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agonyaunt2022-10-18 05:07 pm
ermingarden) wrote in agonyaunt2022-10-18 05:07 pm
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The Ethicist: I’m Supporting My Adult Son. He Just Gave $1,000 to a Homeless Woman.
I have raised two sons without financial help from their father and recently put the oldest through college. He is now 23 and is working a minimum-wage job. He finds it tedious, but he’s stuck with it while he looks for better opportunities.
He lives at home, and I don’t charge him for anything, even though his food, cellphone, car insurance and car-maintenance expenses all add up to substantial sums. I figure he needs to save up funds so that he can eventually become independent and move into his own apartment. (He pays for his gas, work lunches and outings with friends.) His younger brother will start college in two months, so I am preparing for another four years of significant expenses. These costs will strain my budget; although I work full time, I will add weekend hours to my schedule.
We live in Los Angeles and frequently witness the sad plight of destitute people living in tents throughout our neighborhood. Recently, my son drove past a homeless woman with two small children and stopped to give her some money. He had no cash and instead got her cellphone number so that he could send her money through a payment app. He gave her $1,000 — nearly half his savings.
He described this incident to me at the end of the day and said he knew I would be proud of him, “because you’ve raised me to care about people who have less than us.” Holding back tears of frustration, I said I was proud of him for being such a good-hearted person. And I am proud of his generous spirit; I’m also frustrated that he gave so much of his savings, when he could have either saved up or contributed to the expenses that I struggle to cover for him. I felt that while his behavior was kind, it was also impulsive and irresponsible. I felt too that the money he gave away was not entirely his own; he had it only as a result of me working hard to cover most of his expenses. I know this is the wrong way to feel — when you give something to someone, it’s theirs to do what they want with it, right?
I couldn’t sleep that night, wondering whether I was an ogre for resenting his extreme generosity toward those in genuine need of help — or a floor-mat mom who has failed to teach my son a sense of personal responsibility. Going forward, I plan to charge him for 50 percent of his costs, e.g., his car insurance, cellphone and a portion of the grocery bill. I don’t want these charges to seem like I’m punishing him for his kindness, but I worry that he won’t develop a sense of financial responsibility unless he pays for at least some expenses. Should I have reacted differently? Name Withheld
Let’s agree that people who have some resources have a duty of charity and that the duty is what Kant called an “imperfect” one, in the sense that it’s not owed to anybody in particular. Giving a large amount of money to one random stranger, about whose life, needs and struggles you know very little, isn’t necessarily the best way of fulfilling this duty. Genuine benevolence should be guided by conscientious reflection, deliberation and reason.
Your son works at a minimum-wage job, so this money was the equivalent of many hours of work. What he recounted to you, though, was an impulse of spontaneous generosity — he was moved to act, and he acted — and spending more time learning about this mother’s situation could have resulted in a more valuable and lasting gift. One also thinks about the greater good that a more carefully targeted donation might have achieved. That doesn’t end the conversation. In my view, charitable giving needn’t maximize benefits as measured in some objective way; we can direct our benevolence to our own communities (and perhaps also support anti-malarial initiatives in Guinea).
But taking a more local perspective suggests another problem here: As long as he’s your dependent, his finances are enmeshed with yours. Yes, it’s his money. All the same, there was something disrespectful or, at the very least, heedless about his giving away half his savings without consulting the person who supports him and who is struggling to cope with looming expenses. Being a member of a household carries responsibilities of mutual concern and care.
You’re right to worry that this impulsive act suggests that he hasn’t learned to be responsible with his resources. The self-admiring way he described the incident to you as he extracted your approbation suggests extravagance as much as compassion, perhaps reflecting a kind of moral grandiosity. Given his incaution about spending down his savings, you can wonder, too, how intent he really is on securing his own apartment and living independently. So it might indeed be a good idea to tell him that you’re going to ask him to cover some of his own costs. It could help him gain a sense of responsibility, as you say; it could also help relieve some of the financial burden you’ve had to shoulder. This may well be a case in which charity properly begins at home.
He lives at home, and I don’t charge him for anything, even though his food, cellphone, car insurance and car-maintenance expenses all add up to substantial sums. I figure he needs to save up funds so that he can eventually become independent and move into his own apartment. (He pays for his gas, work lunches and outings with friends.) His younger brother will start college in two months, so I am preparing for another four years of significant expenses. These costs will strain my budget; although I work full time, I will add weekend hours to my schedule.
We live in Los Angeles and frequently witness the sad plight of destitute people living in tents throughout our neighborhood. Recently, my son drove past a homeless woman with two small children and stopped to give her some money. He had no cash and instead got her cellphone number so that he could send her money through a payment app. He gave her $1,000 — nearly half his savings.
He described this incident to me at the end of the day and said he knew I would be proud of him, “because you’ve raised me to care about people who have less than us.” Holding back tears of frustration, I said I was proud of him for being such a good-hearted person. And I am proud of his generous spirit; I’m also frustrated that he gave so much of his savings, when he could have either saved up or contributed to the expenses that I struggle to cover for him. I felt that while his behavior was kind, it was also impulsive and irresponsible. I felt too that the money he gave away was not entirely his own; he had it only as a result of me working hard to cover most of his expenses. I know this is the wrong way to feel — when you give something to someone, it’s theirs to do what they want with it, right?
I couldn’t sleep that night, wondering whether I was an ogre for resenting his extreme generosity toward those in genuine need of help — or a floor-mat mom who has failed to teach my son a sense of personal responsibility. Going forward, I plan to charge him for 50 percent of his costs, e.g., his car insurance, cellphone and a portion of the grocery bill. I don’t want these charges to seem like I’m punishing him for his kindness, but I worry that he won’t develop a sense of financial responsibility unless he pays for at least some expenses. Should I have reacted differently? Name Withheld
Let’s agree that people who have some resources have a duty of charity and that the duty is what Kant called an “imperfect” one, in the sense that it’s not owed to anybody in particular. Giving a large amount of money to one random stranger, about whose life, needs and struggles you know very little, isn’t necessarily the best way of fulfilling this duty. Genuine benevolence should be guided by conscientious reflection, deliberation and reason.
Your son works at a minimum-wage job, so this money was the equivalent of many hours of work. What he recounted to you, though, was an impulse of spontaneous generosity — he was moved to act, and he acted — and spending more time learning about this mother’s situation could have resulted in a more valuable and lasting gift. One also thinks about the greater good that a more carefully targeted donation might have achieved. That doesn’t end the conversation. In my view, charitable giving needn’t maximize benefits as measured in some objective way; we can direct our benevolence to our own communities (and perhaps also support anti-malarial initiatives in Guinea).
But taking a more local perspective suggests another problem here: As long as he’s your dependent, his finances are enmeshed with yours. Yes, it’s his money. All the same, there was something disrespectful or, at the very least, heedless about his giving away half his savings without consulting the person who supports him and who is struggling to cope with looming expenses. Being a member of a household carries responsibilities of mutual concern and care.
You’re right to worry that this impulsive act suggests that he hasn’t learned to be responsible with his resources. The self-admiring way he described the incident to you as he extracted your approbation suggests extravagance as much as compassion, perhaps reflecting a kind of moral grandiosity. Given his incaution about spending down his savings, you can wonder, too, how intent he really is on securing his own apartment and living independently. So it might indeed be a good idea to tell him that you’re going to ask him to cover some of his own costs. It could help him gain a sense of responsibility, as you say; it could also help relieve some of the financial burden you’ve had to shoulder. This may well be a case in which charity properly begins at home.
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Is he aware of his mother's expenses?
My dad is financially dependent on my mother for complex reasons I needn't go into here, and she gets so angry when he makes a purchase or does a thing that she considers unnecessary. But... she doesn't actually tell him about the finances, he has no way to judge what is too much, what is fine, whether she's strained, etc. She expects him to read her mind, somehow, but if he asks frank questions, she won't answer. This letter sounds so much like her that I'm sceptical.
So I'd advise the LW to discuss finances with her son and say "this isn't sustainable for me, especially with your brother heading to college too; can we work something out, going forward? Here's how my money stands right now and what I'm willing to do for you." It doesn't need to be framed as any kind of response to his act of generosity, and shouldn't be. Just have a frank, adult conversation.
I'm not sure that I'd diagnose moral grandiosity here on the part of the son so easily. I talk with my mother about the charitable things I do, not to win moral points or something, but because she's my mother. She raised me to be generous and to give what I can, and sometimes she enjoys hearing about stuff I've done that I think she'll be proud of. The LW isn't describing a pattern here, she's talking about one incident. It sounds like something opened her son's eyes, and he felt moved to do what he could in the moment.
Sometimes a big payment like that -- lifechanging amounts of money -- does an amazing amount for a person, and there are a number of studies showing that pure money gifts like that help significantly in lifting an individual out of poverty. I'm side-eyeing the Ethicist's "carefully targeted" comment for that reason: it sounds totally like everyone else's excuses for not giving money to homeless people, that they're going to waste it on drugs or whatever, when the reality of homelessness is that there are many different realities of homelessness. For many people a gift of pure money is the way out. I'm guessing the son didn't literally go up to the first homeless person he saw totally at random: he stopped to talk to this woman with children, perhaps heard her story, and then made a decision based on what he saw and heard. Good on him for caring and for treating another human like a human.
That said, it would be good for him to understand his mother's sacrifices for him; if he is aware of all that and that it's a strain on her, then that does change things somewhat and he needs to be more considerate of her feelings at the very least, and start pulling his own weight either way.
Edit: It is totally possible to end up relying on someone financially far more than you realise, I should add. The costs they absorb don't all start at once, and you can get kinda blind to them. Buuut it is also that person's responsibility to communicate about them. I did also misread the age of the son, though, and he's a bit beyond the age where I'd expect him to go "whoops, wait, why am I relying on my parents so much?" So there is that.
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"just cough up some dough, mac"
yeah, also with bonus big yikes, "I'm not saying I agree with every conclusion of the effective altruists, but why is your son giving money to a hobo instead of sending it to Eliezer Yudkowsky's pet debunked claimed perfect charity?"
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I do understand the frustration/resentment about scrimping and taking on extra work, just for him to give half of his savings away, but it's only justified if it's actually been communicated to him that she's doing this, and is about to have to start working weekend hours in addition.
Basically, it's time to have an adult-to-adult *direct* conversation about how his brother's upcoming college means that she's not going to be able to fully cover all of his living expenses going forward.
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a) LW, you're not an ogre.
b) However, de-coupling having him pay for his expenses from your resentment of his choices would be a good idea, emotionally.
c) However however, in general, getting him to pay some of those expenses is a good idea, for various reasons that other people have already laid out. These are useful lessons to learn.
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And he only had $2000 in savings. Where did the rest of it go? (At that income level, he's not paying a lot in taxes, either. Unless his mother's claiming his as a dependent, which hopefully she is.)
I don't love that the son's gift to a homeless person was the last straw for his mom, and I loathe the Ethicist's answer, which seems of a piece with his support in a previous column for the deeply dubious Ethical Altruism movement.
But on the whole, I can't blame LW for being frustrated. He's a grown man! He should at least notice that his mom is having to add extra hours to her work schedule to pay the bills.
Him moving out might not be reasonable, given LA rents. But unless he's saving to move out, he should be contributing at least half his pay towards the household expenses. Plenty of people pay that much just in rent.
The ethical problem here isn't that this young man impulsively gave $1000 to a homeless person. It's that, as an adult with a job, he's burdening his mother with all his living expenses. It's irresponsible, entitled, and frankly, gross. Time for Baby Man to grow up.
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But according to the letter, which is all we have to go on, his only expenses right now are gas, his work lunches, and going out with friends. He could absolutely contribute towards the living expenses he's letting his mother struggle to pay.
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But admittedly that was my first thought, too. If he's not paying anything but gas and lunches, saving up a few thousand dollars shouldn't be that difficult (I say this from the POV of someone who is living with Mom way, way past that age, and thus has been putting the 3/4 of her paycheck that would otherwise go to rent into savings for years. And yet I see so many letters where people somehow manage to spend everything despite not having expenses.)
LW, the problem here isn't that your son gave to help someone in need, it's that the two of you aren't communicating well about how finances are being handled. Having him contribute to expenses may not be the best solution, but if the goal is for him to move out, he should be helping you pay the bills even if it's via writing checks with your money - he needs to understand what stuff actually costs, and learn how to manage that. And he needs a specific savings goal to work toward - a deadline after which he needs to be moved out, a savings target that he needs to meet in a certain amount of time if you're not going to charge rent, "rent" that goes into savings, *something*.
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