Parents, I need some perspective here. I have 3 children, two adults, and a teen. I have two sons. One who’s still figuring life out and a bit of a loner, another who is great company and easy to be with. My daughter is 23. She feels that we aren't like other parents, and we don't like her much. She feels this way because we don’t want to hang out with her very often, we don’t make many plans with her, and we don’t buy groceries for her or help out much with money. She feels uncomfortable asking for money because we usually say no. We aren't paying for her psychiatrist, as an example, and we aren’t contributing to her rent in a very expensive capital city whilst she looks for full-time employment. She says that parents pay for their children’s rent now, and they want to hang out with them and take them to museums, the theatre, and on vacation.
For context, we are in a very fortunate position and were able to pay for our children’s university tuition in full, so they have no university debt. We have been supplementing her part-time income by 50% to help her cover rent for close to a year. We do not pay for her psychiatrist because, up until recently, she had a retail job that provided private healthcare. We do not pay for her therapist because she is an adult now, and I think she has to make decisions for herself about where she spends her money - particularly if she is only working part-time (through no fault of her own…she can't find full-time employment). We took her on a family vacation this past Christmas and we spent almost every day with her and her girlfriend, who joined us. Note I say almost every day - this is a sticking point for my daughter, because we didn't want to spend all of our time with her.
I don’t enjoy hanging out with her because she is always stressed and unhappy. She is not a relaxing person to be around and I find her quite demanding. I love it when she visits us at home, but I am happy to stay home and chill and potter. This upsets her because other parents take their children out to dinner, go to the bar, or go shopping. Other parents are taking their adult children on a couple of vacations a year, whereas we don’t want to.
I think she has a point: I don’t want to spend loads of time with her. We speak every day - every day - and it is usually coaching her through something quite emotional, like girlfriend troubles, or job disappointment, or how much she hates her job or how tough she is finding life. I lie awake at night worrying about my relationship with her, because I am not a warm fuzzy drop everything for my daughter kind of parent, I’m just not. And I think that’s because I find my relationship so draining and stressful that it doesn’t leave me any space to think about taking care of her in ways she wants, like planning days out or popping up to spend time with her. But this is now upsetting me on such a deep level, I’m starting to wonder whether I might be broken in some way, and incapable of giving her love like a normal mother. After the most recent phone call, I am tempted to tell her that she’s going to have to accept that I am not the mother she wants, but I’m still here.
I think this has come to a head because my daughter cannot pay her rent this month, and I said it's time for her to accept that she should move home until she finds a full-time job. She thinks we should help her out financially but we’ve said enough is enough. She is heartbroken. None of her friends can believe we won’t send her more money when we can afford it.
How much time are parents spending with their adult kids? How much financial help are they giving them? And how do I address that I find all of it overwhelming, overstimulating, and emotionally stressful?