hold a steady job. Steve is often "between jobs" for six to eight months at a crack. Lisa had a job with the same company for 28 years and has a very nice income. My husband and I are sick of seeing Steve mooching off his mom. He drives around in a new truck, dresses well, has a nice place to live and anything else he wants -- all at my mother-in-law's expense. Abby, she retired recently, and Steve is spending her retirement money faster than it's coming in. What can we do to get rid of this bum? -- Bummed out in Georgia

17.  6/29/12. Dear Annie: I have been with "Jim" for eight years. We are in our 40s and have been through a lot together. When I moved in with him three years ago, two of his kids lived with their mother, and the older boy was in prison. I was supportive of Jim's visits to "Lloyd" and also wrote letters myself. Lloyd got out of prison 18 months ago and was paroled to our home. He is not supposed to frequent bars, but his drinking has increased, and he constantly violates the terms of his parole. Two months ago, he was arrested for public intoxication and spent the weekend in jail. He had to wear an ankle monitor for 30 days. Lloyd refuses to abide by our curfew. He wakes us up when he strolls in drunk at 3 a.m. Twice he left the refrigerator open and let the food spoil. He has kicked in our front door and broken numerous things, and now items have been disappearing. We've given Lloyd chance after chance. We pay all of his bills, including the one for his cellphone service. I've told Jim that Lloyd needs to respect our rules or find somewhere else to live. Jim keeps telling Lloyd to straighten up, but there are never any repercussions, so it never happens. I'm exhausted and can't take much more. I don't want to ruin my relationship with Jim. How do I proceed from here? — Lost in Love

18.  7/13/12. Dear Amy: Our adult son has a drug problem. Family and friends are aware of this because he has been in rehab and has had long periods of sobriety. He is a good person when he is not using drugs. But like all addicts, he will do what he needs to do to get drugs when he is using.  He has stolen from us, and we have responded by not allowing him into our home. We have not allowed him to live here for years, but when he is doing well, we allow him to visit and begin to trust him. Recently, he stole from us again. We are coping with it, but I am wondering what to say to family and close friends who inquire about him. I don't really want to tell truthful details, because I am embarrassed and I still have hope that someday he will be clean for good. I don't want people to remember this about him. What could one say to be truthful but not share details? Are we enabling? — Distressed Mother

19.  7/18/12.  Dear Annie: My husband's 35-year-old daughter, "Effie," has a college degree, but has never held a job. My husband sends Effie most of his Social Security check each month and also pays her credit card bills, which means he is now in debt to the tune of $10,000. When Effie visits, she makes a mess of the house and is disrespectful to me. She somehow manages to take several vacations a year. Now she wants my husband to foot the bill for an expensive wedding, and he's agreed. He also agreed to continue supporting her after she marries. Because the wedding is in our state, Effie wants to stay in our house for several weeks before the wedding. I don't think I can take it. My husband is entirely in her corner and believes his relationship with her is perfectly normal. He's been unwell, and I hate making things worse for him, but I can't hold in this anger and disappointment much longer. I keep asking myself whether I'd be better off without him, but I don't know the answer. — Torn in Tallahassee

20.  7/20/12.  Dear Amy: I have a friend who is 72 years old with three grown children. Two of her children constantly ask her for money to make mortgage payments, buy cars, furniture, pay for their vacations, pay for their children's birthday parties and even to send their children to expensive private schools. These two adult children do not have full-time jobs, are lazy, selfish and take advantage of their mother. I see the pain on my friend's face when she tells me about a phone call from one of them asking for more money. I would like to suggest that she say "no" to them, knowing that it would be for their own good to start being more independent and knowing that she is depleting the money that her late husband left her. I would like to suggest tough love. Should I? — Sad for my Friend

21.  8/6/12.  Dear Abby  I need some advice about my girlfriend "Vivian's" son. "Kirk" is 22 and very immature. I love Vivian with all my heart, and I get upset when Kirk verbally abuses her. I try not to say anything because I feel it's not my place because he's not my son. Kirk hasn't worked in two years. He walks into his mother's house and takes whatever he wants -- food, toothpaste, rolls of toilet paper, etc. He won't help her around the house, mow the lawn or wash a dirty dish he has used. And he lives rent-free in one of the duplexes his mother bought for additional income.  Vivian is a wonderful woman who is hard-working and self-supporting. She's also tired of her son's lack of motivation and how he takes her for granted. I know a mother doesn't want to see her child go hungry, but where do you draw the line? -- Fed up in TX

22.  8/18/12. Dear Annie: What do you do with a sibling who has been enabled all of his life when Mom is no longer around to provide for him?  My brother has had a house to live in, a car to drive, insurance, etc., for the past 25 years. He is an alcoholic and a drug user. He doesn't work because he doesn't want to. He has an all-expenses-paid life. When my mother dies, how do we settle the estate? If the house is given to my brother, he would lose it because he has no concept of paying bills. My sister thinks we should sell the place, give my brother his share and move on. My mother is 82 years old and in poor health. She will be leaving us a huge mess when she passes, but she refuses to discuss it now. — Help Me Plan

23.  9/7/12. Dear Annie: My older sister, "Susie," is 33 and has been receiving financial support from my parents for more than a decade. They give her money outright and also pay her car insurance, health insurance and other bills. Susie does not work. She's in a master's program, but it is unclear whether she will finish. My mother believes she needs to help Susie, as she has had mental illness issues throughout her adulthood. I am not upset that Susie is receiving money from my parents. It also doesn't bother me that I am not likely to receive similar assistance. But I worry that my parents are giving Susie no reason to finish her degree or pursue a job. I consider it enabling. On several occasions, Susie has maxed out her credit cards, and my mother paid those off. My parents do not have the money to continue doing this. Is it appropriate to speak with them about this? - What To Do?

24.  9/15/12.  Dear Annie: When can we stop giving our children money? When is enough enough? My daughter and her husband are in their mid-30s. They bought a house they could not afford. On top of that, they are in the middle of filing for bankruptcy, as they have been overspending for years. My daughter works two jobs that provide neither a consistent paycheck nor benefits. Her husband's job is more stable, but his salary is low. At one point, we gave her one of our used cars, which she was able to keep running for a couple of years. When that car died, I took money out of my retirement fund to buy her a used car. My son-in-law's mother just bought them a new oven. My question is: When does all this stop? I worked for 30 years and never once asked my mother for money. I'm tired of doing and doing for them. At what point can a parent stop taking on the problems of their children? — Resenting Parent

25.  9/18/12.  Dear Annie: I am engaged to an intelligent, beautiful, loving woman. We both work full time and see eye-to-eye on just about everything. However, we are becoming increasingly frustrated with her four kids when it comes to doing their laundry, putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher, walking the dog, etc. If a trashcan is overflowing, they simply pile more on top of it instead of taking it outside. These kids are between 13 and 21. We want them to take responsibility for their actions and take pride in their home. We have tried making lists and assigning tasks, punishments and rewards, to no avail. During our most recent conversation with the kids, one said, "It's too difficult to remember." Another said, "You can't make us do it." Two of these kids are working. Any suggestions? — Frustrated in the Midwest

26.  9/28/12.  DEAR ABBY: I recently married a wonderful man, and I like my in-laws very much. They're nice, welcoming people and we get along well. There's just one problem: They are the biggest enablers I have ever met! With my husband it isn't a big deal because he's very self-sufficient. On the other hand, his 30-year-old brother has lived with them for three years. He is jobless and has a drinking problem. His parents don't encourage him to look for work. They give him an allowance, pay all his court costs and drive him around because he got a DUI. They even pay his cellphone bill. What is my place in all of this? Should I say anything? My fear is that when my husband's parents die, his brother will become our problem. -- Looking ahead in Colo.

27.  10/15/12. Dear Amy: My daughter seems upset with me because she perceives that I give my other daughter (her sister) too much help. She does not want to discuss it, so at this point her feelings and concerns are unknown. The first daughter is married, with a home and a full-time job with health benefits and a retirement plan. She has two children who are also married. They have jobs and are self-supporting. The second daughter is divorced, rents and is unemployed. She also has two children, but neither is married or employed. Her children use drugs and have leeched every available cent from their mother. Over the past few years I have helped the second daughter with apartment rental guarantees (she has always paid all the rent). I bought her several cars averaging $3,000 a piece. I helped her children (before drugs) with cars that the first daughter's children have not needed. I think the first daughter should be thankful she has a strong financial future and does not need help, rather than be enraged with sibling jealousy. When the conversation finally comes up, what could I say to the "prodigal daughter's" sister? — Upset Mother

28.  10/16/12. Dear Annie: Our son graduated from college more than two years ago. He has not looked for a job, nor does he have a resume. He claims that he can't put a resume together because he didn't participate in any school activities and has no job experience, although he has done quite a bit of volunteer work at his church. He spends much of his time playing video games. Currently, he plays all night. He goes to bed when other people are just waking up and then sleeps until late afternoon.  We have never pushed him hard. He helps some around the house, but my wife and I like to do things ourselves. Our son is intelligent and moral, does not drink or smoke, and is well liked. But I worry about his lack of ambition. He refuses to talk to a counselor to determine whether something is holding him back. I've told him that unless he shows some initiative, he eventually will be too old for anyone to want to hire him. He doesn't want any of the part-time jobs that are easily available, because he says he cannot learn anything from them. I've said he should at least show he is willing to work. Do you have any suggestions? — Frustrated Dad

29.  10/21/12.  Dear Carolyn: After graduating from art school in 2008, my daughter, now 26, worked an assortment of odd jobs before landing a job at an art gallery late last year. I’ve been giving her $2,500 a month to help cover her living expenses but I feel like she should be able to shoulder more of her own expenses, given what she earns. There always seems to be some unexpected expense that crops up, though, preventing me from cutting back my support. To make matters worse, she and a co-worker are fed up with the boss and now want to quit and open up their own art gallery. The co-worker apparently would be able to secure financial backing. My daughter would work as director. I want to retire, but my retirement income would not be enough to support both me and my daughter. Meanwhile, I feel that after a lifetime of support, including college costs and a new car, I’ve done enough. But if she fails, then she might have to move back in with me, which would be an intolerable situation. So I feel stuck. Any suggestions? — Sad Dad

30.  11/10/12.  Dear Amy: Many times you have advised engaged couples who are facing possible deal-breaking issues (usually involving other family members) that unless they are both prepared to put their marriage at the center of their lives, they should not tie the knot. How about married couples who are faced with issues later during their marriage?  I am 66 and 12 years into my second marriage. The past six years have revolved around my 25-year-old stepson’s heroin addiction, related felony convictions, sex-offender conviction, prison sentences and parole violations. My wife has centered our life on her son and in my opinion is his greatest enabler, with no signs of change in the future. I love this woman and want to spend the rest of my life with her. Before marrying, I agreed that she and her son were a package deal. That was when he was a child (his father had died). Who could have seen this coming? However, I am done with the daily drama. I feel he is long overdue to take responsibility for his choices and actions. I want to feel our marriage is at the center of our lives. I have not felt this in six years. I feel I’m being selfish in wanting my life back. We have been to numerous counselors only to end the sessions at the slightest hint that the marriage should be of prime importance. We’ve talked of divorce, and I guess that’s where we are heading. Do you have any wisdom? -- Sad Stepdad

31.  11/18/12. Dear Abby: My parents are in their 80s. I have two brothers. "Pete," the oldest, is in his 50s and lives with them. "Dave" lives next door. My parents support them both financially. Neither one works or even tries to find a job. Both of them are addicted to meth, and one is hooked on prescription pills as well. My parents know it but enable them by paying their bills. Pete and Dave steal and blame each other or any innocent family member who comes to visit. My parents are in total denial. There is major drug use going on every day, as well as potential violence. Pete and Dave threaten to shoot people all the time. Part of me understands it's none of my business, and I have no desire to be around such dysfunction. The other part of me is furious and wants to put a stop to them using my parents. If I offer suggestions to my parents -- such as cutting off Pete and Dave -- they get mad at me! I'm ready to sever all ties because there's no stopping this train wreck. I think my parents actually enjoy paying for my two 50-something brothers so they can stay high, never grow up and always be dependent. Any advice? -- No name in the Southwest

32.  11/25/12.  Dear Amy: We are retired and have a very small home. Our child, who is close to 50, went through a divorce and told us she was moving back home. She has been with us for almost six months. She does nothing except sit with her laptop all day, every day. She has no job or means of transportation. She refuses to take the bus, taxi or anything but our auto. She has doctors, dental and other medical appointments that we take her to. We are tired of being a chauffeur, cook, house cleaner, etc. When we try to talk to her about a job or plans to find her own living space, she starts shouting, shedding tears, bullying and arguing. What would be your suggestion to help us? We can get nowhere and could use some help. Help us get our home back! — Upset Parents

33.  12/2/12. Dear Amy: I have a sister I love dearly, except for one thing: She is a total pushover when it comes to her kids. Her oldest son is 38 years old, lives at home, has no job, runs all night and sleeps all day. He has three children by two women that he is not supporting in any way. Lately, he has brought a new girlfriend into the mix, her new baby (by another man) and her dog that pees all over the house. My sister has a daughter (32 years old) who also lives there with her daughter and her dog as well. And my sister has a dog. None of these ingrates contributes to the household expenses. We have the same conversation over and over again, and I just can’t do it anymore. She refuses to throw anybody out, especially now with the weather getting cold. I say make them responsible for themselves. I have tried all the avenues I can think of to help. I just hate how they take advantage of her, but I hate even more how she lets them. Any advice? -- Disappointed Sister

34.  12/28/12.  Dear Annie: I can relate to "S.W. in California," the father who had a falling out with his daughter and she cut off contact. In response, he took her out of his will.  My husband and I have traveled this road with our adult children. Some young adults are simply selfish and ungrateful. They expect their parents to tolerate everything they do (even drugs), allow their friends into the home (even drug pushers and felons), give them money at the drop of a hat (even when the parents are struggling financially), and allow them to use their home as a hotel or storage facility. If the parents don't cooperate, the kids punish them by being abusive or keeping the grandkids away. I am tired of being treated so poorly. I have loved unconditionally, and in return, I've received disrespect and a broken heart. My job is done. — Indiana Mom

35.  1/1/13.  Dear Amy: I have a 22-year-old stepson who is immature and irresponsible. He has been attending classes at a community college for four years and has yet to earn a degree! He spent some of his financial aid money last year to buy his girlfriend an engagement ring. (His fiance's mother has now let him move into her home.) He needed $500 worth of repairs for his car, and instead of fixing it he went out and bought a $3,000 car with financial aid money. That car broke down in a week. He took out a student loan for $8,000 because he needed money to pay off his credit cards. After all this, he borrowed $600 from his grandma for school supplies and she called my husband saying she needed her $600 back, so my husband paid her back, but did not require his son to repay us! What should we do? My husband states we should do nothing because his son is grown and can make his own decisions. He says he has talked with his son and he won't listen, so he has to suffer the consequences of his decisions and actions. I think he needs some tough love and I have told my husband that the only times his son should be given money from us is for his birthday. — Shaking My Head