To think adult children are becoming more entitled?

[Lamentingalways]

Can I ask that this isn’t posted on Facebook please as it quite outing? Thank you!

I’m not sure that entitled is quite the right word but I am wondering if any others (particularly interested in the view points from people that have children in their 20’s) have noticed this.

I feel like we’ve moved forward hugely as a society in that we can name our emotions, put boundaries in place and recognise personality traits. I am glad our children learn these things he in school but it does feel (to me) that many of these young adults look at the way they were parented quite dimly and it feels as though their expectations are quite entitled and frankly ludicrous. Is it perhaps because many if them haven’t experienced how hard parenting actually is? Or perhaps this is unique to me although I do see lots of posts on social media
where young adults are complaining about what I would consider a parent doing their best during that time.

My daughter is late 20’s, I was a young Mum but I always worked and arranged for my family to take care of her when needed. I didn’t really drink, didn’t smoke, there was always food in the cupboard, meals were made, there was a warm, safe roof over her head. She had clean clothes, I paid for any school trip she requested even after I became a single Mum, t told her I loved her every day and still do every time I see her. I certainly am not perfect and have made mistakes I’m sure but I genuinely did my best and I think looking at other parents it wasn’t a bad life I gave her. We always had little holidays, she had good school attendance etc (which doesn’t happen by accident). I never had to give harsh punishments because she was a well behaved child and we talked about things so it never felt necessary.

Let me say I am very proud of her and I love her very much, I won’t tell her I feel this way because she would be upset and I will never fall out with her. But I feel that she is quite ungrateful. She makes little comments to me sometimes when she is with her OH that feel unwarranted, she will talk about anything negative that happened and I’m serious when I say these are seriously small things like I snapped at her or I got annoyed that she wouldn’t do something that I asked her to. She is quite condescending sometimes as if I am an idiot.she implied I was wearing the wrong size shoes quite recently (I wasn’t, it is brand that has unusual sizing and they fit perfectly) I certainly am not an idiot, I’m getting b older so sometimes might forget something but I work in a professional field, drive, have an owned home and have younger children. You know from the outside I’ve got my shit together so to speak (inside is a different matter but I hide that well) She chose to move somewhere that is a 35 minute drive from me which is absolutely fine and really no big deal but I do have 2 school runs a day to do and younger children to take care of so it was never going to be conducive to me seeing her all the time when we both work and have commitments. I want her to live wherever she wants to but I think she maybe resents that I don’t visit her more, she hasn’t said that but once made a comment that implies that’s how she feels. One of the problems with that is when I ask her to do anything she assumes I will pay. It doesn’t matter what the activity is she stands next to me and watches me pay. She doesn’t say thank you, she doesn’t offer to pay and doesn’t offer to send me the money. If her partner is there he offers or orders separately so I’m.not sure why she feels quite so entitled when she is alone with me. The other thing is, whilst I don’t see her as often as perhaps her MIL does (all her children have left home and she lives around the corner) it does mean that I never interfere, I have never once told her I disagree with her decisions etc where as MIL does, there’s something to be said for having a Mum that just says well done and lets you get on with whatever you please without judgement isn’t there? One year she didn’t send me a birthday card or present but did send a text. She never buys her Step Dad a birthday card and their relationship has been fine. I always make sure she and her partner have their card and present to open on their birthday whether I will be seeing them on the day or not, same at Christmas. Her step dad used to drive her around semi regularly, went to her when her car broke down, paid her phone bill etc. Of course I can’t list everything that feels disrespectful here but there are quite a few more examples of her almost feeling like I wasn’t / am not quite good enough for her but I genuinely tried my best and like I say I am fairly confident that it was a lot better than the children and young adults around her were getting.

So I guess what I am asking is have you noticed this if you have children around this age or is it quite unique to me? I’m not looking for advice as such (although I know some can’t help themselves) but I can promise you that I’m not hiding any massive trauma that occurred and I also know I should speak to her about it - I will but now isn’t the right time.

Totally agree. This is a phase OP. Some may say things are hard for young adults nowadays, but every time in history this has been the case for one reason or another.

I remember when I first offered to pay for something when I was with my parents. It took a lot longer than you might expect, but I had some really tricky years of not even being able to afford to buy food to myself when I was working. Plus, I was at university for a very long time.

I really didn’t understand how hard things were for my parents, and how much they did for us until I had children myself. God I used to go months without even calling my parents when I was in my 20s. I’m much better now and our relationship is changing still as I sometimes find myself looking after them. Your DD will change as she gets older.

As a PP said, I encouraged my kids to buy presents/cards for each other /us/ grandparents from around 10ish I think. But dd always organised ds, and he's terrible now at remembering and organising himself. We're always on at him... Last year he dashed to B&M on Christmas Eve and I had a whole pile of kitchen-related presents the next day! Some kids just take longer to mature/get themselves organised.

Nail on the head. Our DS has it incredibly hard compared to us back when we were in our 20's. Having to pay stupidly high rent/contribution towards utilities for a multiple occupancy tiny bedroom in a basement of a shared house with shared kitchen and bathroom - basically half his take home pay, and that's with him being a relatively high earner for his age, i.e. just over national average. He doesn't waste money, the rest goes on food, commuting costs, necessities such as clothes, a cheap hobby, etc. There's no way he can even start to think about saving for a deposit for buying his own home. Most of his non working time he's studying for professional exams.

We still do a lot for him, i.e. last year we bought him an iphone so he doesn't have a high monthly contract to pay. We bought him a gym membership. He didn't ask for that, we offered, in fact he never asks us for anything, but we can see he struggles. He can only come home 2 or 3 times a year as he can't afford the ruinously expensive train fares (even with "cheaper" advance tickets), so we offer to pay a couple of times a year too.

He has to carefully think about going on holiday with his friends, or going to events, or even going out for a meal or to the pub, as it's all so expensive. He doesn't want to get into debt, so pays off his credit card in full every month, which means he has to plan not to do anything expensive too often and forces himself to live within his means without debt.

We never lived like that back in our 20's in the 80's. Neither of us had high paying jobs, but we could go out to the pub, have day trips, etc without giving money a second thought as everything was so much cheaper (adjusted for inflation etc). The sad fact is prices have been rising far higher than wages for the past 10-20 years and it's squeezing people hard, especially younger workers at the start of their working lives, even moreso now that most decent jobs are in London/SE so youngsters have to move (and pay extortionate rents) just to get jobs in their chosen profession if their family home is out in the regions.

He worries about job security, he worries about his pension, he worries about how he will ever be free of the treadmill of paying extortionate rents and buy his own home. As for marriage and starting a family, it's simply not on his radar, as he knows he can't finance it. He tells us all his university flat mates and his current young work mates all feel the same. They feel like hamsters on a treadmill, working hard but getting nowhere.

Well done for trying to turn it into a pensioner bashing thread again.
If ops daughter is in her twenties op is not a "boomer" anyway.
You do it on every thread, what us wrong with you?

Yes.
I see elements of this in my olderdc. It gives me the rage.

My 27 year old son is a bit like this but I am very aware of his financials.hes hard working, I didn’t need to pay for Uni , he is however paying out almost 60% of his income on housing and bills in London and has split with his long term GF . He is however very greatful for any help

The intricacies of how things should be done compared to how it was a generation or 2 ago is huge and I think it’s difficult for parent of a certain age now to keep up and compete with the holier than thou standards of today. I’m sorry your daughter makes you feel this way, you sound lovely.

Ffs op is not a boomer and that has nothing to do with some young people assuming they are entitled to their parents money. I have 3 adult kids and 2 would never let me pay without an argument. The 3rd does not work due to his health so going out for food doesn't happen.

Have you ever just said what she is saying back to her. So she moans about you getting angry back when she was younger and you say

It seems like that really had an impact on you, do you want to talk about it.

If she says yes you can chat it through and hear her out and talk through your experiences as you raised here and help her make her peace with it, if she say no you can tell her it feels like a barb from your perspective and you’d prefer she wouldn’t bring it up again unless she wants to discuss it.

Nobody is going to like persistent, unexpected criticism without some form of resolution.

In your shoes I wouldn’t just put up with the petty comments unless they were an invitation towards a resolution of a past hurt.

She probably expects you to always pay because you do always pay.

next time don’t pay. Say something like ‘do you want to split the bill down the middle or just each pay for what we had?’

I think this is quite normal behaviour in your 20s, but I’d maybe expect her to at least offer from time to time and to be less reliant on you. It’s not your fault that she moved 35 mins away and she does need to respect your other responsibilities. It sounds a bit like she’s a bit entitled but without the full picture, I feel unable to make that judgement really. It is quite tough out there for young people.

I would maybe try talking to her about how you feel but very gently and maybe suggest free or inexpensive things to do together when you meet? It doesn’t always have to cost a lot of money.

I always find it interesting when generations compare one another - the conditions are quite different. Many adult children don’t move out as young as previous generations or may not have very high earning jobs, and therefore learn or aren’t able to be self sufficient later.

Is this about money, or her general attitude towards you OP? It’ll only get resolved either way by having a sensitive conversation with her. Bearing in mind if she’s already feeling or presenting as resentful, then do it gently as to not cause upset.

I saw similar with my late husband's adult children.

One time, we visited one of them and their partner. (We stayed at a B&B.) DH invited them out for a meal and asked them to suggest a restaurant.

The restaurant was lovely, but expensive. Fine.

DH told me to use his card to pay for the meal. (He was disabled following a stroke and I had a POA bank card. He had hemiparesis, so he walked with a stick and one hand didn't work.)

I went up to the bar/till to pay and found that the adult child was already there. "Oh, that's nice," I thought "They've decided to treat their dad."

Nope. They were ordering yet another bottle of expensive wine and putting it on the bill. The barman/waiter was visibly uncomfortable about it, to the extent that when I asked for the bill he asked "Is that all right?"

The booze bill was fairly eye-watering. We were both retired teachers. DH's mitigation was that the child and partner were used to putting things on expenses.

The child wasn't young, by the way - middle-aged.

In my family the older generation paid for meals. We didn’t actually go for many meals growing up but if we did it was because my gran was visiting and paid for it. I’m taking my sons away in Feb. The eldest is an adult. I’m paying for it so because I’m paying it has to be cheap. It’s 3 nights away to a cheap destination. I wouldn’t expect them to pay for meals/ holidays etc as it’s never been that way with my family. I own a house and they don’t. I have a really good pension and they don’t so I wouldn’t expect them to pay even though they have more disposable income than me. I don’t have lots of money so I just adjust what is affordable for us to do.

In your family if you want it to be that the adults pay for themselves (which is fair enough) then you need to tell them that. Or suggest cheap things. Eg can I pop in and see you for a cups tea? If she suggests lunch then say I don’t have much spare cash at the moment for lunch.

How on earth is she a boomer?

I have children this age and I'm very firmly into Gen X. My parents are boomers (so the child in this case's grandparents will be boomers not the OP).

Grow up.

I'll add that I am a late-end Boomer and I disagree that we could spend without worrying about it in the '80s. Maybe that was the case for some. I had to count every penny.

I think I learnt family/social etiquette things from older siblings. They modelled good behaviour to me and I noticed and copied. Things like

• Paying when going out with parents
• Visiting elderly relatives
• visiting family around the festive season
• bringing gifts for the host

And I'm sure plenty more. But I think without that example I would have been very self involved. No idea who taught them!

Yes, agree with these posts. My three are early 30s, all are buying houses with their partners, have decent jobs, worked since they were 16, saved their money and did quite a bit of self financed travelling etc.

However, late teenage through to late 20s, especially with the eldest, were a pain in the ar*e. We got all the complaints and accusations, the lack of communication and contact, assuming we were rolling in money and could pay for everything (we handed out small loans when we could, we're not well off), we tried to listen and offer emotional and moral support.

Yet now we still get incomprehension, I guess it's hard to understand what other people have gone through. All this talk of boomers, my parents were dead by the time I was 20, I had no time for sh*t, I had to hold down a steady job, learn to budget and accept that I couldn't afford everything I wanted. DH had parents but they weren't a family who spent money without thought, the kids were expected to work. Life is tough for most and it can take your whole life to appreciate it.

You either have manners or you don't, it would grate on me op, ask her why she thinks you should still pay for her like a child when she has her own home and is far past the age of adulthood.

Since working and living independently I've never even considered anyone else pays for me, I find it bizarre for her to have this expectation.

Well that didn't take long, did it.

I doubt if the op is a boomer if she has young children.

Consider how awfully this man has treated you and your daughter - and then assume he treats his mother just as awfully. If he’s living with her, he may well be bullying her and preventing her from attempting to contact you. The fact that she begged for a photo and cried when receiving it suggests so.
She is not him, don’t punish her for his actions. A grandmother can be a really special and valuable relationship to have.

I’m just glad it’s not just mine, I couldn’t have written this post almost word by word.

My theory is that not only DD being an only child (and me overcompensating) made her quite self involved, but it’s also some sort of defence mechanism reaction: it’s all “me me me” because that’s her of guaranteeing her share.

I only started worrying after she turned 18, DD was a lovely kid and I never had many issues with her. She have me quite a few headaches during HS but most teenagers do and never anything super outrageous. But it’s likely she just isn’t able to consider others around her (at home - outside I get absolutely showered with compliments about her!).

I’ve been feeling very run down and tired and she’s just not transitioning into adulthood very well, I feel like I still have a messy teenager at home even though she’s 22.

The latest is that she wants to move abroad and just assumed I’d move with her. I am in a relationship, I have a very settled job… I don’t know why she assumed this.

Early twenties are a pain, trying to separate from mum. My DD accused me of torturing her as a child by making her drink water. She grew out of it in her later twenties.

Well said.

My DS25 is not like OP’s daughter. He and GF offer to pay their share when we go out, although we’re able to treat them and we do.

Wr also made sure he understood that the house we have now is not what we first bought, although it’s the same address. He remembers some of the old version but not all. When they were house hunting both we and GF’s parents reminded them of what we managed with in terms of terrible kitchens, bathrooms, general decor, and how long it took us to get the improvements done.

Above all, I expect good manners and gratitude. He sees me model it when DF or PIL take us out for a meal.