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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Gifts with Strings: How controlling should we be when we’re being generous?

    We may not like that a grown child dresses like a Goth or dyes their hair purple or has put on too much weight. How far should we go to persuade them to dress in J.Crew, cut the purple locks or go on a diet?

    What if we supercharged that desire to persuade with a bribe of sorts, say, tie the change in appearance or habit to a financial gift? A reader posed that question to the NYT’s Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah. Here’s what the reader wanted to know: Can We Ask Our Son to Go on Weight-Loss Drugs in Exchange for a House?

    The question goes beyond the inadvisability of commenting on a child’s body size. It leads to the tricky issue of whether gifts to our kids should have strings attached. And in this case, a string that’s linked to an adult child’s behavior and smacks of coercion.

    Here’s Appiah’s response, edited and condensed.:

    • It’s not always wrong to attach conditions to a gift. Sometimes the conditions are intrinsic to what’s being given.
    • It would not be problematic to tell a relative with an addiction problem that you’ll provide an apartment so long as the person maintains their sobriety. The rationale is that the addict’s choices around substances aren’t fully free. The condition is aimed at protecting autonomy, not constraining it.
    • By contrast, the reader’s son is fully capable of judging the evidence and deciding what to do with his own body. His choice about seeking treatment may be misguided, but it’s his to make, and the condition is unrelated to the gift.
    • This isn’t extortion; withholding a benefit isn’t the same as imposing a penalty. But it’s disrespectful. The implication is that the son can’t be trusted to make reasonable decisions about his own life and body without being bribed into them.
    • Consider a gift where the condition is intrinsic to what’s being given: The parents could offer to defray the costs of treatment. This helps them give their son something without saying anything about how much they trust his judgment.
    • He may still decline. If he does, the parents will have to make their peace with the fact that it’s his body and his life.

    Photo: Maia Lemov

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Leaving a Legacy: Disinheriting your kids, accidentally

    Life is full of surprises. Some of them are more delightful than others. If you’re divorced or widowed and you meet a new romantic partner, that’s surely a joy for you but not necessarily your kids. They might be accidentally disinherited,

    That is ground zero for those who find romance later in life. Their kids may be genuinely happy for you; they may be relieved that there’s someone out there who’s willing to take on your worries, anxieties and late-night phone calls. They may also be concerned about where that leaves them, inheritance-wise. If there now a new step-parent and family that stands to inherit some of their family’s good-gotten gains.

    A Wall Street Journal story was blunt about the problem. Addressing the potential disinheritees, its reporter wrote:

    • Let’s be blunt: If you have a single mom or dad in their 70s or older who’s in a new, serious relationship, you may worry about your inheritance.
    • If your parent remarries — and then dies — will the surviving spouse wind up with a big chunk of the estate that would’ve gone to you?

    The solution might seem simple enough: If you don’t want to accidentally disinherit your kids, don’t draw up a new will. But simple is not correct. In most states a new spouse has a right to a portion of your estate, regardless of what an older will says. Asking that spouse to promise to fork over a share of your assets to your kids is no guarantee that your kids will receive their due. “It never happens” is how one financial planner put it.

    There are tools to assure that your adult children’s inheritance survives the new coupling.

    Pre-nups are not just for the rich and famous. A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement can explicitly note which assets a parent has earmarked for their children and it can waive the spouse’s statutory right to claim those properties.

    QTIPS are not just for ears. A parent (particularly one who has more assets and higher earnings than their new spouse) can leave assets, such as a family home, in a trust for the surviving partner. Once that partner dies, the remaining principle passes to the adult kids.

    Irrevocable Trusts mean what they say. Assets placed in an irrevocable trust are protected and generally cannot be altered or claimed by a new spouse

    Designated Beneficiaries get what’s coming to them. Parents who remarry can update their life insurance, 401(k) and IRA beneficiary forms to explicitly name their children. These designations supersede instructions left in a will.

    One other tip. If you hire an estate planning attorney, keep that lawyer as your exclusive province. Attorneys have a fiduciary duty to do what’s best for their client. If you and the new love retain an attorney together, the attorney has a duty to both of you, but the surviving partner will receive the benefits of that lawyer’s duty.

    photo: Palo Coleman

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  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Money Matters: Why it’s so hard for our kids to buy a house today

    Those of us who are baby boomers grew up on 7, even 8 percent mortgage interest rates. So why is it such a big deal today that the rates are hovering above that 7 percent mark (7.4 percent as I write this post) and our kids are struggling to close on a house?

    Economists have an explanation. In oversimplified terms, it’s because although 7 percent interest rates look similar to the late 20th century, home prices do not.

    A WashPost article gives that explanation more depth:

    • In 1990, median homes used to cost three times the median income or less in most of the nation’s largest housing markets. Today, that’s true in only three out of 100 markets, according to Alexander Hermann, a researcher at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. .
    • The average price-to-income ratio of homes shot up in the 2000s when interest rates were low. Amid today’s high rates, it hasn’t come down. That means It’s much harder to afford a house with a high interest rate when the house itself is far pricier.
    • Even a low rate that makes the monthly payment manageable wouldn’t help prospective buyers. That’s because they can’t afford the down payment on a house that’s five times their income..

    Then there’s the supply side problem.

    • In that 20th-century era of high interest rates, homeowners did not factor mortgage rates into a decision to put their house on the market. Today, homeowners are reluctant to give up their low-rate mortgages and sell their homes. That’s putting a lid on inventory.

    There’s another wrinkle:

    • The WSJ headlined that “America’s New Housing Market Is All About Luxury—and It Runs on Cash.” So, while surging mortgage rates are keeping many buyers on the sidelines, affluent shoppers are pushing overall prices higher with big cash purchases.

    Many of us could- and do- help our kids with a down payment. But an all-cash deal–that’s probably beyond most of us.

    painting: Rebecca Lemov

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Rightsizing: Why can’t we clean out the stuff we no longer need?

    Unused and unremarkable stuff–a chair with a broken leg, soccer team trophies, a third-grade geography report–is crammed into our attics or lurking on our bookshelves. We need to clean it up or clear it out. If we don’t, it will eventually fall to our kids to do it, and they won’t know treasure from trash.


    We know this. At least our minds do. (See my blog for tips on downsizing stuff) And yet, tips be damned, we cling to our belongings, even the outdated skis and the chipped vase.

    The question is, why can’t we get rid of that stuff?
    Enter neuroscience. The answer is, it’s all about how our brains work.

    • Writing in an OPED in the NYTimes, Emily Falk, the author of “What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change, reassures us that “It isn’t irrational to have trouble letting objects go. The parts of our brain that help us decide what is valuable overlap with the parts that keep track of what feels like us.”
    • What this means is that “we feel that what is ours is good, and we increase the value we attach to objects, ideas and behaviors from our past.”

    Okay. So what can we do about our counterproductive brains?

    • Falk suggests thinking about the downsizing transaction not as a seller (the person giving away the object) but as a buyer (the one getting the object).
    • “Instead of asking as a seller, ‘Do I want to keep this?’ we might ask, ”Would I buy this today?’ Modifying the decision-making framework allows a neural calculation in reward and self-relevance systems to shift, too. A teakettle becomes something you can choose — or not — rather than something you stand to lose.

    Nobody said this would be easy.

    painting: Hilary Precis, “Flea Market”

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    The Gift Gaffe: Tips on giving presents to our loved ones (and others).

    When she was browsing around her local bookstore, my friend Kathy found herself staring at adorable baby books and plush baby toys. She wanted to scoop them up and send them to her year-old grandniece whose birthday was in a few days.
    She resisted the scoop. Instead, she took photos of one or two books and two or three plush toys, texted them to her niece (the baby’s mother) and asked: Would the baby like these?
    Her niece’s reply surprised her. Not the part where she said the baby would love the books and toys. It was the thank you that was included in the note. Her niece appreciated her aunt asking about whether the proposed gift would be something the baby would enjoy, that the family could use.

    Kathy got the backstory from her sister. The grandfather–Kathy’s sister’s ex-husband–had been showering his granddaughter with gifts: a tricycle, a play kitchen, an indoor slide. The baby was at least a year or two away from using these gifts and the family was tight on storage space. What little extra room there was in the back of their garage was now taken up with the bulky play things. Would the family even remember the make-believe stove and sink was in the back of the garage two years from now?

    Kathy’s approach isn’t limited to baby gifts. Most of us are occasionally guilty of sending a present to a loved one that we think they’ll like. Maybe we’re at a street fair or traveling and see a set of hand-crafted wooden bowls that we’re sure our son and his wife would love. Or a Turkish rug with just the right colors for their living room. Or a painting that’s in the style of their other artwork. It could be that if you do offer these treasures up as gifts, the bowls will be used, the rug unfurled, and the painting hung. But maybe they miss the mark. Instead of pleasure, they’re a pain.

    Borrowing a page from Kathy, it seems better to forego the joy of spontaneity and, given the tech wonders readily available on our phones, let the potential giftee preview what you have in mind. That way, the sweater you want to give your teenage grandson for Christmas will actually be worn and even loved.

    painting: Berthe Morisot

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Empty Nest: Sighs, thoughts and fears on the college drop off

    In a NYT Opinion piece, Jennifer Weiner shared the joys and fears of dropping her younger daughter at college to start her freshman year.

    Parents of incoming freshmen at every school get versions of the same emails: about scheduling your kid’s move-in time and filling out forms for the health center and making sure to buy the extra-long sheets.

    Parents of daughters get an extra assignment. It isn’t written down, but we all know what it is. In between buying shower caddies and LED lights, we have to give our girls a refresher course on Rape Prevention 101. Don’t leave your drink unattended at a party. Don’t walk home late at night by yourself. Make sure someone knows where you are. Watch out for your friends.

    When it came time to say goodbye and leave her daughter in her dorm room (bed made, clothes unpacked), Weiner reflected on the milestone of the moment:

    “Make good choices!” I called. I drove home, a little sad, mostly proud, thinking: My work here is done. I knew it wasn’t really true — she’ll still come home on breaks, and she’ll still need me — but it was a milestone. My kind, smart, big-hearted daughter was ready to spread her wings, ready to meet all the people and do all the things.

    Weiner’s topic in the opinion piece wasn’t just another sharing of the emotions many of us feel when we drop a child off at college. Her bigger concern–and the point of her column–was the anger she felt about the Cornell rape accusation, the botching of the investigation into it and how far we have not come in protecting young women since Weiner was a college student.

    For women who’d gone to college decades ago, the ones who’d spent their undergraduate years marching and protesting and signing petitions and occupying buildings — the ones, that is, like me — the fury was laced with a kind of bewildered exhaustion. How is this still happening? Shouldn’t things be better by now? How could all of our activism have brought about so little change?

    Painting: Paul Gauguin

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Bank of Mom and Dad: When is a loan a gift or vice versa

    Housing’s a bear for our kids who aren’t homeowners yet. If we offered a little help with the down payment, that might make a mortgage possible. It’s not just housing that’s causing angst. If we helped to pay off a car loan or covered their health insurance, that might ease their anxiety levels.

    When we are fortunate enough to afford to help, many of us derive satisfaction from tapping our savings to offer our kids a financial boost. What it comes down to is giving them a sliver of our savings now rather than later when we won’t be around to see them enjoy it.

    If we are going to be financial boosters, should that help come in the form of a loan or gift? If we go the loan route, we have to put our banker hats on: Write a contract, set repayment dates, spell out the harms if they default. Unappetizing at best.

    Michelle Singletary, the personal financial columnist for the Washington Post, put it this way in a column:

    • Give gifts, not loans:
    • When generosity comes with strings attached, the situation can get ugly.
    • That’s why we need ground rules.

    Here’s a paraphrased version of her gift-giving ground rules. She designed them for friends as well as family. I’ve adapted them for those of us who are offering financial aid to our kids.

    • Never a lender be. Only give what you can afford to never receive back. Expecting repayment can ruin your relationship or leave you monitoring (and resenting) the way your kids spend their money–especially if there’s a splurge involved.
    • Ditch the control gear: Before you give a gift, it’s reasonable to ask standard, up-front questions about how your funds will be used. You should do your due diligence to make sure you aren’t enabling bad financial behavior. However, once you hand over a gift, don’t micromanage it.
    • Cut out the middleman: If you want to control the way your kids use your gift–say, it’s money to pay off a car loan and that’s the only way you want your gift used–pay the creditor directly. It’s better than attaching a string–“this is for your car loan”–and then policing whether the middleman (your kid) pays down the loan.
    • Go thank-less. “Are you overly concerned about getting credit for your generosity?” is a question Singletary raises. She suggests we veer away from needing regular acknowledgements of our largesse.

    On this latter point, Singletary notes that Proverbs reminds us: “Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth.” And that Matthew cautions: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.”

    To that I would add this: Blessed are those of us who are able to give the gift and trust our children to use it as they see best.

    Sculpture: Auguste Rodin, “Le Penseur”

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Right-sizing Tips: DIY decluttering so your kids won’t have to do it.


    Towels with grease stains; jam jars in amusing shapes; books started but never finished. There’s stuff hanging around our closets, basements, and bookshelves that is of questionable use and doesn’t, as Marie Kondo’s KonMari method famously espouses, “spark joy.” And yet there the clutter sits, ready for a new home–be it a gift to our kids, a donation to a charity or a toss into a trash bag.

    My personal path through this involuntary collection of stuff came when I moved from a suburban house to a city apartment. I didn’t have time to thank discarded items for their service. My mantra was simpler: A bag a day, even if the bag on some days was lunch size. I recently recommended a variation of my mantra to a friend who had to move herself and her huge book collection across the country. She was almost paralyzed by the enormity of her task but says by cutting the task down to one box a day she got a handle on it. Which is, I guess, the secret to “bag a day.” It cuts the task down into do-able bites.

    There are other tips for downsizing, rightsizing or decluttering–which is the ultimate gift to our kids who won’t have to deal with overstuffed cupboards and closets when we’re unable to. Here are some ideas from a Washington Post article with a promising title, “How to let go of things you don’t use and declutter your life.” The article has a lot to say about the psychology behind holding onto stuff that’s no longer useful. But I’ll cut through that clutter and just list some of the tips for tackling the job.

    The One In/One Out Rule: If you’re faced with, say, a box of empty jam jars, prune down the number by choosing one to save, one to recycle till the number of jars is more manageable.

    Donation Station. It can be a box, a bag or any kind of container that can hold items that can be reused–bring joy–to someone else. Books in good condition can go from donation station to a public library (many accept donations and resell the books for cash) or to a Little Free Library where neighborhood readers share books. Keeping a donation station year-round can help keep clutter from accruing.

    Textile Recycle. Not all no-longer-worn clothes are appropriate for resale or for donation to a used clothes shop. Several stores accept stained or ripped clothing for their textile recycle programs. Eileen Fisher, Madewell and H&M are three outlets that have such programs and there are more online.. such as Blue Jeans Go Green or TerraCycle.”

    Throw It Away. Not everything can be reused, recycled or regifted. If a favorite glass pitcher has a broken handle, it’s okay to put it in a trash bag. No judgment. No guilt. And a less cluttered closet.

    Painting: Robert Rauschenberg, “Fulcrum”


  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Passport Collectors: Our Gen Z kids are traveling to the future.

    A 20-something in my family texted to check on his great grandparents’ emigration paths: Had my mother come here from Poland and when? How about my dad? Poland or Russia?
    The flurry of interest had little to do with the tracing of roots. He’s doing what a growing number of Gen Zers are busying themselves with: Collecting passports.
    He’s already got a good shot at a Canadian passport: His grandmother on his mother’s side was born there. But the Polish connection, though a lot less likely, would be especially valuable. It would translate into an EU passport.

    He’s not alone in his passport mania. Another 20-something in my family is also deep into research on alternative passports. That means half of my grandchildren are ranging around seeking alternatives or additions to their US. passports.

    To put my family’s activities into a broader perspective, Newsweek carried an article that came right to the point: “Why Dual Citizenship Is The New American Dream.” Its findings:

    • A growing number of Americans are looking at dual citizenship as a fallback plan in times of widespread uncertainty and deepening political divisions
    • A Harris Poll survey found that four in ten U.S. adults (42 percent) have considered or plan to relocate outside the country to improve their quality of life or financial position.
    • Among Gen Zers, this number went up to 63 percent, while 52 percent of millennials were considering moving abroad.

    My first thought was that my grandkids may become part of a brain drain from the U.S. They’re looking for options in case things here deteriorate even more than they have. But that was me talking to myself about my world view.

    When I asked them why they were doing this, I got somewhat different answers.

    • He wants the passports in order to say he has them. It turns out, passport collecting is a thing for Gen Z,
    • Also, an EU passport would let him live and work in Europe relatively easily, if he wanted to
    • She wants to be free to study and live abroad.
    • They both say alternative passports would make travel abroad easier and less visa-filled.
    • Neither of my grandkids is a stranger to traveling and living abroad. So they are comfortable with the idea of being citizens of the world, with passports that let them be just that.

    For most of modern history, the American Dream was rooted in one place: America. But that’s shifting,” a director at The Harris Poll, noted in an interview with Newsweek.

    • “While dual citizenship used to be reserved for retirees, the wealthy, or those with strong family ties abroad, it’s now a growing goal for middle-class Americans who want more control over their future.
    • It marks a real mindset shift—less about pledging allegiance to one nation, more about staying agile in a world that feels increasingly unstable.

    “Dr. Kristin Surak, at the London School of Economics, turns her eye on recent history to share a perspective on what’s happening with younger adult generations.

    • “What were once seen as stable democracies no longer look so stable to many people. Brexit led a number of UK citizens to search for an Irish grandparent and take up Irish citizenship to retain the benefits of EU membership.
    • The extreme politicalisation of US politics over the past several years has had a similar effect of driving people to look for exit options.”
    • “They may not be planning to move immediately–or at all–but many applicants want the peace of mind of knowing there’s a way.”

    painting: Eugène Boudin, Jetty and Wharf at Trouville, 1863,

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Good Counsel: What do we do with our Free Advice?

    A hundred Free Advice buttons arrived in a plastic bag as part of a donation to the thrift store — New4You — where I volunteer. I couldn’t resist adorning myself with a few of them.

    Surely this was the button message meant for my blog readers. After all, most of us have stored up plenty of advice in the form of wisdom and experience to share with our adult children. But the question I raise time and again in posts is, should we offer it? As our children have blown past their toddler years and teen times, we have been morphing too. We’ve had to go from advisors–don’t put that dirty stick in your mouth; those shorts are too short to wear in public–to a counseling role. That is, to oversimplify, if they come to us today and ask us if they should dye their hair purple, we can feel free to say, “I’m a little slow on today’s styles, but purple’s never been your color.”

    I have passed the buttons around with much glee to friends and fellow volunteers with adult children. (Lemme know if you want one.) Some of us doubled over in laughter at the thought of wearing the button the next time we saw one of our children.

    But beyond the fun of it, these buttons hit home. I wish I could rejigger them to add just below the big green letters a note in smaller black type: But only when asked.

    photo:selfie