What Adult Children Need – And Don’t Need – From Their Parents

Action Step #2: Help them figure out finances, if desired 

In my informal survey, I asked: “What do you most NEED – emotionally or in any other way – from your parents during this time in your life, if anything?  

A top answer? Financial guidance! That surprised me – but then made total sense. Because Gen Z young adults have far less familiarity with financial independence than did prior generations. 

Pew Research Center found that in 1980, 32% of young adults were financially independent by age 22. Today that number is down to 24%! In a nationally representative survey, 59% of parents said they had given at least some financial help to their 18-29 year-old kids in the last year. 

Meanwhile, just a few years down the road, 55% of Americans in their thirties and forties say parents are “doing too much” for young adult children. Yet those ages 18-29 disagree: only 31% say their parents are doing too much for them. 

What does all of this mean? Well, some theorize that it may simply be more expensive to “launch” today. But I suspect that the help our young adults need may have just as much to do with direction as it does with dollars. In my informal polling, one survey respondent explained it this way: “I don’t know anything about investing – like how to do it or where to start. And while I haven’t asked my parents for explicit help on it, it would help if they asked me if I had thought about it at all, and whether I wanted help/advice from them.”  

Another comment, “I would like their help with financial decisions, as I don’t want to be living paycheck to paycheck.”