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Thursday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Aug 07, 2023 04:46 AM

The topics with the most engagement yesterday included adult children not having children, support for first generation students at universities, a visiting child, and rescuing an uncle's dog with the help of DCUM.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "If adults kids don’t have kids what’s the point?" and posted in the "Adult Children" forum. The original poster laments that she gave up 22 years of her life for her kids and apparently has no grand children. Therefore, she questions the point of her sacrifice and dreads what he expects to be a lonely, sad life with empty Thanksgiving tables. I am familiar with parents who live their lives vicariously through their children, but this was the first time I can recall encountering this phenomenon with regard to grandchildren. However, since a few other posters agreed with the original poster, I guess it is not uncommon. From these posters' perspective, all that they worked for in their lives was not for themselves, nor even for their children, but for their grandchildren. Without grandchildren, it was all for naught. For some of these posters this is an issue of "keeping their line going". One poster claims to be from an aristocratic family to whom a "line" is very important. On the other hand, some posters mocked the idea of a "line" that had any value. For the original poster's part, I don't think she was all that concerned about her "line". Rather, she seems to view grandchildren as something that would give value to her life. She is not interested in future generations after she's gone, but simply the remaining years of her life. Many posters disagree with the original posters' thinking. They argue that having children is a personal decision that should be done because the parents want the experience of raising children, not as a duty to their own parents. Many are critical of the original poster for not finding other things of value in her life. Almost universally, those posters who expect grandchildren react by threatening not to leave money to their children. More than one poster describes having worked diligently to amass fortunes big or small with the plan to pass them on to grandchildren, but will now find ways to spend the money. Not too many posters find this decision to be problematic and they agree that parents have no obligation to leave inheritances to their children. Generally, I found this thread to be very bizarre and, based on several responses, so did a number of other posters.

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