Should parents be paying for their adult children?

I believe one key aspect of family love is that there is no expectation of anything in return That should just happen, but may take many different forms. Why have children if you are not prepared to form a family unit and the support that entails?

I am not sure I understand that, Beryl. I think most people would be better off financially, and able to secure their long-term well-being, if they did not have children. But I agree with, Malcolm; having a family of three generations hopefully leads to an understanding of reciprocal support where possible but I don’t think one part should ever be conditional on another. Bringing up the younger generation is the opportunity to create the right responses at the relevant time; but we still need to make provision in case it doesn’t happen [like they all choose to emigrate to Australia].

I was wondering about the reasons people have children. If s*x is the driver, you can prevent the results. We don’t need to produce any more simply to populate the Earth. If they are to continue our genes, would we not like to keep the family bond to both protect the legacy and see how they develop? But I must admit, I had not considered the purely mercenary option of providing us with a pension; I think it would be cheaper not to have them in the first place but to save up all the money they would otherwise have cost.

Malcolm , according to the latest NOS birth rates are up in England+Wales , but you see the fertility rate is going down (funnily -its only female fertility rates that are produced ), obviously men,s dont count when they know full well British born mens fertility rates are further down than women,s , but hold on -all is not lost- (one for the Brexiters perhaps ?) –immigration fuels baby-boom , all those highly fertile men from the eastern parts of the EU perhaps ? -one in six of all new European babies now born in the UK fueled by mass migration , you have Simon Ross (Population Matters) on your side. 776,000 births in Britain -2014 up 16 % from 2001 -second highest total in Europe-fertility rate now fourth highest in Europe –there cis a lot more . Obviously East Europeans arent drinking out so many plastic hormone changing bottles and drinking water with less female hormones in them .

“Why do people choose to have children?”. A question debated long and hard by almost every Child Protection specialist. In our case my wife’s propensity for becoming pregnant (seemingly whenever I sneezed) dovetailed nicely into the simple fact that we both wanted a family. Thirty years on and our two both hold senior positions in Engineering and Psychological research. We both enjoy being with them, whenever they arrive and we’re glad to be part of their lives.

Yes – we have helped them out a lot and are more than happy to do so in the future. We all went on holiday together last year and had a great time. Sadly, that’s not, it seems, a typical family, however.

Some monozygotic twins are effectively clones, although epigenetic differences can increase as they become older .

And I started off feeing quite positive today…

Yes, I’m sorry, Ian. I was getting a bit depressed by the emerging attitudes towards helping one’s grown-up offspring so I decided to put forward the positive points. I desisted to mention plague, pestilence, earthquakes, coastal erosion, bombing, hair loss, and other calamities that give parents golden opportunities to support their adult children uncomplainingly in their time of need.

And plague’s not covered by household insurance, either…

There is no reason, in my opinion, why adult children should not reciprocate in times of need, but the question is more about whether parents should assist their offspring at difficult times. I happen to think they should do so, unconditionally, without any resistance or resentment, and without any expectation of any reward. Judiciously it might be best to wait until asked for help, but then give it generously.

The same as the big cat family do Sophie , when a fight takes place between 2 males lions for control of the pride and the winner usually tries to kill the cubs belonging to the beaten lion ?

Sophie – By the time they have older kids the parents have already passed on their genes; the additional value of helping their offspring in difficult times is to civilise them in the hope that it might be reflected in their grandchildren’s attitudes and behaviour. So it is a form of genetic inheritance but at a second generational level with the inclusion of an additional gene stream from the second first-generation parent. [I hope that makes sense]

Translating Duncan’s point into human life, idealistically the mother’s new partner would treat the step-children as if they were his own, and vice versa, but realistically there are boundaries in our expectations. Adult children can probably anticipate and accept that but care needs to be exercised with step grand-children.

Which brings me to the point that, for many parents, it is concern for their grandchildren’s welfare rather than for their adult children’s that prompts their financial or other help and that, were it not for the grandchildren, their assistance might be much more limited.

Exactly John.