Parents share struggles supporting adult children who are not working or studying

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Readers respond to a letter about the challenges facing families where their adult children are not able to lead independent lives

I was moved by the letter ( 3 July ) from a parent whose child is not in employment, education or training (Neet). As a parent of a neurodivergent late-teenager who struggles with social communication and with making relationships beyond the family, I have found the prospect of his entry into adulthood a daunting, unsettling one.

As your correspondent makes clear, it’s easy to slip into the habit of comparison and begin to see your adult child as falling “behind” their peers who have now found places for themselves in the wider world – in work, but also in romantic relationships. Perhaps as a man it is most difficult for me not to make comparisons with my own teenage years, which now seem to me to have been marked, like those of so many, by experimentation, recklessness and a general disregard for order, routine and safety. All of which, I suppose, add up to a specific manifestation of the independence that we so often value in our children.

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