Assuming that it is, it’s not like this situation doesn’t exist for some people. It’s not even unheard of for high school students to be expected to contribute to the household finances. I knew at least a couple of kids in that situation.
See and I don’t really see any difference between “If you want to live her you have to pay $X per month” and " You have to pitch in $12X toward your tuition each year". My assumption is that parents who want to charge their kid more than moving out would cost are probably not paying much (if any) of the tuition - but I could be wrong.
I think this specific situation may not exist - lots of college students contribute to household expenses and plenty of high school students do. But “contribute” can mean anything from “buy your own personal items and give me $20 a week toward gas/electric” to “give me as much as you’d pay to live on your own”. I’m not sure the latter situation really exists because I can’t even imagine two parents who would think their kid would go for that.
The parents are clearly the assholes here. The article says if he chose to stay at home, they were expecting him to pay the same as for a one-bedroom apartment in their area, but without ANY of the privacy, freedom or anything involved with having your own place. I suspect that even paying $1300/month plus half(?) of the bills, he’d still be their kid, living in their house, sharing a room with his brother, etc…
To put up with that, the parents should have cut him a sweetheart deal; maybe 4-500 a month at most, plus 25% of the bills (there ARE 4 people living there after all) at the very most.
On top of that, when he did the economic math and realized that paying $1300/month plus half of the utility bills for a HOUSE is a bad deal vs. half of a 2 bedroom apartment and half of its bills, not to mention the freedom aspects, they tried to guilt-trip him as if he’s somehow putting THEM in a bind by moving out.
F**k those asshole parents. You can’t threaten to eject your kid if they don’t agree to pay far above market value for their room, and then get pissed and try to guilt-trip him when he realizes that’s a shitty deal. That’s just a crappy and greedy way to treat your kids.
If nothing else, they should have said something like “Hey- we’d really like you to stay and help us with our expenses. We’re prepared to negotiate a reasonable rate for you staying where you are.” instead of trying to extract cash from him.
And FTR, $1300 a month is a LARGE part of a good sized mortgage.
My home life was rough when I turned 18. My parents had recently divorced (which wasn’t a bad thing, my dad was a total a-hole and my brother and I both thought they should have divorced many years before) but it did leave the house in a weird state after my dad left. My brother was a real problematic person, he was always hard to live with (and he eventually developed the wonderful trifecta of mental illness, drug addiction, and crime, he’s currently in county lockup as I type this). I got a retail job making minimum wage to pay my way through community college and tried to kick in what I could to help my mom out but things got so bad I moved out to live with a couple of coworkers. Eventually I couldn’t afford tuition and living expenses so I dropped out before I got my degree.
It’s not that odd for kids who are young adults in college to chip in at home in my experience. In my case I was also paying for 100% of my schooling at the same time, I’m not sure what the deal is with the person in the Yahoo story.
Oh the dollar amount in the story is insane. I know my situation was a long time ago (mid-90s) but I think I was chipping in a couple hundred dollars a month.
Similar situations, sure. THIS particular one - pay us more than the market rate, but with “oh you decided to move out, you ungrateful bastard”, and then ostracizing the kid. What kind of parents are these? If the parents really think like that there’s a lot more going on than the article says.
Based on the article with the $1300 and half of utilities I thought the parents were just trying to push the kid out. But if they got upset when he found his own place, I guess they were just greedy.
But there is a difference, a clear one. If the case were you have to pitch in X amount for college, then phrase it as such, not as a choice about the living situation.
The main point that makes the parents assholes is not so much the outrageously high rent they wanted their son to pay, but that they got all pissy when the son made a perfectly reasonable choice to live elsewhere.
I thought the point of making a grown child living at home pay rent was so the grown child would take responsibility for themselves like an adult should. Therefore, the parents do not have the right to get nasty if the grown child makes an adult decision to move out on their own.
Yeah, it is absolutely illegal to work as a bartender in CA under the age of 21. At 18 I was making the then munificent minimum wage of $3.35/hr working at McDonalds 
. With that I paid my own (cheap at the time) tuition, books, transportation and entertainment, but received free room and board from the parents.
I just don’t see a real difference between “parents pay entire tuition and student pay X per month towards rent” and “parents cover living expenses for student and pay tuition minus $12X , student pays $12X toward tuition” . It is a difference in framing , but the kid is paying the same amount either way - although when I was in college it would have been way easier to pay $X per month than $6X when each tuition bill was due Of course, I also said that my assumption is that these parents would not be paying much tuition tuition - maybe you would see it differently if $X per month was $100 per month rather than $1300 plus half of the bills.
I will tell two stories. The first is my best friend. He finished first in his class at South Philly HS and automatically won a full tuition scholarship at Penn. His father ordered him to turn it down and go out and get a job. He refused. So his father tossed him out of the house. He spoke to the dean of men at Penn who told him that there was an unoccupied dorm room that he could use for a year, which he did. Then he got a part-time job at the lab I was working at. That’s where I met him. We became close friends and decided to get an off-campus apartment together, where we stayed for two years (the rent was $50/month in 1956).
My story is almost the opposite. When I finished HS, there was no money to go to college. But, great luck, I found this job at a lab at Penn where I worked full-time and took courses part-time. The job didn’t pay well, but it included half tuition for all the courses I took. And I lived at home and no one asked me to pay anything. My parents were delighted at what I was doing.
Until I moved out. Then there was hell to pay. “My cousins will think we don’t along.” “Children are supposed to live at home until they get married.” On and on like that. But they got over it.
Given my stories I think the parents here are utter dorks. If the report is true of course.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. By family events, I meant that if my parents were taking my younger siblings on vacation, they expected me to take time off from work or school to go with them.
I’ve known other women, like your mother, who were denied the opportunity to have tuition paid by their parents because they had to save it for “the boys.”
The difference in framing is a big difference, yes. If you want your son to pay X amount for tuition then tell him exactly that. Framing it as a choice and then being upset because he chose different than you wanted is silly. If you never wanted him to have a choice, ask him up front for what you want.
Right. It has not been reported elsewhere. I find the story suspicious. I say the Writer is the asshole.
I guess I assumed that once you had moved out and no longer had to follow their rules, you stopped taking time off from work or school on their schedule. Its what I would have done, but I’m a bitch.
Nope, it wasn’t like that at all. Mom and aunt were forbidden to go to college. Period. They couldn’t pay their own tuition or pursue scholarships. They were women, they were going to get married and have children, there was no reason to waste money or time in educating them past their place.
Of course, this topic has nothing to do with the OP, so I will apologize for the hijack and bow out.
I see what you’re getting at now - yes, giving him a choice and getting upset when he doesn’t choose what you want is silly.
Someone I went to college with in the 70’s had to completely pay for College and room and board. Her parents still claimed her on their taxes because she lived with them summers and holidays so she was not eligible for any financial aid and her parents made good salaries. I always thought she got a raw deal.
I don’t know if she had to pay room and board during the summer but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Why would it be reported elsewhere?
Seriously, there are 300,000,0000 people in the United States and its not conceivable that at least one of them has parents fucked up in this way? I’ve got way more farfetched stories than that.
The article says;
For a while, they were hoping to rely on me with helping out with their mortgage payments on the house also with the bills. So now that I’ve chosen to leave, my dad says I’m going to leave them really struggling and he can’t believe I decided to be selfish instead of helping my family out.
Back in my teens, I knew a family that expected their kids (ages 11-18 or so) to work summer jobs. The parents took half their earnings. I guess their reasoning was that the family came first and they paid for everything when the kids were young. And they were probably funding the grandparents as needed, so there was a hive economy or something.