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The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart sick.
The sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears.
I'm Steve Olman.
I'm Cheryl Strait.
This is Dear Sugar's.
Oh dear song, won't you please?
She has some little sweet days with me.
I check my bedbite every day.
Oh, and this sugar, you see in my way.
So, Cheryl, I was reading two things in conjunction.
Reading letters from our inbox.
And also just happened to read this story that was in the New Yorker recently.
Some months ago, called FAQ, like frequently asked questions by the writer, Allegra Goodman, whose work I love.
And it was really such a brilliant story.
And I so did just could see in my little brain this connection to all these letters we've started to receive at Dear Sugar's.
The story deals with this young woman who returns home from college and she's sort of seemingly adrift.
The way the story is presented, and it's brilliant in this sense, is that the parents are very concerned.
They have all these anxieties about whether their child is depressed.
She doesn't seem to be taking action when she's going to get back to school, get back on track, and so forth.
And as the story progresses in a way that good fiction has of sort of defamiliarizing us, making us see the world in a new way,
what we actually come to see is that the parents' vigilance is a form of neediness.
It's a kind of dependence that they have on their child.
And what she realizes at the end is that she has to liberate herself.
And what's so interesting, the connection I made to the letters that we're getting in our inbox, is that a lot of people from both directions,
parents and kids are struggling with this question of, when do I stop paying for my kin?
As parents and as kids, how long should I be on the family dole?
And it's become so much murkier in our generation.
You and I grew up in a time where I think for many young people it was just understood when you're 18, you're not entirely on your own, but you're mostly on your own.
You're not coming home to live.
But I feel like now our letter writers from both directions are struggling with this feeling of, when do I stop being a son or daughter and become an adult?
Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with you that it's an entirely new paradigm. I agree that when you and I were 18, 19, 20, there was a greater social stigma for you to move home and live in your parents' basement or, you know, in your old bedroom.
That's now much more socially accepted than it was.
And yet I do think that this dynamic has always existed. I mean, you and I have talked on this show about many of our peers receiving money from their parents still.
Sometimes in the form of, you know, private school tuition for the grand kid or, you know, like a little, you know, I have friends who are like my age who receive like a monthly little stipend from their parents still.
So I think that it's gotten money and family and those financial cords between us and our kin have gotten very complicated.
Right.
Well, I don't have read the first letter. Yeah, dear sugars. As a 26 year old graduate student, I consider myself lucky to have parents willing to support me as I continue my education and work towards a career.
However, I find myself wrestling with the tension of asserting my independence, given my parents desire to be financially responsible for some aspects of my life.
I earn enough of my research stipend to afford a modest lifestyle and I'm happy with my life apart from my parents.
Increasingly, it feels like they're holding me in limbo with the lingering finances they refuse to let me take on myself.
These items are down to remaining on their cell phone plan, continuing to drive their old car and paying for my car insurance.
On one hand, I would love to say thank you, but no, thank you and simply leave the car at their house and purchase my own cell phone and cut the cord.
On the other hand, I value having a good relationship with my parents, not only for my sake, but also for their happiness.
When I've brought up pain for these things myself, my dad will scoff and say something condescending like maybe in a couple of years, or he'll snort when I refer to myself and my 29 year old sister as his adult children.
Fights have escalated among us when I so much is trying to pay for a round of drinks when I'm with them as they view my income as poultry compared to theirs.
The situation is complicated in that my older sister is often unemployed. She lives at home and is very much okay with my parents paying her way.
I live in another state and only deal with these issues when I'm home for visits. I feel like it's easier to avoid conflict for the short time we're together.
I want to have a relationship with my parents in which they recognize me as an adult, but I fear that bar and marriage they'll never make the transition.
The judgments they pass on my behavior and life choices, everything from visiting friends while I'm home to getting an IUD are amplified by the power they derive from the money they still invest in my life.
They were married by my age and had independent careers and apartments. My life path is a bit more winding than theirs. With at least three years ahead of me in school, I won't have the stability they want for me anytime soon.
How can I develop a relationship of mutual respect with my parents? How can I wean myself off their financial involvement without ruining our current relationship?
How can I navigate the mess of discrepancies between how me and my sister relate to my parents and their finances? Signed confused and frustrated emerging adults.
Yeah, see, so this is a letter that I was specifically thinking about when I read this allegory, Goodman story. One line stood out here where you say, you know, with at least three years ahead in school, I won't have the stability they want for me anytime soon.
If you were an over in this letter, the question is, well, what do they want? And how do they see things? And the question for you is, wait a second. What about the stability you want? Maybe if in exchange for a little bit of financial instability, you gain a sense of volition and control of your life, a little bit more independence.
You're waiting for your parents to say it's okay for you to be an adult. And you need to be able to say it's okay for me to be an adult to say, I'm not ruining our current relationship, I'm redefining it. And in this version of our relationship, I really appreciate that you want to pay for my car insurance.
I really appreciate that you want to help me out in these ways, but I'm not taking that help because I'd rather do it myself.
I think you'll find this short story I mentioned so comforting is because the young woman has to realize something that really is in a way kind of seditious, which is my parents are dependent on me.
And they're not going to break the cycle. And so I have to be the adult in the room and break the cycle.
I can't say it better. I think that the very simple and straight answer to your question is that, you know, the way to convince them that you're an adult is to simply be an adult.
And adults don't ask permission if they want to have their own cell phone plan and pay for it themselves, they do that.
And so what you do is you go out and get a new cell phone and get your own plan and your own name and you pay the bill and you do the same with the car and the car insurance.
And you're not the one doing something wrong by making those choices.
If your parents respond with anger at those choices, they, you know, they need to contend with that themselves and deal with those consequences.
And you're perfectly reasonable to cut those ties and you should just do it.
This is a crazy association, but I was just thinking about this moment as you were talking Cheryl, I've told you the story of like Aaron and I alope, you know, by that time she was in her early 30s.
And she had a complicated relationship with her parents, but when we announced that we had alope.
And by the way, she was pregnant and they were going to be grandparents, you know, her father, I still remember the expression and say, he was just press fallen.
And he kept saying, I don't believe it. I want to see a marriage like this. I don't believe it. And my mom, God bless her.
She very quietly walked over to him and said, and just, you know, set her hand on him and looked him in the eye and said, it's tough to see your little girl grow up.
And I was like, that's it. She just saw that inside every big, especially because a dad sounds like the locus of this, you know, for you, confused and frustrated is like your dad, really who you're mentioning in this letter as the person who's kind of scoffing at the idea of your adulthood.
Underneath all that, I'm the big daddy is a little boy or at least somebody who's terribly afraid that you don't need him and who measures his own worth in the world by your dependence.
And that's a tough cycle to break, but it's really crucial to your sense of self that you do so not with any rancor, but with the recognition that, you know, you're going to have to define for him a different relationship.
And that's probably going to be uncomfortable for him, but necessary.
Yeah. And I think, you know, there is a way to say very directly, confused, listen, I do need you. And here's what I need. I need your love. I need your support. I need your advice when I seek it.
Right.
I need all the things that parents really give us that, you know, those power that powerful bond that you don't ever want to cut.
And, you know, the other thing we keep saying talk to them, tell them this, I would also consider the possibility of, you know, writing them a letter sometimes in my life when I've had to say the kind of big thing.
Yeah.
And that I know that I'm maybe not going to be heard because the person will react emotionally in the moment. I've written instead of considered letter.
And, you know, you know, your parents better than than we do, but that could be a way to really fully express the nature of what you're doing when you decide to cut your parents off, you know, cut that sort of money feedback.
I'm like, you know, I think this is a real thing and you simply need to take action and explain yourself to these very important people as lovingly as possible.
And, you know, they need their reign as your sort of financial providers needs to come to an end.
Mm-hmm.
If you do write a letter, which I think is a great idea, you might recognize their lives, the different paths, as you've obviously thought about that they took, how your life is different from theirs.
But in some ways, how you want what they got, which is to establish your own life in your own sense of self-hood in which you come to them, not for money, not for the car insurance, not for the phone plan.
But because you really want their counsel, you want their support.
And you mentioned, can use this dynamic with the sister, which absolutely makes it a little more complicated.
But this is a great practice for you to really recognize that boundary. You are not your sister.
She has made different choices. She has a different life. Just because she's financially dependent and comfortable with that doesn't mean that you need to be.
And so you can differentiate yourself. So, you know, step into that and own it and don't ask anyone for permission to do it.
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You're digging in a place that's been very peaceful for a while.
Do it anyway. Dig.
So we're back.
And we're going to talk to a guest about a different dynamic.
This is, I think, maybe the more traditional one we think about when we think about that financial cord that exists between parent and child.
And that is the frustration of the parents who are saying, how long do I have to keep paying for this stuff?
Yeah, exactly.
So we're going to have on the show, I'm super psyched about this show.
Kate Gail is the founder and managing editor of Red Hand Press.
She's also the editor of the Los Angeles Review.
And she writes wonderful poetry, nonfiction librettoes.
She also writes her current project is on the eighth day, the story of her cult upbringing.
And the reason that I especially was fascinated to talk with her is she's writing an opera like all of us who are just busy writing operas.
She's writing an opera about young men who live in their parents garage.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Okay. I think she's the perfect guest.
Let's give her a call.
Let's do it.
Hello.
Hi, it's Steve Alman. I'm here with Cheryl Strayed.
Hi, Kate.
Hi. How are you?
Good. How are you?
Good.
So Steve just read your glorious bio and told us about this opera you're writing.
But today, the reason we're calling you, Kate, is we're talking about how to cut that financial cord.
It's something that a lot of people struggle with in various directions with family relations.
Absolutely.
So tell us about your own experience, your, in addition to everything else, you do a mom of two.
And what was their path like towards financial independence if they have even reached that hallowed state?
Well, my daughter has a master's.
But when she was in her 20s, she was still on my phone plan.
She had a gas card.
And of course, on my healthcare and current insurance.
So I told her a year in advance that at 26 when she was on her own health plan, that she was also going to have to be paying all those other bills.
So she had a year to think about this and make it happen, which she did.
So you told her when she was 25.
Yes.
Okay. When you're 26, this is when you need to be financially independent.
Right.
How does she respond to that when you, when you told her?
Actually, very well. She just, she just said that's plenty of time for me to figure everything out.
And I think if I had told her next month, she would have started to panic.
But since she had a year to figure it out, she was good.
And also, I think she and I are on the same page in that she wants to be independent.
And I want her to be independent.
Right. Right. What about your son?
Well, so my son is a different thing. When he was 19, he was doing what California boys do, which is, you know, in a band playing the guitar and smoking weed in my backyard.
And unless he wasn't growing it in your backyard, right?
Yeah. I mean, that's, well, I don't know. That might have been better.
Exactly. He'd be paying for him.
Right. Okay. I take that back. He should have been growing it in your backyard.
Exactly. I think in other parts of the country, the boys are in the basements and the addicts, but here they're in the garages.
And so I said to him, you know, this isn't acceptable.
You need to either work or go to school and he clearly wasn't inclined to either.
So I said, is there anywhere you'd like to go? And he said, well, I've always wanted to go to Nepal and work at this orphanage that I know about there.
And I said, consider it done. And I bought him a one-way ticket to Kathmandu and told him he could come back in a year.
So he went and worked at that orphanage and when his visa ran out, he was kind of like, what next? And I was like, wow, that sounds like a personal problem.
Let me know how that turns out.
So that was creating my own right of passage for him in a way or him being complicit in that.
And he's become quite an adventurer at this point. He's traveled all over the world and right now he's teaching English and Vietnam.
So I feel like he made the boy to man transition because he was forced out of depending on me for everything.
Right. And I think that's, there are so many things you said that interest me, but you use this phrase the right of passage.
And this is something I've really thought a lot about. You know, I think the hike I wrote about in my book, Wild, was a ride of passage.
I think that there is something that goes on in our early 20s, sort of late teens, where we do need to find a way to test our own strengths and test our own independence.
And that's not given to us by the culture. And so we need to invent them ourselves.
Were you conscious of that when you told your son, OK, go off and have this adventure?
Well, I had this kind of epiphany at one point when I was sitting around talking with his dad and my husband.
So the three of us all have stayed very close and raised the kids together. And my ex is in his 60s. And he said that like his right of passage was avoiding Vietnam.
And he was also was kind of talking about how just getting laid, he needed to sort of have a job and a good set of wheels. And then my husband, who's in his 50s, was also talking about how, you know, to go on a date, he needed to kind of pull himself together.
And I suddenly realized that my son didn't need to do any of that. And I realized we're missing a right of passage here.
The boys can just be boys forever and still get the benefits of being a man, which is a set of wheels, at least enough money to get by and getting laid.
That's what you get when you grow up as a man. He's getting all of that without any rights of passage. So if I want to write a passage for him that transitions him, I'm going to have to come up with something.
Right. But you've still funded the trip to Katman, do you know, right? I mean, did we're you still supporting him financially while I was there? Did he earn some money?
Working there was he volunteering.
So what I agreed on that first trip was I bought the ticket to get in there and his dad said he'd buy a ticket back in a year.
And I said, your current insurance is costing me $100 a month. So that's how much I'm willing to give you the rest of it you need to make yourself. So that's what happened that first year.
He came back briefly and then took off for New Zealand six months in New Zealand in a year in Australia. And at that point he was just on his own.
So he is off the family payroll and has been since he was like 20. My daughter took longer, but she also went to graduate school. Right. And how old are your kids now?
They are now 26 and 27.
Awesome. But it's clear Kate also that this this issue preoccupies you because you've written an opera about it. What's the opera about?
The opera that's tentatively called the man in the attic is about a woman who basically convinced her her young lover to live in the attic for many, many years.
But in my opera, I have a sort of chorus of boys who are all in attics and garages and basements playing video games. And when I propose this to the composer Joseph Turin that I'm working with, he said,
Oh my gosh, my stepson is in my basement playing video games right now.
Yeah. Well, I want to reach you this letter kidding, get your take on it because we have a father's perspective.
Two sugars. I'm a father with two children from my first marriage and two step children from my second. My question concerns my first born biological child son who will soon turn 18.
Though he lives nearby with his mother, I rarely see him in contrast to his younger sibling who spends time with my wife and me twice a week.
My son and I had a falling out two and a half years ago at which point he elected to stop spending time with me on any regular basis.
We smoothed over the roughest parts of that patch, but in all the time since, he has not spent a single night under the same roof as me.
He has not spent any time at all with my parents or his step-grandparents or any aunts, uncles or cousins in my family, and he has not gathered with the other five of us in my core family since last Christmas.
When I invited him to join us for Thanksgiving dinner this year, his only response was, sorry, I'm going to pass.
My core and extended families are full of loving, kindhearted people with room in their hearts for my son. It saddens many of us to witness his disregard for the opportunities we offer, the formation of happy memories, positive connections with our friends, and those in our social networks, guidance and moral support as he enters adulthood.
My legal responsibility for financially supporting my son ends next year. I could certainly opt to continue providing that support, contributing to his education, paying for his insurance, etc.
But should I? Would withdrawing that support effectively demonstrate the consequences of refusing to participate in the give and take of family life?
Consequences that might lead him to reconsider his self-imposed isolation from the rest of us? Or would such a move be petty, short-sighted, manipulative, and more likely to be counterproductive?
I love my son dearly. At this point though, he and I are acquaintances, but he's sometimes when we get together for a movie or some other fun activity.
I've got lots of friends and acquaintances that I get together with on occasion, and I don't provide basic financial support for any of them. Given my son's choices, is there any reason I should treat him any differently as he becomes an adult, sincerely, father of three acquaintance of one?
No, boy. I think it's such a fascinating letter because it's, and Kate, I want to hear you respond to this, but he's really kind of burrowing past all of our sentimental ideas and saying, well, hold on a second here.
If we're going to define relationships in terms of their emotional psychological content, he's an adult, he's an acquaintance. I don't pay for my other acquaintances.
But he's not an acquaintance. He's your son. No father, he's your son. One thing Kate, before you got on the phone, we discussed a letter from a 26-year-old woman who was a child.
A child who's parents didn't want to sort of stop giving her money. And we were saying one of the things that occurred to me is that, you know, that their generosity wasn't really generosity. It was an exertion of power.
And father, this comes to mind also when I contemplate your letter because basically what you're saying is, I'll pay you if you're nice to me.
And if I don't get to have that power over you that you're going to come and spend Thanksgiving with me and, you know, be essentially the kind of open-hearted communicator that I want you to be, then I'm not going to pay.
And I do think that that's a mistake. I absolutely understand why you are paying about your relationship with your son. I think that that's very hard.
But I would really strongly encourage you to separate your financial obligations to him, which you do have. Those are two different problems. And one of them is easily solved. And that is, be a father to him.
Be a father to him with your money. Even if you can't right now be the father to him you want to be in your emotional relationship with him.
It's so interesting. I mean, the father of three is in a way offering a model of fatherhood and what it should offer to kids or parenthood that the father of our last letter writer confused could use because he's not saying I want economic control over this kids life.
I want him to be dependent on me. He's saying I want to be emotionally involved with them. I don't just want to be in acquaintance. I want to be able to provide him the kinds of human emotional and psychological familial support that I think will help him into adulthood.
So I totally agree that it's the wrong tactic. But I think the strategy is pretty healthy. What he wants from his son is to have a deeper relationship and to be able to help him in ways that don't feel monetary as he's entering adulthood. What do you think, Kay?
Well, I think that we get to know our kids as kids for usually about 20 years. And if you're extremely fortunate you get to know them as adults for 40 years. And how about 20 years plays out determines whether you even get to have the 40 years.
So to me, the fact that this the son is being a bit of a punk when he's a teenager just seems as a parent of kids that are in their mid 20s, it seems so irrelevant.
My two classic stories that I'll remember of my son is he said to his dad once.
Dad, I just want you to know you were born a douchebag and you'll die a douchebag. And wow, his dad said so many people would agree with you on that, but you're still going to need to do your homework.
And he said to Mark, his stepdad at one point, Mark, the problem with you is you think you're the alpha male around here.
So my point is that in our household, I have two stepsons in one son. All three of the boys were punks to their dad during a lot of the time until they were about 20.
And the dad just wrote it out because your job as an adult is not to turn off and on the love faucet. It's to be an adult. And that means you're the parent acting like a parent means you continue to love this person as much as you can.
And continue to be there for them and hope they grow up.
And this dad loves his son. And I think if he hangs in there, the son will outgrow being a punk.
It's possible that he won't, but it seems given all this love much more likely that he will.
And the thing about the friendship is, I absolutely agree that if we are mentally healthy, that you don't have friends who don't respect you. That's a given.
But that's not the same with your kids. Your kids are sometimes going to disrespect you.
And I think you hope by the time there are adults that you have a mutually respectful relationship.
Yeah, you know, there is a difference, I think, between talking about financially supporting an 18 year old and an even like a 23 year old or a 26 year old.
They can't usually just leap right into financial independence.
And so I'm curious, Kate, if you want to give father and other listeners any feedback about, you know, how to go through this process.
So, beginning at 18, where you are giving all this support financials your kids and weaning them off of that over time.
Well, I think that, like, one of the things that I'll hear kids that are 18, 19 and 20 say is, you know, like, I'm totally on my own.
You're not totally on your own if your parents are paying for your dorm room or apartment and your tuition.
You're not even on your own at all. You just happen to not be living under your parents' roof.
I always said to my kids, when you're on your own, it's when you can walk across the street and buy me an ice cream to them.
As in, you're paying all of your own bills and you could share back with the family.
So, I decided that I really wanted independent kids and it wasn't just that I don't want to have to take care of them.
It's that I like independent people.
And I think that that's one of the questions that parents need to ask themselves is, who am I going to know for the next 40 years?
Someone who's asking me for help every time they turn around, who can't figure out anything on their own, or someone who solves their problems and this planet's problems.
And it's got some.
So, that's what I wanted and I felt like at 18, I started this, well, I mean, even when they were in high school, I started this conversation about becoming independent.
And being on your own, being able to take care of yourself and other people in your community.
So, I think that the point kids are in high school talking to them about the fact that they're going to be independent and moving toward that.
So, making steps towards independence early is a good thing.
Unless you really want to have someone who's dependent on you the rest of your life and I think that's not an ideal for the kid.
Right.
Kate, thank you so much for joining us. It's been really a pleasure to talk to you.
Yeah, thank you.
And we better get tickets to that opera.
Definitely.
We'll bring our ungrateful children.
He lives in the basement.
You need a singer.
Just let me know.
Steven, I could do a duet.
One thing that nobody knows about it is that it's incredibly simple.
Okay.
Yeah.
Hi listeners.
We're taking a few weeks off for the holidays, but we'll be back with a new episode of Dear Sugars in the New Year.
Talk to you then.
Dear Sugars is produced by the New York Times in partnership with WBUR.
Our producer is Alexandra Lee Young.
Our editor and managing producer is Larissa Anderson.
Our executive producer is Lisa Tobin.
And our editorial director is Samantha Henig.
We recorded the show at our ghost studios in New York City, our mix engineer is Josh Rogasen.
Our theme song is by Liz Weiss.
And other music is by the Portland band called Wonderly.
Find us at nytimes.com slash Dear Sugars.
And please send us your letters at DearSugars at nytimes.com.
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If you want to read another letter on this topic, check out our column in the style section.
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