Thanks to the clusterfuck that is today’s job market, everybody’s writing a think piece about 20-somethings accepting more help from their parents than the generations before them. But if we know our parents are going above and beyond for us, what can we do to make things right with them?

I really don’t know what I would be doing right now (selling roses in the street like a Dickensian orphan?) if my parents hadn’t essentially subsidized every choice I’ve made while trying to figure out what to do with my life.

They paid for my college education even though I decided to be a spectacularly impractical theater major. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person I know who doesn’t have student loan debt. After school, they welcomed me back home for over a year, which allowed me to pursue a ridiculous number of unpaid internships and various theater projects. They didn’t pressure me to get a “real job” until I got restless and decided for myself that I wanted one, and then when my hectic barista gig proved to trigger my crippling anxiety they encouraged me to quit.

This entire time, my dad was quietly putting money in my checking account without even mentioning it while my mom cooked my favorite foods and took me shoe shopping. A few more unpaid gigs and anti-anxiety medications later, the feeling of being a freeloader was becoming overwhelming. I signed up with a temp agency, a job flexible enough that I could still pursue writing and theater, and made plans to use my savings to move in with friends at the end of the summer. I know that to have parents so supportive makes me a lucky bastard, but I’m worried that it also makes me a spoiled brat.  

Part of it is that I know that my situation isn’t typical. While a lot of my friends have parents who do things like pay their phone bill or help out with rent, a lot of them also are facing monstrous student loans, huge grad school tuition payments, or asking parents for help who can’t or won’t assist them.

In addition, I decided that my college education was going to be about following dreams and rainbows and writing satirical one-acts, so I ended up not the most employable person in the world. Also, I know that my parents’ ability to help me didn’t come free: My dad is basically the lawyer equivalent of Katniss Everdeen’s dad toiling in the coal mine, and that’s how he could afford to support me for a year when I really should have been supporting myself. I’m kind of the worst! So what should I do about it?  

I think that if this question as posed to my parents, they would tell me that I could pay them back by being happy. Although that sort of seems like bullshit, I know that if I worked really hard for twenty years doing something I wasn’t crazy about just so I can literally pay them back (which is something I really thought about doing), I don’t think they would be satisfied. My mom’s still waiting for me to write the Next Great American Novel (working title, The Great Gatsby II: Electric Boogaloo). Right now, I don’t really know how to give back, but by getting a survival job and moving out, I can at least stop taking.  

I can hear the comments before they’re posted, so I’ll just save you the trouble: First-world problems! White people problems! You and your pleasant, supportive parents can suck it! I know, I know. This “problem” that I have is really an embarrassment of riches, but I hope that I can make it a little better by making it known that they’re riches that I want to spread around. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Kathryn Funkhouser still makes her parents birthday cards and sometimes writes things here.

Sometimes we leave town, and it costs a lot of money. Other times we leave town, and it costs less money. But it almost always costs money. Here are the places I have gone and am going, and what it cost or will cost me to get there (what I spend  when there is a different matter. I only go visit friends or family, really, so it ranges from zero dolllars to all of the dollars at my disposal, usually).

When I lived in Los Angeles, Calif. I went or would go:
• To San Francisco, Calif. (Fly, $150 to $200)
• To Norfolk, Va. (Fly, $300 to $500 or free, if my parents missed me)

When I lived in San Diego, Calif. I went or would go:
• To Los Angeles, Calif. (Drive, $50 roundtrip, or train, $80 roundtrip, terrible idea don’t do this)
• To Norfolk, Va. (Fly, $300 to $500 roundtrip, or free, if my parents missed me)

When I lived in Portland, Ore. I went or would go:
• To Los Angeles, Calif. (Fly, $250 to $300 roundtrip)
• To San Francisco, Calif. (Fly, $200 to $250 roundtrip, or free one time when my cousin missed me)
• To Norfolk, Va. (Fly, $300 to $500 roundtrip, or free, if my parents missed me)
• To New York, N.Y. (Fly, $200 to $500, roundtrip)
• To Seattle, Wash. (Drive, $60 roundtrip, usually split two or three ways)
• To San Juan Islands, Wash. (Drive, $90 roundtrip, split two ways)
• To the Oregon Coast, Ore. (Drive, $20 roundtrip, split two or three or four ways) 

When I lived in Norfolk, Va. I went or would go:
• To Washington, D.C. (Drive, $50 roundtrip, split two ways, or free if my parents were driving or train, $80 roundtrip)
• To Richmond, Va. (Drive, $30 roundtrip)
• To Charlottesville, Va. (Drive, $45 roundtrip)
• To New York, N.Y. (Drive, $150 for gas and tolls roundtrip, or train, $180 roundtrip)
• To Germany and then London  (Fly, $950 roundtrip plus $300 intra-country travel)

Now I live in New York, N.Y. I am going or have gone:
• To Norfolk, Va. (Fly, $150 to $200, or free if my parents miss me)
• To Washington, D.C. (Bus, $40 to $50 roundtrip)
• To Beacon, N.Y. (Train, $30 to $40 roundtrip)
• To New Haven, Conn. (Train, $30 to $40 roundtrip)
• To Burlington, Vt. (Bus, $25 to $40 roundtrip)
• To New Paltz, N.Y. (Bus, $41 roundtrip)