What do you think about financially cutting off a child for his/her benefit?

I think it is a healthy wake-up call and benefits both parties.

This is really not clear. Could you rephrase and be more specific?

My parents did it to me when I was 21 and it was the BEST thing that ever happened to me I was one of those kids who was a leech, pretty much. I just took money and never thought about where it came from. I refused to get a job and just hung out with my friends all the time.

I do think it’s different once the kid is already responsible and comes into temporary bad times if it is indeed a temporary setback. But if the kid keeps falling short all the time, it’s because they are counting on your money. Once they know they aren’t getting it, they will find a way to do on their own.

Cut them off. Today!

It probably makes a huge difference what your current relationship is, and what you want in the future.

If you want them to feel that no one cares about them, that there is no one outside themselves on whom they can count, then pretty obviously, you should cut them off.

If you want them to develop the expectation that a loving person takes care of the people they love, then it’s much trickier.

If you have a good relationship with them, then perhaps you can talk about it and explain what you are trying to do __for__ them. If you have a crappy relationship, then maybe that’s what you need to work on – not their sense of independence.

I agree with @marinelife cut them off immediately.
Once they get a taste of what they need to do to keep normal life going then they may make a difference for themselves and not rely on the parent anymore.
I have to wonder how old this grown child is?

If by grown child you mean an 18+ adult then yes, cut them immediately and get on with your lives.

I’ve always believed there’s no harm done and a great benefit to a person’s sense of self if they can start out paying for their own things such as celly bills, car insurance, partial, their own clothes at stuff like that while still at home. Once a “kid” decides to go to college, it should be discussed and understood up front what participation family will have and what the “kid” wants to invest/pay back.

It depends how cooperative they are about the need for them to understand “learning self-reliance and lighting a fire under their asses” Make them a deal. If they fall short they pay for it.

@gailcalled Let’s say a parent is paying for their kid’s rent “just because”. If the kid hasn’t proven themself to be responsible, the parent cuts their funding in half or all the way. The purpose being to teach them a lesson about life or something.

I wouldn’t cut them off that soon. Give them time to adjust a bit. Pay less and less or give less and less money. Immediate cuts off can result in bad things.

If the young person is still in full-time education and you know they are actually studying (they are not all studying just because they are turning up at uni on a daily basis), I think continuing to support them is fine. If they are not working, are not studying, are not actively looking to do either, cut them off. I think @Hibernate makes a good point about making it a gradual transition but I would be making the dates when the drops in financial support will occur and by how much, very clear. I do think it is an important life lesson. If they want to do additional (not just general tasks that should be expected of people sharing a home), you could perhaps supplement their own income stream but no, not total support unless they are unable to work full-time because of other, valid commitments.

I would give them fair warning; and then when the date came they are out.

I would need more details on a particular situation really though. An 18 year old having trouble getting his act together I would not cut off so fast. A 20 year old notgoing to school and never having held down a job would get a time limit to snap out of it.

Any child of mine who had a working plan I would never cut off or kick out. If my kid was going for his bachelors and then masters, I would happily support them until they finished. If my child was through with school, but had a plan to work a year and save while living at home so they could move out with some money in their pocket, or to get married, etc., again I would happily let them stay with me without paying me any rent or for food.

If my adult child moved back home during a rough patch I would welcome them back and support them as long as they had a plan to get back on their feet and out in a reasonable time.

Well in my specific situation let’s say the son is 24 and has a Part-time job where he is able to earn $1200 a month before any expenses but after taxes and he is occasionally able to take odd jobs to earn slightly more money per month but it varies depending on how successful he is in finding work. He is also looking for a more permanent full-time job which is why he holds q part time position. There are a couple thousand in savings as a small cushion. We live in Los Angeles and $1200+ doesn’t go too far beyond the very basics, so that is what I am working with.

I’d say it depends on why they need help, and what they do with it.

I think I’ve known a lot of parents who say they’re doing it for the child’s benefit, but then seem way too enthused about how they got to spend this newly “saved” money on expensive tv systems and house renovations for me to really believe it was actually for the child’s benefit. That’s not to say it can’t ever happen, but that the line makes me really wary. And, it depends so much on the personal circumstances – for example, if you (impersonal you) were such a bad (read: abusive/negligent) parent that the kid is now really screwed up and that’s part of why they “haven’t got their act together”, then I feel you have more of a responsibility to help them out while they work through all that stuff they should have gotten done while they were underage. So, it really depends so much on each situation, and what’s going on with each person, and what the relationship is that I can’t really take a general position.

@Aethelflaed Yeah, but the kid has to be showing the effort of working things through.

@Paradox1 it may be that in this economy and where you’re living that he may not be able to go on his own right now. Is there some way that you can make a setup that’s more independent for him—like his own entrance with a key and he can pay rent? He could also pay for boarding—put up money for a meal or two a day. Or he could have a microwave and mini fridge if he wants to be more independant.

If you do this, I’d write up a lease and get it notarized or whatever you have to do so that it feels more official to him that he’s living on his own, but on your premises. Also, that makes it so you can have rules that are reasonable and not so much like parenting rules.

If you are afraid of boundaries being stepped on, perhaps you could help him find a room to rent for a comparable price and help him with a down payment.

@paradox1: A 24yr old able bodied male in America who can only find one p/t job? Sounds not right to me.

I’ve been laid off for a year before and in that time (no college degrees, no vocational training) I held several p/t jobs that paid my bills and helped pay my mom’s mortgage.

On the other hand, I have an adult sibling with several degrees, now working on a Phd who insists she cannot get hired anywhere and so has been a babysitter for the last decade while being financially subsidized by my other relatives and running up over $100k in student loans. Guess which kid got all the excuses and leniency?

I think it really depends on the situation. If the adult child is trying their best and just having trouble getting by, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to help them when you can, but if they are just milking the situation because they can, then it’s time to cut them off and let them learn the hard way.

@Paradox1 In your specific situation, if you know the son is trying to find a full-time, better paying job and he isn’t out blowing his money, then I see no reason why helping him is a bad thing. If he weren’t trying and he was blowing what money he had, that would be a different story and that’s when I’d lean toward cutting him off.

A grown-up child? THey are an adult . . . cut them off and let them be an adult. They will not move into skid row and be lost forever, they will make it. But as long as your financial support is available, they won’t start thinking the way they need to to survive.

My mom passed when I was 19 and in college, and with that I became an adult. My grandparents paid my phone bill and car insurance. Once I graduated college it was all on me. I survived!!!

Other “grown up children” can too!

For me it would depend on the situation. I’d help my kids out if I could as long as I didn’t feel like they were taking advantage of me. If that was the case, I’d explain why I was cutting off the money flow but make it clear I’d still help in other ways if needed.

When my husband was about 19 or 20, his life was one big party funded by his parents. He’d moved several states away for school, dropped out almost immediately, and just continued to live off his parents. Finally they cut him off but told him they’d buy him a plane ticket home if he asked. He stuck it out for several months before he decided that being broke, on parole (for basically being stupid), and eating nothing but Top Ramen every day was not the life he imagined for himself. He took his parents up on the plane ticket, moved home, got a full time job, pulled his shit together, and has been a responsible person ever since.

One last thought. Sometimes the parents don’t kick the kid out because the parent him/herself is getting a benefit out of the child living their. Sometimes it is companionship, sometimes help with something they have trouble handling themselves. I have seen this more than once.

I was cut off at age of 21. It worked—at least as far as making me support myself. It also pretty much destroyed my relationship with my parents. We have not been close since and they do not get to see their grandchildren unsupervised.

I think that you need to look at your goals and the potential short term and long term consequences and then make a decision. I think that most people don’t think about long term consequences. And of course, what happens in one case probably won’t happen in another case.

If you cut your child off:

Will you be able to stay cutting off no matter what? What if they lose their apartment? What if they are starving? What if they lose a job and become homeless?

Will they feel like they can never come to you for help again? Do you care?

Will they suddenly start taking care of themselves? Is the only reason they don’t take care of themselves because they don’t have to? Do they want to work and can’t find work? (It is the recession after all). If you kick them out, will they find a way to take care of themselves? Will they balance their budget, so to speak? Will they balance the budget at a standard of living you are comfortable with? Do they have the skills to do well?

When I graduated from college, it was the last big recession—the Carter-Reagan recession. I sent out lots of queries, and got maybe a couple of interviews and no job offers. Eventually, my parents suggested I get “what color is your parachute.” It helped, but not then.

They kicked me out one evening with nothing. The next morning, after spending the night at a friend’s house, I got a dishwashing job. I went back home. I worked there for a week and then got a job doing carpentry work for my father. The plan was I would build a grubstake and then move to NYC and be on my own, and this is, indeed, what happened.

My parents did help me out and, in many ways, have been behind me, and yet, because of the way they did it, I never trusted them again. Well, I had already felt uncomfortable with how much they would support me, so I was already well on the way to not trusting them.

I think that if you are happy with making them get on their own feet and don’t care what happens after that, it’s easy. Do it. Cut them off. Don’t give into their efforts to wheedle stuff out of you. They will make it.

I think a lot of our kids have a sense of entitlement. I have to ask why that is? Personally, I think it is the parents who give them this sense. This is especially easy when we only have one or two children. In China, they call their only sons Little Emperors. I suspect we have been doing that to our kids in the US, too. We are wealthy, and all that wealth is focused on few children.

If their behavior is our fault, then throwing them out basically says we don’t have responsibility for this. We deny how we brought up our kids. We blame it on them.

I don’t think that’s right. I think we have a responsibility to help our kids become independent. We must teach them how to do this. It isn’t just schooling they need. They need to know how to find work. How to find an apartment and/or car. They need real skills. But job hunting is the biggest. We owe it to them to give them connections and help them through this passage of life.

My parents couldn’t do this. My father never had to look for a job in his life. They were always given to him. He could not understand why I would have a problem. He didn’t understand the problems and had no skills to help me, anyway. So he threw up his hands in disgust and kicked me out. Pretty pathetic, if you ask me.

But I figured it out on my own, and being forced to do it made a difference. I couldn’t just moan around and be depressed. Things became more urgent. I had to take whatever job I could get, not wait for the right job. I could no longer afford to indulge my fear of talking to people or of asking someone to hire me when I couldn’t imagine why anyone would hire me.

If I were you, I wouldn’t kick him out or cut him off. I would try to help him. But having said that, I know that cutting someone off can work. I also know it has unintended consequences. Do what you will.