Page 11 - Seniors Today Magazine April 2024
P. 11
Cover Story
Entitled or Not?
When are we going to grow up, asks Dr Monika M Dass
When Thomas Gilbert received a 30-year
sentence in September for killing his father establish his career. He is 34. They will now
over a money dispute, it ended a four-year- house, feed and take care of him and hope
long case that sent a chilling warning to that their only child will find a job that he
any parent who ever considered giving can keep. The family finances are already
money to an adult child. precarious, but my friend has signed up for
Mr. Gilbert, the son of a Manhattan another part-time job she will do after office
hedge fund manager, was raised with a hours.
silver-spoon lifestyle, attending the elite You want to support your child, but
Buckley School for boys in Manhattan, the if your child is just serially not self-
exclusive Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, sustaining, what do you do? How do you
Mass., and Princeton University, but wean your adult kids off this cruel financial
he had trouble holding down a job after dependence?
graduation. So, his parents gave him a Research has established this pattern all
monthly allowance, in addition to covering over the world, including the West, where
the $2,400-a-month rent on his apartment ruthless independence at the age of 18 was
in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood. the norm.
When his father cut the allowance, an We have gone through a generation of
outraged Mr. Gilbert, then 30, took a gun parents known as ‘helicopter parents’ who
and fired it into his father’s head at point- have to know and solve every one of their
blank range. child’s problems, shielding them from
My friend’s son has returned home after adverse consequences all their lives. Even if
a two-year stint in Bengaluru. He wants they arose from conscious choices that the
to recover from another failed attempt to adult child had willingly made.
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #58 | APRIL 2024 11
