Sounds like my wife's aunt. She lives with her elderly parents who have dementia but refuses to do any caregiving. Never held down a job. Only dud out of four children. Something is off about her, maybe a personality disorder but I don't think actual mental illness (though who really knows).

In past generations, those "duds" were sent to an institution or abandoned.

Boomers ravaged the corpse of the economy.

HHmmmm. I have to wonder about your community and social groups. The only people I know whose kids struggle like you describe have mental/substance abuse issues. Of course, there's more than one family that isn't as 'nice' as some think they are which explains why some of them have mental/substance abuse issues.

MYOB and stop judging others. It's not a good look and your 'superior' parenting isn't as superior as you think it is.

It used to be that young adults moved out so they could marry or live with a significant other. It doesn't seem like the young folks are pairing up as much as they used to, so they don't see a need for a place of their own, and subsequently a job to support a household. A side effect is that the US birthrate is now at 1.67 children per woman. (Other developed countries are actually shrinking because of low birthrates.)

I actually don't know any? All my relatives and nice neighbors all have lovely children.

Anonymous wrote:Between neighbors, family friends, siblings of friends on both mine and DH's side we can think of so many examples of nice, educated, well-off couples that have one, if not multiple, adult children who are complete duds.

This is the issue. It's one thing to be nice, it's another thing to fail to teach your child manners and responsibility. Often it's because the parents are too nice, and they pamper their children without imposing responsibilities on them so that they learn there is an expectation of responsibility. The majority of the failure to launch children that I've seen come from families where the parents have always done everything for the children, have not imposed any household responsibilities on the children and have not given an expectations of what they are supposed to do. So, in effect, the parents are too nice.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm guessing there's often something more diagnosable than "being a dud," whether it's mental illness or drug use.

I'm sure that's often the case, but not always. My boss's daughter comes to mind. They are rich and she has just never needed to get a job to survive, so she hasn't. Never had a "real" job (though plenty of short term "passion" jobs) and her father is still supporting her in her 30s.

Well that one it's pretty obvious what happened.

Regression to the mean.

The 1 case I've known up close where this has happened was mental health issues that were not properly addressed as a teen.

Anonymous wrote:I'm guessing there's often something more diagnosable than "being a dud," whether it's mental illness or drug use.

I'm sure that's often the case, but not always. My boss's daughter comes to mind. They are rich and she has just never needed to get a job to survive, so she hasn't. Never had a "real" job (though plenty of short term "passion" jobs) and her father is still supporting her in her 30s.

I'm guessing there's often something more diagnosable than "being a dud," whether it's mental illness or drug use.

How are your children doing?

Comfort breeds complacency.

Between neighbors, family friends, siblings of friends on both mine and DH's side we can think of so many examples of nice, educated, well-off couples that have one, if not multiple, adult children who are complete duds. Under or unemployed, living at home, sleeping in, don't help around the house, don't help their aging parents and are just a complete burden to their parents, siblings, and society. How does this happen? And how do we avoid it happening? Its impossible to picture now, but I'm guessing there was a time these parents couldn't picture it either.

(My post is prompted by my sweet neighbors who it turns out have been living with undiagnosed dementia and their total dud adult son has been living with them for months and "didn't notice anything" and is completely useless. There was a very dangerous situation recently where everything ended up mostly okay but still...)