The good years when middle-aged parents could expect treats from earning offspring are fast becoming a distant memory, writes ORNA MULCAHY
WAS IT just us, or does every family have a seemingly perfect set of friends to compare itself with during the tricky business of growing up?
In our case, two or three Alpha families were used as yardsticks of excellence down the years. These paragons lived in different counties and abroad so that news of their achievements filtered through in big batches via the phone or in airmail letters.
The parents were clever and hard-working, and their children – oh my goodness, where would you start? They won singing and dancing medals, they played for their county, they had naturally straight hair; they were whipping up experiments in the kitchen from July onwards for the Young Scientist, they got scholarships to university, studied like maniacs, and eventually acquired interesting or high-paying jobs. They married well, got rich and sent their ageing parents off on cruises around the world.
In general we hated them, but it was the cruise holidays that really hurt. “So-and-so is just off to New York on the QEII, John’s sending them for their anniversary,” my mother might say in an aside guaranteed to bring back all the envy and resentment of childhood.
I’m not sure where all those fabulous people are now, but the chances are that they have children of their own and that those children are heading towards adulthood. Will they in turn treat their parents to cruise holidays and weekends away in nice hotels? It’s looking unlikely.
It’s the natural order of things that children raised by caring and giving parents should in turn look after them as they get older, but right now the idea seems almost Utopian. The recession has wiped millions of jobs out of the world economy. It is going to take years for our children’s generation to prosper, or even to stand on their own feet financially.
In the meantime, we’re going to have to support them. When I say “we”, I mean the last of the baby boomers, who have benefited from free education, decades of good emigration prospects and an economic boom at home. That cycle has come to an end, and our children, for now it seem, cannot count on the same happy demographics.
The reality for many parents approaching middle age is that they will be looking after, and giving treats to, their grown-up children for some time to come, and not the other way around.
While the State declares a child to be an adult at 18, and cuts off child benefit on the birthday, the parent must go on giving for as long as it takes to get them launched on a career.
In the UK, they’ve coined a horrible new word, Yuckies – Young Unwitting Costly Kids – to describe grown-up children who are still on the payroll at home. A new survey has found that these big babies are costing parents up to £30,000 each as they struggle through from 18 to 30. The research, carried out by the child trust fund provider Children’s Mutual, found that 28 per cent of parents are remortgaging their home to raise money to support adult children, while 93 per cent of the 1,500 surveyed said they were paying something towards their children’s finances.
Sixteen per cent of the parents expected their children to remain financially dependent on them into their 30s.
Not surprisingly, given the source of the research, the message parents had for others whose children are still young is “Save, Save, Save.” And don’t make any plans to convert their bedrooms. Last year, again in the UK, Abbey Mortgages found that almost half a million adults aged between 35 and 44 returned home to live with their parents, while almost as many 25-34-year-olds were still living at home, or had returned there due to changing circumstances such as losing a job or splitting up with a partner. The Abbey research found that parents of these “boomerang” children had withdrawn about 20 per cent of their savings to help them. The situation prompted Peter Mandelson’s department of business, innovation and skills to issue a guide for parents, advising them to make their children do their own washing and ironing, and not to provide them with snacks or handouts. Impressive stuff. Ireland has always had plenty of “boomerang” children coming home to roost, and indeed plenty more who never went away in the first place.
Our strong sense of family is helping to keep many people afloat in the recession. Parents and siblings are having to lendmoney where banks will not. Grandparents are helping out with school fees, holidays and even with groceries – that’s if their own savings have not been wiped out in the great bank share collapse.
One irony in all this is that many middle-aged folk who had been considering retirement are now having to stay in their jobs with grim determination.
With pensions and savings eroded, and family commitments running into an unseen future, they cannot afford to retire and let a younger person take their job. It’s a thorny issue for employers, and yet another reason why young people are not going to get their chance anytime soon in Ireland.