bearing blog

Profiles in marriage.

My friend Margaret at Minnesota Mom has posted a beautiful profile of her parents today. Twenty years ago, she interviewed them as a university assignment; this is a sort of update.

It's really lovely -- go read.

Posted with Blogsy

Class distinctions.

Darwin links to a post about class differences between marriage partners.  Um, I'll just copy a big chunk of this from Darwin.

I was struck by this post which talks about marraige frictions which derive from class assumptions:

Oliver and Maggie are young, very much in love, and planning their honeymoon. What should be an exciting series of conversations becomes surprisingly unpleasant. Maggie resents Oliver’s nonchalance about where the trip should be; he’s seemingly happy with almost any destination. Oliver finds the normally easy-going Maggie strangely rigid and demanding about where to take the trip, and doesn’t understand her anxious, almost obsessive research into the possible details of each honeymoon location.

Finally, it occurs to Oliver to ask a question: “Do you imagine that this is the only trip we are going to take together?”.

Maggie bursts out “Of course it is!” and starts to cry.

What is going on? Oliver grew up middle class and therefore anticipates a lifetime of travel with his future spouse, of which the honeymoon is only one journey. Maggie grew up in a community where virtually everyone was flat on their uppers. For her, a honeymoon is the only trip a couple would take, the sole travel memory they would share between themselves and with their children and grandchildren for 50 years to come. For her the choice was thus fraught with fear that she and Oliver’s one and only venture into the wider world would be less than perfect.

Another couple, Alphonse and Pat, generally get along well until something in their household breaks and a long-running feud comes to the surface. When the dishwasher floods the floor, for example, Alphonse digs out the service manual and his tool kit and commences to tinker with it over a few days until its function is restored. Pat simmers with anger at the days without a dishwasher and the grimy tools and grease stains on the kitchen floor. Alphonse is bitter that Pat doesn’t seem to admire how handy he is at fixing things around the house.

What is going on? Alphonse grew up in a blue collar home in which calling a repairman was considered an extravagance and in which men were supposed to know how to fix things with their own two hands. Pat grew up in an upper middle class home in which the only thing in the tool box was a cell phone. When Pat’s high-powered professional parents needed something to be repaired, they hired someone and it was done immediately, no muss no fuss.

 

MrsDarwin and I have very nearly identical class backgrounds, so I don't think there's ever been a time when we've found ourselves working from different assumptions like this. There have been a number of times at work, however, when I've found myself suddenly conscious of my background assumptions as compared to those of other people....

Darwin goes on to write about having "a deep feeling that 'people like us don't have vacation cottages' or 'people like us do our own yard work.'"  

I'm tempted to go off in three different directions in response to the post, which has a lot of food for thought, but right here I'll write about the first one that struck me upon reading the fictional frictions between Oliver and Maggie and between Alphonse and Pat, based on unspoken assumptions that arise from their backgrounds.

It reminded me of my marriage, just a bit.  Not because of significant economic class distinctions between Mark and me, but because of this difference:  A large fraction of my cohort of friends came from divorced families, and not one of my parents or my parents' siblings had stayed married.   Whereas in my husband's family and cohort, almost everyone had stayed married.  Mark comes from a place where it is assumed that marriages last.  I come from a place where it was assumed that they do not.  

Indeed, during the time that Mark and I were planning our wedding, one close relative warned me (technically not "to my face" -- it was over the phone)  that my marriage would likely fail.  

The difference hasn't caused arguments between us, not that I can remember (maybe it did while we were dating) -- but it has from time to time caused us to be bemused at each other's reactions.  

I guess most of the bemusement comes from me, now that I think of it.  

Postsecondary education questions: A summary sort of post, before moving on.

(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)

+ + +

In this post I came to a conclusion about parents' responsibilities toward helping adult children finish their education:

 Parents have a certain minimum education and preparation that they owe their kids; if they don't manage to do it by the time the kids are adults, the kids have a right to ask for more help; but adults who are continuing to receive help from their parents to continue their education, rightly continue to be subject to their parents as they were when they were minors.

A lot of what the Church documents go into has to do with religious development and character development, but economics is part of it too.  I think these (both from Familiaris Consortio) are the key economic features of a minimum education for a child who may marry :

• it will enable them to "establish their family in favorable...economic conditions." (53)  
• it  "will... acquaint [them] with correct methods for the education of children, and will assist them in gaining the basic requisites for well-ordered family life, such as stable work, sufficient financial resources, sensible administration, notions of housekeeping" (66)

(I propose to stick, for now, with the case of a child who likely will plan to support a family.   We'll get to other vocations eventually.)

I also wrote that (morally rather than legally speaking) a child is emancipated 

• when he is accessing what he needs to know
• and is doing what he needs to do
• to fulfill the duties of his vocation,
• and has embarked on independent life.

We can combine these definitions of "necessary education" and "emancipation" to arrive at something like this (economically speaking) for a child who may marry:  

Parents must teach the child, or delegate that teaching to another, so that he knows what he needs to know and can do what he needs to do to establish his family in favorable economic conditions.  That education must assist him in gaining stable work and sufficient financial resources for supporting a family.  It must also assist him in learning to run a household and acquaint him with correct methods of educating children.

I think everyone agrees that parents owe their minor children an adequate education.  If all the adequate choices cost money, and the parents can reasonably afford it, then they might reasonably conclude they have a duty to pony up for elementary-school or high-school tuition.   

Given that, parents might reasonably conclude that they also have a duty to contribute materially to a child's postsecondary education -- if that postsecondary education will complete the "minimum" education that a child needs.  That is, if it will teach him adequate knowledge and skills to establish his family in favorable conditions, to gain stable work, to gain sufficient financial resources, to run a household, and to educate his children.

Here's what's coming up:

  - On the theoretical side, I have a post in the works on what it means to have "adequate" skills and knowledge.  Not a list of necessary skills and knowledge, but the meaning of "adequate."

  - On the cost-benefit side, Mark is working on a guest post (okay, right now it is in the form of several spreadsheets) about the lifetime economic differences between hypothetical sibling pairs, one of whom gets a 4-year college degree, one of whom does not.  I got a preview of the data last night.  I think you'll find it very, er, educational.  

The point of working these things out, both on the theoretical and the practical side, is not that it is foolish or wrong to choose (or to fund) a less-lucrative path if it will make you happier; the point is to make your choices (a) within the bounds of duty to your family and (b) with your eyes open to the range of consequences. 

Postsecondary education questions: Parents' responsibilities surrounding emancipation and helping support adult children.

_{(Slightly edited and expanded since first posted, but before any comments showed up.)}

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

+ + +

I've spent a few posts now gathering facts and summarizing Catholic teaching with respect to education.  In this post I'm going to try to synthesize all that into answers to the following questions:

Do parents have an obligation to help a child finish his education, to the point that he can fulfill the duties of his vocation, after age 18?

May they set conditions on that help?

Do the offspring have an obligation to accept the help (and any conditions set upon it?)

+ + +

In one recent post, I posed the question: "When is the child 'emancipated?' How do we know he is ready to be launched?"

I wrote about practical and legal definitions of emancipation here.    In part because our legal system limits parents' control of their offspring,

...Parents can't guarantee that their offspring (even assuming normal intelligence and physical/mental health) will acquire all the skills that an adult human being should, not even if they throw all their best efforts at the task. That's because the young person is a person, with free will, and -- news flash -- persons with free will sometimes decide not to cooperate, or come up with their own lists of "necessary skills." So even if there comes no point when a parent can say , "You are done, I did my job" -- there must eventually be a point when a parent can rightfully say "I am done -- I did the best I could, and now it's your turn to finish your growing and education on your own -- if you choose to."

I further noted that morally speaking (as opposed to legally), a child is truly emancipated

• when he is accessing what he needs to know
• and is doing what he needs to do
• to fulfill the duties of his vocation,
• and has embarked on independent life.

(Remember that definition, because we are going to come back and unpack it.)

If a child is emancipated when he is doing this, then the pre-emancipation education properly includes all the preparation: learning what he needs to know to fulfill his duties (so he can access it when he needs to know it), and acquiring the skills he needs to have to fulfill his duties (so he can call on those skills when he needs to do them).

The final step to emancipation is independent living. Even if a person has the knowledge and skills to fulfill his vocation, he isn't technically emancipated if he is still living with significant material support from parents.

(Note that "prepared to fulfill the duties of his vocation" doesn't mean "qualified for the exact sort of job he wants" or "makes as much money as he wants." See here for my post on "what is the vocation for which education prepares us?"  We are not -- yet -- talking here about whether parents have a duty to help their child get a graduate degree, or whether they have a duty to pay for an expensive private college.... we are talking about a "complete enough" education.)

As I noted here:

"Children should be so educated that as adults they can follow their vocation... with a mature sense of responsibility and can choose their state of life; if they marry, they can thereby establish their family in favorable moral, social, and economic conditions" [GS52] "The family must educate the children for life in such a way that each one may fully perform his or her role according to the vocation received from God" [FC53].

This kind of education is part of parents' responsibility:

Parental authority is "unrenounceable" and should be "exercise[d]... as a ministry..., a service aimed at helping [children] acquire a truly responsible freedom" [FC21]. The primary way that parents express respect and affection for their children is in the care and attention devoted to their upbringing and in providing for physical and spiritual needs; later, in educating them in the right use of reason and the right use of freedom [CCC2228].

I believe this implies that parents have a positive obligation, as far as they are able, to employ parental authority to help their child learn what he needs to know to fulfill the duties of his vocation; and help their child acquire the skills that he needs to acquire to fill the duties of his vocation.

Once a child attains legal majority, it is not possible for parents to force their child to submit to parental authority for education. But legal majority is arbitrary with respect to the determination of emancipation. So what if, at that point, the grown offspring is still not adequately prepared to fulfill the duties of his vocation or to live independently?

Let's consider two possibilities, and I will try to flesh out my personal conclusions:

1. The offspring requests help. If at the age of majority the offspring's education is inadequate, and the offspring requests additional help from parents (whose responsibility it is to prepare the child to fulfill the duties of his vocation), I think the parents are bound to continue offering help, insofar as they are reasonably able. In return, I judge that the offspring still owes filial obedience to parents, since he isn't emancipated and is still dependent on them.

In other words, the parents are perfectly free to set conditions on the assistance that they offer, as long as they remain within the moral constraints imposed by the responsibilities of parents toward their offspring. They also have a responsibility to offer help that is aimed at being, um, helpful. (If it's really no good, the legally-adult offspring is free to reject it, after all.)

2. The offspring declines help. If after the age of majority the offspring declines to accept the help that parents can offer towards preparing him to fulfill his vocation, then parents are no longer "able" to employ parental authority to continue educating him. In my opinion, that is when It's time for the parent to say, "I am done, I did what I could while I had the chance to do it."

+++

Bear in mind that a grown son or daughter might well reject help at first, but come back later and ask for help then. I think that if the son or daughter is still not adequately prepared to fulfill the duties of his/her vocation, the parents still do have a responsibility to help prepare their child, insofar as they are able to help.

 

You could think of this argument as going like this: parents have a certain minimum education and preparation that they owe their kids; if they don't manage to do it by the time the kids are adults, the kids have a right to ask for more help; but adults who are continuing to receive help from their parents to continue their education, rightly continue to be subject to their parents as they were when they were minors (and parents owe them the same kinds of considerations as they did back then, such as love, a good example, and the freedom to choose their vocation and profession and a spouse without coercion.)

+++

Two more notes:

Obviously there is a fine line to walk between illegitimate coercion, and legitimate use of parental authority to guide the child's education and preparation, e.g., to set conditions on the help offered. There are no clear rules here. It is going to be a judgment call that requires self-examination on everybody's part.

And a child asking for help to finish an inadequate education is a distinctly different situation from a child who has already been emancipated but who has fallen on hard times and asks for material help from parents. The parents have already fulfilled their duty to educate the child. I am not going to consider this situation any further right now, but will restrict myself to conditions surrounding emancipation for the "first" time.

In the next post I am going to consider what it means to "have the necessary knowledge and skills." Not so much a list of which knowledge and skills are necessary... as what it means to "have" knowledge and skills at all...

...and hang in there for a promised guest post from my husband on economics.

 

+++

UPDATE.  I want to make it clear that this post does not reflect Catholic teaching.  This is me trying to figure out the implications of the teachings that I summarized earlier in this series, so that I can move forward and feel reasonably confident that I'm not way off base.   

Anyone come to any different conclusions?

 

SECOND UPDATE:  I think about this topic some more here.

Post-secondary education questions: "Ignore your parents," aka anecdotal evidence that we're not aware how much things have changed.

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

+ + +

Have you ever read the Ask A Manager blog? I really love it, and I am not sure why, because I do not have a job anymore, let alone a manager, and so I do not technically need any of her advice about coworkers and harassment and crazy bosses and the like.

I think one of the reasons I like AAM is because she dispenses no-nonsense advice about getting along with people, advocating for yourself without stepping on others' toes, and dealing with the way things are instead of how you wish they would be. These are good skills in any setting, not just an office.

But the more I read it, the more I think it is helping me keep in touch with the outside world just a little bit, hopefully enough that I can use some of that information to help prepare my kids for it.

Anyway, apropos of the recent post in which I argued that one of our problems is that older people are giving advice that would have been good a generation ago and isn't good now, we have this reader question at AAM, from a reader fresh out of college who has secured a $10/hr school administration job she's excited about:

My mother is not happy with me taking this job whatsoever. She thinks that since I double-majored in four years from college, I should be able to find a job that starts me out at $18/hour. I understand that she just wants the best for me, but honestly I think she is in denial about how bad the job market is at the moment for recent college graduates (especially since both of my majors are in the humanities). She thinks that just because I graduated college, I should be able to find a prestigious job. But I have looked on multiple job sites and sadly $10/hour is on the higher end of the pay scale around where I live when it comes to entry level work. I am lucky that I found a job in general that is full-time, especially since so many of my friends that live around here cannot even find that.

My mother complains that the pay at this new job is too low and that they are trying to screw me over .... but my new employer has been informing me on what has been going on ... every step of the way and has been very good with answering my questions and concerns in a prompt manner. My mother says that I will be “working for a bunch of monkeys” and that I lost too much money since I received the job offer in mid-July and will not start until the third week of August. But isn’t it normal to wait that long to start a new job, especially since it is for a school?

...[S]o many of my friends are getting ripped apart by their parents for the fact that they cannot find a well-paying job out of college. I think it would be beneficial if you can address the fact that the economy is still pretty bad for recent college graduates since many of our parents have not looked for a new job in many years and do not see it first-hand.

The blogger writes, a bit tongue in cheek,

As of right now, all parents are prohibited from giving job search advice to their children. All of them. Yes, the sensible few will be punished for the transgressions of their peers, but that is the price that must be paid to put a stop to this epidemic of awful advice.

Your mom is wrong. Your friends’ parents are wrong....

Ignore her. Ignore anyone who seems not to be aware of the terrible job market that entire country is dealing with.

 

more

Not too long ago, in my post about what children owe their parents, I pointed out that the Catechism says that grown children should "willingly seek [their parents'] advice" and "accept their just admonitions." It is probably worth pointing out that the Catechism does not say that grown children should necessarily take their parents' advice, nor that they should accept admonitions that aren't just. One of the ways we show the unconditional part of the respect owed our parents is by asking for their advice, but it isn't inherently disrespectful to reject that advice (charitably, perhaps without comment) if it is truly bad advice.

And while we're at it, remember that in the post about what parents owe their children, I pointed out that parents ought to offer "judicious" advice to their grown offspring. If the only advice you have to give is injudicious, maybe you have a parental duty to keep it to yourself!

Postsecondary education questions: Can you still work your way through college?

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

+ + +

 

More fact-gathering.  Just this past spring, PBS Newshour's blog The Rundown posted a useful article:

In researching the growing amount of college loan debt that students are taking on as academic sticker prices steadily increase, we wondered: Is it possible to pay for college through summer and part-time jobs alone?

So we compiled data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics and others to create a calculator that compares possible annual income vs. college expenses since 1976, the first year all the data we need is available.

You can plug in your own hourly income as well as hours worked over the school year and during summer, and whether you attend a private or public college for a two-year or four-year program. Or, you can use our assumptions of the federal minimum wage rate -- currently $7.25 an hour -- with a part time job of 20 hours per week during the school year and a full-time job of 40 hours per week over the summer. Mousing over the lines shows you the college costs for that year and earnings. The difference shows whether you've made enough money or if you need more to foot the bill.

The calculator is located here.

Looking at four-year public institutions and using our assumptions for hours worked and income, average college costs actually could have been paid for up until the 2000-2001 school year. After that, a student would have to work more hours, or make more per hour, to keep up.

I think they must have changed the calculations since they wrote the article, because when I put "minimum wage," "four-year" and "public" into the calculator, I see the lines cross in 1991-92 --- my senior year in high school.  

(Having played with the numbers, I suspect they erred and got the "could have been paid for up to 2000-2001" for the case of "working 40 hours a week all year long while attending school full time.")

It is extremely instructive to look at the average costs of two-year public colleges.  In 2012, you can just about break even working a minimum-wage job for only 15 hours a week during the school year, and 40 hours a week during the summer.  

If you are attending a four-year college, you can just about break even working the same amount of hours if you could get your hourly wage up to $13.50.  Perhaps this is a good argument for doing some time in a vocational or trade school before starting college -- anything to bump your earnings significantly above minimum wage.

There's always the work a little, study a little option.  What if you worked minimum wage, 40 h/week for a year (saving ALL your money), then attended school with room and board for a school year, for eight years in a row, working all the summers?  I calculate that if you'd done that for the past eight years, you'd actually have come out ahead by $9500 to put toward your other expenses.  

Those two-year colleges are looking like a better and better idea.

Spend some time with the calculator and tell me what you've learned.

Post-secondary education: For the sake of completeness, filial responsibility laws.

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

+ + +

 

I've been blogging about how, legally speaking, parents' compulsory obligation to support their children ends at age 18, but how there's at least some evidence of a social expectation that parents will continue providing material support at least for a while.

For the sake of completeness and symmetry, I ought to point out that some states have on the books a "filial responsibility law" which compels adult children to provide material support to indigent parents.

There's a little bit about this here 

Filial responsibility laws typically don't apply unless your parent has to accept financial support from the government or she incurs a nursing home or other medical bill that she has no possibility of paying. If she has no financial resources, you might be expected to pay for her care. The nursing home, hospital, government or a third party can file a lawsuit against you in states that allow it, seeking a judgment that would obligate you to pay your parent's bill.

The law gives courts some discretion when enforcing filial responsibility laws. If you're barely making ends meet financially, courts typically won't require you to impoverish yourself to pay for your parent's care. Likewise, if you're paying significant costs for your own child, such as college tuition, this may exempt you from being responsible for your parent as well.

... If your parent abused you or abandoned you as a child, the law allows that she's undeserving of your financial support. However, some states have statutory requirements for abandonment. In Pennsylvania, your parent must have abandoned you for at least 10 years before you reached age 18.

My state, Minnesota, repealed its filial responsibility law in 1974.  But filial responsibility laws remain on the books in many states: 

 In a 2002 article titled, “Filial Responsibility: Can the Legal Duty to Support Our Parents Be Effectively Enforced?” by Shannon Frank Edelstone, appearing in the Fall 2002 issue of the American Bar Association’s Family Law Quarterly, the author listed thirty states that had filial responsibility laws on the books. 

Those states were Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. 

While each state’s laws vary, most provide that children have a duty to provide necessities for parents who cannot do so for themselves.

A recent Wall Street Journal article explored the question of being "on the hook for Mom's bills," describing a case where an adult son in Pennsylvania was ruled to owe more than $90,000 for his 65-year-old mother's hospital and nursing care bills after a car accident:

The ... family's experience serves as a warning for middle-aged children with parents who are racking up long-term-care bills. In many states, including Pennsylvania, the filial-support law doesn't require lack of cooperation or asset shielding on the children's part. They simply have to be deemed by a judge to have the means to pay the bill, Ms. Pearson says.

The best defense against such laws, elder-law experts say, is planning. "If your parents aren't multimillionaires, then you need to get some advice way early, maybe when they're 65," says Carolyn Rosenblatt, a San Francisco mediator, elder-law attorney and registered nurse. "By the time they're in their 80s, most people need some help. How would you pay for that?"

Among the possible strategies: buying long-term-care insurance before health problems begin or building an in-law unit that you could rent out, perhaps to a child in college or starting a first job, until your parents need it.

I'm not really sure whether it is relevant to the discussion.  But this is, I think, perhaps the flip side of considering whether parents should allow their adult children to live at home.

 

Post-secondary education questions: Emancipation, practical and legal considerations.

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

+ + +

I want to lay out some more facts to consider before we delve into the question, "What makes a child emancipated?"  At what point is a child "on his own," no longer bound by the requirement of obedience to parents, and under the expectation to provide for his own material support instead of asking it from his parents?

The problem from a legal, secular sense, in the United States, is that we have a patchwork of overlapping standards when it comes to the question of when a child is "free" from his parents.  Let's take a look.

Legal Emancipation

Wikipedia:

Emancipation of minors is a legal mechanism by which a minor is freed from control by his or her parents or guardians, and the parents or guardians are freed from any and all responsibility toward the child...

Children are minors, and therefore under the control of their parents or legal guardians, until they attain the age of majority, at which point they become adults. In most states this is either 18 years old, or requires the person be either both 18 and out of high school or at least 20 years old. However, in special circumstances, minors can be freed from control by their guardian before turning 18.

Besides attaining the age of 18, marriage or entry into the military generally  legally emancipates an under-18-year-old.  There is some variation in state law.

We're going to keep it simple here, so for the time being we will not consider special circumstances, and for the purpose of our argument, we will say that at age 18, or marriage, or entry into the military, a child is freed from legal control by his parents and parents are freed from compulsory material support of the child.

 + + +

But besides the strict legal consideration of who can be forced to support whom, and who can be forced to obey whom, we have other standards in place that suggest "dependency" is more complicated than that.

Take the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) requirements for dependency.  The FAFSA is the form that prospective college students have to fill out so that the government and other institutions can figure out what are their  material resources available to pay for college.  This number is used to determine how much need-based aid the student is eligible for.

Recall that after a child turns 18, a parent is not legally required to provide any material support for a child.  However, when it comes to figuring out how much material resources the child has in order to calculate eligibility for need-based aid, the child is counted as a dependent (as if the parents' wealth is available to him) long past age 18.  Here are the requirements for dependency in the context of the FAFSA determination:

Dependency According to FAFSA

 According to the link above,

An independent is anyone who:

• is 24 years of age or older by December 31 of the award year.
• is an orphan or ward of the court or was a ward of the court until the individual reached the age of 18.
• is a veteran of the Armed Forces of the United States.
• is a graduate or professional student.
• is a married individual.
• has legal dependents other than a spouse.
• is [under age 18 and is] an emancipated child as determined by a court judge.
• is a student for whom a financial aid administrator makes a documented determination of independence by reason of other unusual circumstances.

Anyone who does not meet these requirements is a dependent.  

With regard to whether a child might be determined a non-dependent by reason of unusual circumstances:

Typically the FAFSA determines you are a dependent if you receive half of your income from your parents.

And note that you may still be a dependent according to the FAFSA even if you file a tax return as a non-dependent.

 This is very relevant, because it demonstrates that we have a social expectation that prospective students under the age of 24, even if legally emancipated, should be able to call on their parents' resources when paying for post-secondary education -- that before they ask for a handout from the federal government, or from many institutions which offer need-based aid, they should use available resources from their families of origin.  

We don't, actually, compel the parents to provide those resources (that's what the legal emancipation at age 18 means).   But we take the existence of those resources into account, not just the resources that the 18-to-24-year-old actually controls.  

Now, if you've ever been an 18-year-old whose family is too wealthy to qualify for need-based aid, but whose family refuses to provide any material support for post-secondary education, this is going to feel pretty unfair.  But it's pretty clear, from the FAFSA definition of dependency and from the social pressure implicit in water-cooler conversations about college bills, that the onus to rectify that apparent unfairness is on the resource-rich but reluctant parents, and not on need-based financial aid programs either run by governments or by institutions.

In short, society generally expects parents to provide some material postsecondary educational assistance to 18-to-24-year-olds.   Some parents may disagree ("When you turn 18, you're on your own") but they seem to be in the minority, or at least not to have exerted enough political power to normalize this philosophy.  I think it's generally seen as a valid position to hold, but I don't think many people hold it.

 + + +

Health Insurance

There is no doubt that providing a means to pay for health care is a form of material support, and if you have to pay for your own health care out-of-pocket or pay for your own insurance policy, you are "supporting yourself" more than if you can remain on your parents' insurance policy.   Who's eligible to be a dependent for the purposes of determining who's covered by a health insurance policy?

To simplify, let's just look at one set of standards:  those set by the PPACA ("Obamacare") and subsequent regulations.  I'm getting this from here (pdf).

Definition of “Dependent” Who is Eligible for Coverage:

An [insurer] must base eligibility for dependent child coverage in terms of the relationship between the child and the [subscriber] and may not deny or restrict coverage based on factors, such as financial dependency on the [subscriber], residency with the [subscriber], student status, employment, marital status, or [except for a grandfathered-in exception that ends in 2014] eligibility for other coverage...

Plans and issuers are not required to make coverage available for the children or spouse of a child receiving dependent coverage...

The terms of the plan or insurance coverage providing dependent coverage cannot vary based on the age of the child, except for a child who is age 26 or over.

So under this relatively recent legislation, an insurer must extend dependent child coverage to an 18-to-25-year-old son or daughter of a subscriber, exactly as it extends coverage to a subscribers' children who are younger than 18.   It doesn't matter if the young adult is married, or a student, or employed, or living somewhere else.  After 2014, it won't matter if he or she is eligible for some other employment-based health insurance.  

So here's a situation where, at least according to the evidence enshrined in national legislation, we no longer expect a 26-year-old to fend for himself or herself.  

Does this impose a choice on the parent to incur a personal cost in order to benefit 18-to-25-year-old offspring?  It depends.  If the parent already has an employee-plus-dependent-children insurance plan for other reasons (for example, because there are younger children living at home), it doesn't cost the parent any more money to provide coverage to the 18-to-25-year-old offspring.  But if there aren't any younger children around, the parent does incur a cost to keep the 18-to-25-year-old offspring on his or her insurance plan, because if the parent didn't do that he could probably switch to a cheaper employee-plus-spouse-no-dependent-children plan.  Or maybe he could retire and cover his health costs some other way besides employer-provided health insurance.  So we're looking at a situation where the parent might incur a cost in order to continue supporting 18-to-26-year-old offspring, or might choose not to incur that cost and force the offspring to fend for himself or herself.

 

Transportation:  Automobiles and Automobile Insurance

A common kind of support that is provided by many parents to their offspring over age 18 is use of a family car, which requires somebody to pay for auto insurance.  Unlike with health insurance, there is "no certain age set across the insurance industry at which offspring are no longer eligible to stay on a parent's policy."  Instead, the usual requirement to include offspring on a parent's auto policy is residency.  If the individual is living in the parents' home, she can be included on the policy.  If she has established her own household, she cannot be included on the policy.  Students who live away at college but who maintain the parents' address as their "permanent" address often still count as "living with their parents" for the purposes of determining eligibility to stay on the parent's policy.  Sometimes the car has to be in the policyholder's name; sometimes all that's necessary is that the owner of the car reside in the same household with the policyholder.

+ + +

So here we have a variety of different "standard" definitions of who is a dependent and who is emancipated.  One thing is certain:  at age 18, you are legally free of the control of your parents, and your parents are legally free of the requirement to support you materially.  

But other standards seem to imply that, even though we don't compel it, we have a social expectation that young adults require support, and we have a social expectation that parents provide some kind of support according to their means -- until some combination of the following factors:

•     the offspring attains the age of 24 or 26
•     the offspring is married
•     the offspring moves out of the house AND is not attending college
•     the offspring enters the U. S. military
•     the offspring enters graduate or professional school
•     the offspring has children of his/her own
•     the offspring demonstrates self-support and that no support is forthcoming from parents

Other legal ages of majority

These vary a lot state by state.  Here are some for my home state, Minnesota:

• The age at which a person is legally competent to consent to sexual activity is 16.
• The age at which a person can be tried in criminal court is 14.
• The age at which a person can be married, with parental consent, is 16.  Without parental consent, it's 18.
• The legal drinking age is 21.

Subjective emancipation -- The tricky question

Still, though, these are all rather arbitrary conditions.  Why 18, or 24, or 26 -- and not 16, or 28?  Those are all just numbers.  Why entry into the military, and not landing your first full-time job?  There may be good reasons to pick some of these rites of passage over others, but they are not inherently determiners of the one quality that matters when it comes to the moral requirements of parents towards offspring:  readiness to embark on independent adult life and to fulfill the duties of one's vocation.

Parents can't guarantee that their offspring (even assuming normal intelligence and physical/mental health) will acquire all the skills that an adult human being should, not even if they throw all their best efforts at the task.  That's because the young person is a person, with free will, and -- news flash -- persons with free will sometimes decide not to cooperate, or come up with their own lists of "necessary skills."  So even if there comes no point when a parent can say , "You are done, I did my job" -- there must eventually be a point when a parent can rightfully say "I am done -- I did the best I could, and now it's your turn to finish your growing and education on your own -- if you choose to."

The question is, how do you know when either has happened?

Post-secondary education questions: Fundamental principles, part 3.

(The introduction to this series is here.  An index of all posts is here.  The first part of this bit on fundamental Catholic principles is here.The second is here. )

+ + +

Okay, now, I've been through two posts in which I tried to summarize what the Catechism, Gaudium et Spes, and Familiaris Consortio has to say about certain questions:

1. What is the nature of the vocation that education must prepare us for?
2. What is the necessary content of education?
3. What are the responsibilities of parents toward their offspring?

Don't think I didn't notice that nobody commented on these posts in which I laboriously list church teachings. And at the same time, I got oodles of comments on several other posts (thank you), so I know you are all out there, just hoping I will get to the point.

The point is out there, but I can't see it yet.  I have to finish this bit first so I can see the big picture.  I'm really sorry it's taking me so long.  Hang in there.

+ + +

Moving on, what remains are these questions:

        3.  What are the responsibilities of offspring toward their parents?

        4.   How do things change when children are emancipated?

 

These are much shorter lists of answers.  Here we go.

What are the responsibilities of children toward their parents?

Children must honor and respect their parents out of gratitude for the gift of life and knowledge.  "The fourth commandment...shows us the order of charity.  God has willed that, after him, we should honor our parents to whom we owe life and who have handed on to us the knowledge of God.  We are obliged to honor and respect all those whom God, for our good, has vested with his authority" [CCC2197].  "Respect for parents (filial piety) derives from gratitude toward those who, by the gift of life, their love and their work, have brought their children into the world and enabled them to grow in stature, wisdom, and grace" [CCC2215] "'With all your heart honor your father, and do not forget the birth pangs of your mother.  Remember that through your parents you were born; what can you give back to them that equals their gift to you?'" [CCC2215]

A certain honor and respect, then, is owed parents unconditionally in recognition of the gift of life.

This is going to be a hard teaching for some whose mother or father has also caused them a great deal of hurt, but it is undeniable that the Catechism, as well as the Fourth Commandment, directs children to honor and respect parents in some degree regardless of the parents' failings.

I am reminded of our duty to be grateful to God for the gift of life even when the life we have is full of great sufferings.  Existence, even in fear and pain, is to be preferred over nonexistence, and preferred with gratitude, accepted as a gift.  This can also be hard, but I don't think we can get away with it.

But even though a certain honor and respect seems to be owed unconditionally, other degrees of honor are owed in response to the goodness of the parents.  Children "respond to the kindness of their parents with sentiments of gratitude, love, and trust" [GS 48].  The parents' kindness, then, is to be reciprocated by gratefulness, by love, and by trust.  Unkindness, maybe, doesn't reasonably earn this extra trust and love.

"As long as a child lives at home with his parents, the child should obey his parents in all that they ask of him when it is for his good or for the good of the family" [CCC2217].  Notice that this obedience is broad [in all that they ask] but not unqualified [when it is for his good or for the good of the family].  "Children should also obey the reasonable directions of their teachers and all to whom their parents have entrusted him.  But if a child is convinced in conscience that it would be morally wrong to obey a particular order, he must not do so."

"Obedience towards parents ceases with the emancipation of the children; not so respect, which is always owed to them."  "Children have the right and duty to choose their profession and state of life" [CCC2230].  "As they grow up, children should continue to respect their parents.  They should anticipate their wishes, willingly seek their advice, and accept their just admonitions.  They should assume their new responsibilities within a trusting relationship with their parents, willingly seeking their advice and counsel" [CCC2217].   Lot to chew on there -- it looks like the children have a positive obligation to ask parents for their opinions and suggestions about the children's choices.

Finally, children owe their parents material and social support:  "Children should stand by [their parents]... when hardships overtake their parents and old age brings its loneliness."  They should esteem "widowhood, accepted bravely as a continuation of the marriage vocation" [GS 48].  

+ + +

Besides the things parents owe to children, and the things children owe to parents, it is also worthwhile to mention certain things which parents and children owe mutually to each other.  Oh, also siblings owe these to siblings.  Pay attention:  these are especially important when friction of one kind or another arises:

-- All members of the family should "assist one another" "in a loving way" [GS48].

-- All members of the family should maintain "a ready and generous openness of each and all to understanding, to forbearance, to pardon, to reconciliation" [FC21].

-- "Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political, and even religious matters.  In fact, the more deeply we come to understand their ways of thinking through such courtesy and love, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them" [GS28]

-- Finally, with respect to parents considering their daughters' vocation and with respect to sons and daughters appreciating the gifts of their mother:  "The work of women in the home should be recognized and respected by all in its irreplaceable value" [FC23].   (I don't think this is meant to exclude the work of men from recognition, it's just a reminder because women's work in the home has been and continues to be historically undervalued.)

+ + +

What about emancipation? 

Some of what's written above deals with the change when children are emancipated -- for instance, when children no longer live at home and they are emancipated, they no longer owe obedience to their parents -- but they do owe them respect, honor, the courtesy of asking their advice and opinions, and the courtesy of accepting their just admonitions.  Basically, they owe it to their parents to accept that their lives continue to be the parents' business, even if they don't any longer have to do what they say.   And they also owe their parents material support in hard times and social support in lonely times.  

Regardless, it's clear that a major change in relationship occurs when the child is no longer at home and is "emancipated." It isn't too hard to determine whether a child is living at home or not.  A harder question is:  When is the child "emancipated?"  How do we know he is ready to be "launched?"  

I will start considering that question in another post.  For now chew on this:

Man achieves dignity, which "demands he act according to a knowing and free choice...from within, not under blind internal impulse nor by mere external pressure...when, emancipating himself from all captivity to passion, he pursues his goal in a spontaneous choice of what is good, and procures for himself through effective and skillful action, apt helps to that end" [GS15].

This and a small number of the other passages quoted in this three-part post will be a jumping-off point to consider the event of "emancipation."  Stay tuned.

Post-secondary education: Fundamental Catholic principles, part 2.

(The introduction to this series is here.  An index of all posts is here.  The first part of this bit on fundamental Catholic principles is here.)

+ + +

Hmm, now where was I?  Oh yes, at the end of this post, when I got tired and stopped.

So, as I was saying, I have been digging into the Catechism, into Gaudium et Spes, and into Familiaris Consortio to find answers to these questions:

1. What is the nature of the vocation that education must prepare us for?
2. What is the necessary content of education?
3. What are the responsibilities of parents toward their offspring?
4. What are the responsibilities of offspring toward their parents?
5. How do things change when children are emancipated?

I got through questions 1 and 2, and then I needed to go to bed.  So now I'm continuing.

+ + +

3.  What are the responsibilities of parents toward their offspring?

The responsibilities of parents toward their children are implicit in the Fourth Commandment:  Although "the fourth commandment is addressed expressly to children in their relationship to their father and mother..., it includes and presupposes the duties of parents, instructors, teachers, leaders, magistrates, those who govern, all who exercise authority over others or over a community of persons" [CCC2199].   Parental authority is "unrenounceable" and should be "exercise[d]... as a ministry..., a service aimed at helping [children] acquire a truly responsible freedom" [FC21].  The primary way that parents express respect and affection for their children is in the care and attention devoted to their upbringing and in providing for physical and spiritual needs; later, in educating them in the right use of reason and the right use of freedom [CCC2228].

"Parents must regard their children as children of God and respect them as human persons" [CCC2222].  "A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea which an alleged 'right to a child' would lead.  In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights:  the right 'to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,' and 'the right to be respected as a person from the moment of conception'" [CCC2378].  Parents have a responsibility to "maintain a living awareness of the gift they continually receive from their children" [FC21].

The good of the children imposes total fidelity and an unbreakable oneness on the spouses [GS48].  Parents owe their children the duty to make decisions together, "by common counsel and effort" [GS50].    "The active presence of the father is highly beneficial to [children's] formation" [GS52].  "The children, especially the younger among them, need the care of their mother at home" [GS52].  

"Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children" [CCC2223].  Parents have the duty of putting into practice in the home "the demands of a love which forgives and redeems" [FC13].  They should cultivate "a simple and austere lifestyle" to promote the correct attitude towards material goods [FC37].  Parents should create a home "where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule" [CCC2223].  It is their duty "to create a family atmosphere so animated with love and reverence for God and others that a well-rounded personal and social development will be fostered among the children" [FC36].  Parents must make decisions carefully and wisely for the good of the family:  they must "reckon with both the material and spiritual conditions of the times as well as of their state in life," and they must "consult the interests of the family group, of temporal society, and of the Church," in order to "thoughtfully take into account both their own welfare and that of their children, those already born and those the future may bring" [GS50] Parents should practice the means of sexual self-control in order to have a deeper and more efficacious influence on their children [FC33].  

Fathers have a special responsibility to give good example, I suppose because of their status as head of household.  In fatherhood, "a man is called upon to ensure the harmonious and united development of all the members of the family... by exercising generous responsibility for the life conceived under the heart of the mother; by a more solicitous commitment to education, a task he shares with his wife; by work which is never a cause of division in the family but promotes its unity and stability; and by means of the witness he gives of an adult Christian life which effectively introduces the children into the living experience of Christ and the Church" [FC25].

Parents owe their children discipline [CCC2223].  The catechism implies strongly that parents should not require obedience except for the good of the child or the good of the family, and that instructions to the child should be reasonable [CCC2217.]  Parents must not provoke their children to anger [CCC2223].   Parents should know how to acknowledge their own failings to their children so as to better guide and correct them [CCC2223].  Parents must not force a person "to act contrary to his conscience" or "prevent him from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters" [CCC1782].

 Parents must inculturate their children into the Church and to a life of prayer.  "Parents...receive the responsibility and privilege of evangelizing their children... They should associate them from their tenderest years with the life of the Church" [CCC2225].  They should belong to a parish [CCC2226].  Parents have a responsibility to bring to family prayer, offered in common, the concerns of family life itself:  "joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments, births and birthday celebrations, wedding anniversaries of the parents, departures, separations, and homecomings, important and far-reaching decisions, the death of those who are dear, etc.... [family prayer times] should be seen as suitable moments for thanksgiving, for petition, for trusting abandonment of the family into the hands of their common Father in heaven" [FC59].  Fathers are exhorted to pray with their children [FC60].  Mothers are exhorted to teach children the Christian prayers, to prepare them for sacraments, to encourage them when they are sick to think of Christ suffering, to invoke the aid of the Virgin and of the saints, and to say the family rosary together [FC60].

Parents must educate children or delegate that education responsibly.  Married couples fulfill the duty to educate children as they do the duty to procreate them, "with a sense of human and Christian responsibility," and are cooperators with and "interpreters" of "the love of God the Creator" [CCC2367].  "As far as possible parents have the duty of choosing schools that will best help them in their task as Christian educators" and that correspond "to their own convictions" [CCC2229].  "Parents have a serious duty to commit themselves totally to a cordial and active relationship with the teachers and the school authorities." If "ideologies opposed to the Christian faith are taught in the schools," parents ought to "join with other families and ... help the young not to depart from the faith" [FC40].  But some education cannot be delegated:  The parents must exert attentive guidance in the child's sex education, under the law of subsidiarity [FC37].  They have the duty "to present to their children all the topics that are necessary for the gradual maturing of their personality from a Christian and ecclesial point of view... taking care to show... the depths of significance to which the faith and love of Christ can lead" [FC39].

Parents should actively ensure the moderate, critical, watchful, and prudent use of the media [FC76].   They have "the duty to protect the young from the forms of aggression they are subject to by the mass media."  They must not "evade the duty of education by keeping children occupied with television and certain publications."  Instead they must "seek for their children other forms of entertainment that are more wholesome, useful, and physically, morally, and spiritually formative."  To the extent that they can influence the selection and preparation of the programs that are made available, they should [FC76].

 Parents have duties even when their children rebel or reject the faith.  Parents must "face with courage and great interior serenity the difficulties that their ministry of evangelization sometimes encounters" "when the children... challenge or even reject the Christian faith received in earlier years" [FC53].  They have the responsibility to seek help from pastors and from the Church during difficult times, such as "disturbed, rebellious, or stormy adolescence" and also at faith-trying times such as when there is lack of understanding or love on the part of those held dear, or abandonment, or death of a family member, even the children's marriage which takes them away from the family [FC77].  In any case, parents must not force a person "to act contrary to his conscience" or "prevent him from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters" [CCC1782].

Parents must allow their children freedom to choose their vocation, profession, and spouse, but they have a role as advisors.  "Parents should respect" the "unique vocation which comes from God" and that "asserts itself more clearly and forcefully" "as the child grows to maturity and human and spiritual autonomy" [CCC2232].   "Parents should be careful not to exert pressure on their children either in the choice of a profession or in that of a spouse" or in the choice of a state of life [CCC2230 and GS52].  But they still ought to give "judicious advice, particularly when [the children] are planning to start a family." The Church documents especially caution parents not to try to steer their children away from a vocation to celibacy:  Parents "must be convinced that the first vocation of the children is to follow Jesus:  'He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or  daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me'" [CCC2232]. "Parents should welcome and respect with joy and thanksgiving the Lord's call to one of their children to follow him in virginity for the sake of the Kingdom in consecrated life or priestly ministry" [CCC2232].  They should remember that some children can "contribute greatly to the good of the human family" by "forgo[ing] marriage in order to care for their parents or brothers and sisters, to give themselves more completely to a profession, or to serve other honorable ends" [CCC2231].

The Church documents specifically spell out responsibilities that parents have toward daughters.  It is implied that parents must not constrain a young woman from the right to choose a husband freely, the right to embrace a state of life according to her vocation, or the right to an education equal to that available to young men [GS29]. The legitimate social progress of women should not be underrated on the account of safely preserving women's domestic role [GS52].  Young women are fully justified in access to public functions [FC23].  "Clear recognition [must] be given to the value of [young women's] maternal and family role, by comparison with all other public roles and all other professions" and to the principle that "these roles and professions should be harmoniously combined" [FC23],

Parents have specific responsibilities towards sons too.  It is their job to restore the conviction that the place and task of fathers in families are uniquely and irreplaceably important, and to remove the "wrong superiority of male prerogatives" [FC25] -- basically, to cure their sons of both extremes of chauvinism or of the demeaning belief that men are unnecessary.

+ + +

I have to go to bed again.  I will continue this next time with what children owe their parents...