to be getting irate at friends with adult DC who do not work?

[goldenteapot]

My DC are in their mid-late 20s and all in work - but are the exception among family and friends. They have around 12 cousins - none of whom have ever worked in so much as a local pub or shop, and all live in their parents' naice houses gaming all day. Lots have one or two degrees, so are not stupid by any means! I think statistically about 50% of young adults of this age that are not working - but among my family and friends it's very much higher.

It's a similar story with friends: every adult child is depressed or anxious and/or autistic so cannot work. The assumption seems to be that the jobs market is too difficult and their children can't cope. Conversation when we meet is all about how frustrated everyone is because they can't get their DC to work or do anything around the house.

I just want to shake them all! They are providing no tough love or reasons that these children will ever work and live independently.

AIBU to be losing my patience with everyone, or am I a bit of a bitch and working life really is too tough these days for young people?

Generally speaking, yes, and I agree we as a society need to understand the reasons young people are struggling so we can help them become productive members of society wherever possible. But I strongly disagree that anyone should be pushed into teaching or care work, both very demanding jobs in their own right, if they don't want to do it and/or aren't cut out for it. Shelf stacking or similar, different matter.

It’s all very ableist isn’t it? I fear this may happen to my children. They are bright and hardworking, but their disabilities mean they can’t work and succeed at school because the school work takes more work than for an abled child. They won’t have any work history beyond the odd work experience or summer internship when they graduate and we have seen it in this thread, parents whose kids worked and succeeded at school are far more likely to have their graduate children in work than average.

I feel like employers are using this as a proxy to discriminate against disabled graduates under the guise of experience or proven work ethic and so on.

Employers just want to hire people who can do the work. Can you blame them for not wanting to hire people who are going to be constantly off sick?

It pisses me off too. I've had to say to one friend: either boot them up the arse and force them to either contribute or move out, or don't complain to me because I'm sick of hearing about it.

'They're depressed,' boo fucking hoo. They're not too depressed to play games 24/7.

Lots of people are depressed. I'd commit suicide if it wasn't for lack of anyone to look after my kids. You get on with it, there's no other choice. No one else should have to support me because I choose not to help myself.

Disabilities are mentioned throughout and there have been some posts denigrating the seriousness of these at affecting employability:
Depression
Anxiety
Autism
ADHD

Barely any mention of the fact that most employers choose not to hire disabled applicants. In this current environment where there are hundreds of applicants per job, they can choose to be picky and get away illegal discrimination.

What other people's children are doing is none of your business. There's surely enough happening in your own life to fill your headspace, so why waste time worrying about this?

I think things like volunteering at parkrun (can be doing their social media or sorting tokens, doesn't have to be physically active) or helping at cub scouts or orchestra etc are exclusionary or out of the reach of many teens? Or that if they are then those children face multiple barriers to employment that a Saturday job isn't going to fix?

I don't think it's necessarily ableist for employers to want appropriately experienced and qualified staff any more than it's ableist to have certain entry requirements for registered orifessions? (I say this as someone with long term medical conditions who was nearly prevented from qualifying due to their being a certain hours in a certain time component to the course).

I think part of the problem is that many uni courses aren’t any where near full time studying/working. They hardly do any hours and have too much free time. They leave at 22-23 not having worked full time and also being used to doing what they want when they want.

However getting a regular hours job is difficult. You have to factor in time to travel and travel costs. I don’t expect my DC to work for no or little pay, I would rather they got extra qualifications/did volunteer work. What’s not allowed in my house is to stay up late gaming and get up late and eat junk. I’ve made it clear that DC will need to move out if they do that. I’m prepared to accept a bit if time finding a job they actually want but after that expect them to just take something to earn and get skills.

YANBU if they're expecting you to pick up the tab for their unemployment. YABU if their parents are covering the costs of their unemployed children.

I also think that there just aren't any jobs for young teens anymore and they aren't experiencing earning some money from a young age.

I loved earning £20-30 per week from when I was about 14 - working in cafe's, babysitting etc.
There just nothing like that anymore and the work ethic is never ignited.

Bring back the £5 an hour evening and weekend jobs for young teens I say!
It would help out a lot of small businesses too.

Also you can’t just teach in a primary/secondary/sixth form even if you have a degree in a subject (maths, history, geography, PE, etc), you still have to get specific teaching qualifications.

ADHD and autism are the 21st century version of the bad back. It seems to cover all and everything regarding people not being able to work.

This . Absolutely.

There really are those jobs though. The shops are full of young workers, hospitality is full of young workers, the gig economy would be a great option for a student. Where I live I see teenagers working in shops, in pubs, chip shops, takeaways etc. It just smacks of a sense of entitlement and skewed expectations to me to be honest. A lot of posters are saying their children are struggling due to low self esteem and low social skills - how on earth will that be fixed if they never leave their bedrooms? And they never will leave if mum and dad continue to enable them.

My adult, autistic / ADHD / dyslexic DD had to struggle through. Was it easy? No. Did it work? Yes. Is she a situated professional now? No. But she's gainfully employed, holds a post grad qualification and is a financially independent home-owner.

No way in hell was I letting her bedroom-rot on my dime. I mean, she did for a while and I created merry hell about it. We hated each other for a while. And I frequently pointed out that she was an over entitled, selfish user.

Yanbu.

To allow them to sit and game all day instead of job hunting/unpaid internships/ volunteer work is stupid of the parents.

Also not making them help around the house- more fool them. If I was the parent in that situation I’d be saying if you live here and don’t work then your job is to take on a significant part of all the housework.

It’s just that waitressing/potwashing/mcDonalds is not really appropriate experience or a qualification for a graduate job in IT or engineering or forensics or journalism now is it?

Entry requirements for professions are related to the profession itself and they don’t ever list paper rounds as a entry criteria.

The number of parents with disabled graduates who are reporting that their child is not even getting interviews or is being ghosted is worrying, these are graduates from RG or Oxbridge with 1sts ffs.

So it’s not an issue of lacking appropriate qualifications or skills. The common thread is that they couldn’t do both full time education plus a regular part time job the entire time.

I really feel this is being used to indirectly weed out disabled students. Many of the screening tests for interviews, especially personality ones, directly weed out students with neurodiversity like Autism or ADHD. There is disability discrimination in employment. It’s not all on the young adults seeking work using it as an excuse, some of it is genuinely due to discrimination throwing up barriers to employers hiring them.

Turn off WiFi, stop paying phone contracts and remove Xboxes/ gaming devices? Leave them with books and cds - they’ll either improve their minds and mental health or decide to leave their rooms out of boredom pdq.

But do they never leave their bedrooms? No hobbies, friends, never visit a shop or a gym. No social life of any sort. If all of the above applies and they have severe agoraphobia then medical intervention is a necessity.

So you’d rather your DC didn’t work at all than that they start their careers on low pay? That’s the problem right there to be honest. At one point I was earning minimum wage working in retail with a Masters degree. I now earn a hell of a lot more than that. But while my career may have changed my drive hasn’t, and my drive was developed in part by all the minimum wage jobs I had to do just to keep the lights on - knowing that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life just making do, so I kept pushing and pushing.

My Stepsons. Ages range from nearly 30 to mid 20's. Sons 1 and 3 both dropped out of college, straight on to benefits and never worked a day in their life. Son 1 has autism but can function well at times but obviously has limitations, son 3 has depression but never diagnosed.

Both live at home and have never traveled abroad, lived independently, done any work of any kind or had a relationship, dont go out to meet friends or go to a pub unless DH takes them to get them out of the house. But they can game every night and sleep all day

Its such a waste of their lives and DH gets very upset as they both had potential but chose to live like they have with their mums full backing.

I was fine with what you said until you got to..."I'm over 60 without claiming benefits." You are lucky to have been fit, healthy and fortunate enough, but a lot aren't. You're not 'better' because you haven't been in a genuine situation where you need help.

Posted twice in error.

Isn't that what financial planning is for?

The elephant in the room is AI

It's by no means perfect yet, but already it can outperform those with minimal or no specialist knowledge on many tasks.

Why ask a graduate to summarise a 50 page document, or take notes in a meeting when an LLM can do a better faster job whilst also removing the need for senior staff to supervise.

It's something humanity needs to work out how to deal with and the social impact on young people and life expectations. Or alternatively AI might all run out of funding ( it runs at a huge loss) and collapse like the .com bubble.