26-Year-Old Stepson Who Won't Work

[jmcrae]

This thread is two years old.

I, too, am interested in knowing what happened, in the end. Did he get a job and move out? Did he find a nice young lady and is he thinking of getting married?

 

[EasterJoy]

This thread is two years old.

I, too, am interested in knowing what happened, in the end. Did he get a job and move out? Did he find a nice young lady and is he thinking of getting married?

Let’s hope it turned out well.

 

[kristacecilia]

Wow… I just keep thinking… when I was 26 I had a husband, owned a home and a vehicle, and gave birth to my third child. I had graduated university (4 years earlier) and held multiple positions through a temp agency during my summers off. (My parents did pay for my education, except what I was able to get through scholarships).

26!? Really!?

That is insane.

OP, I hope it works out for you. I would agree with the previous poster who said they thought it was probably a marital issue. There is no reason for this.

 

[EasterJoy]

Wow… I just keep thinking… when I was 26 I had a husband, owned a home and a vehicle, and gave birth to my third child. I had graduated university (4 years earlier) and held multiple positions through a temp agency during my summers off. (My parents did pay for my education, except what I was able to get through scholarships).

26!? Really!?

That is insane.

OP, I hope it works out for you. I would agree with the previous poster who said they thought it was probably a marital issue. There is no reason for this.

Trust me, parents who have been married since before the adult child now living in their home was conceived can have the same problem. Being stepparent made this particular father hestitate to take action, but if parents don’t have a policy that their adult children must work a certain amount if they want to live in their house, this can happen. (Meaning: if you can’t find a job, congratulations to us, because we now have a live-in gardener, cook, and personal shopper…)

 

[lily20]

There’s an epidemic right now with “men who won’t grow up.” I have friends and know men in my generation (20-30’s) who just don’t grow up.

You can google it there’s articles on it. Has to do with women entering work force, also video games and lots of movie stars who emulate the teenage boy thing-- comedies.

I would say drop the support it will force him to have to get work. You are helping him stay lazy by paying his way through life.

I have had to do this with my husband. He has not worked 3 years of our marriage. He is intelligent and capable, but chooses not to work. I finally stopped paying bills because I was working 2 jobs and him zero.

You may have to accept that your stepson will not work very much. That gives you peace of mind. Also it gives you the freedom to move on and not take responsibility for him.

Hope this helps.

 

[Yeoman]

Funny that this thread just revived.

I recently just had a work place experience with a woman who was came looking for a job and worked for us briefly. She came from one of the depressed industrial areas of the country, and local employers here have noted poor experiences with these employees in terms of their work culture but we didn’t think anything of it. Anyhow, neither she nor her husband were working, even though this area of the country is short of workers and people are hiring. To make her situation a bit more desperate, her family was one of these “blended” families we now see, where the children of two prior marriages were in a single household where one parent is not their mother or father.

Anyhow, when this person was working for us she related how her husband had a certain industrial occupation back in his home state. I noted that there were a lot of employers hiring for that position here, but it turned out that he wasn’t employing as he no longer wanted to work in that role.

I don’t know all the details by a long shot, but the whole thing really surprised me as here, locally, it is still the case that married men work. They work at what they hopefully like, but they work at something one way or another.

My point is that it isn’t just a young demographic now that expects to step into a high paying job from day one, doing interesting things. That has been common, but apparently, according to what I’m hearing, that is ending. Another development that has somehow happened in some regions of our country is a lack of work ethic in general combined with the lessening of the concept that a man’s duty to his spouse and children is to work to provide for them.

 

[Kindness]

There are I’m sure many reasons for the phenomenon of men in modern society who “fail to launch”. However, I believe we can strike off the list Hollywood movies influencing this behavior. I see the movies as reflecting society, if this wasn’t already a common issue how could a popular comedy be made which audiences could relate to? When I was a student in 1995 I traveled up with a friend from my college from D.C. to New York. We stayed with a friend of her’s at his apartment which he shared with 2 or 3 friends in college. In my mind they were “men” i.e. all at least 22 years old. Well they spent their day playing computer games and watching porn (although they “graciously” swore off the later during our visit). Needless to say, they were useless conversationists and had a strange mixture of fear and aggression toward women. I saw a romantic comedy not long after called “Swingers” which captures this lifestyle perfectly.

So that was 17 years ago and it was already an ingrained “lifestyle” for many young men at that point. I agree that many families seem to enable their grown children. I am not from the US and in my country when you leave school if you don’t go to college you are expected to give “housekeeping” money to your parents if you continue to live with them. Treating your parents home as a free hotel with maid service 24/7 is not socially acceptable to anyone I know - unless the child has some very serious problems.

I think there is an idea that children need to be entertained and so some grow up expecting life to be about entertaining themselves rather than loving and caring for others.

 

[Gwendolen]

I know it’s an old thread, but as a nurse, here is my take –

I agree with the PP from the first page or so who pointed out that as he has never worked, and has no marketable skills at 26, even though he needs to work, it is not as easy as cutting him off and telling him to do so.

What he needs for job skills right now is a CNA certificate – certified nursing assistant, takes like six weeks, and then jobs are generally not that hard to come by, because it is grueling work, usually at a nursing home for those starting out with no experience. He will get skills he needs to be a nurse, anyway… lot of nursing students work as CNAs – I sure did. The pay will be enough for gas money, his cell phone, and hopefully some of his expenses. It is an old thread, but I would totally sign him up for a class, and if he doesn’t comply, take it, and then take a CNA job to help earn his keep while he toodles along going through nursing school at his own pace, he is OUT THE DOOR.