Being a mother is tough today.  Particularly if you are the mother of an inmate in debtor’s prison.  At a stage in life when you the parent should be looking forward to weddings and grandchildren, to eating holiday meals in the first homes of your children, and to finally receiving a little financial help, whether its to take a dream vacation or simply so you don’t have to worry about coming up short when the mortgage is due…you instead are finding yourself financially supporting your children.  And let’s be honest, you’re not “giving them a little help” like a down payment so they can afford a nicer home for their young family, you are providing them with all the essentials, shelter, food and transportation.  Just like when they were 10.

However here’s the difference.  Even a parent of a ten year-old who is doing rather poorly in school expect said child to be relatively self-sufficient by the time they are in their mid-twenties.  However if you are the parent of a child in their late twenties or early thirties with no job prospects and a crippling debt load you must deal with the uncertainty of whether that child will EVER be self-sufficient even if they have been academically successful all their lives. 

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I caught the housing bug from an eighth year associate who thinks she is going to make partner. She thinks she is cute making comments about how she was being promoted at the expense of her ovaries. I thought such hackneyed cliches only existed in the nail polish smeared pages of a Lisa Scottoline novel. However I decided against it based oddly enough not on student debt but on what it might mean for my love life.

A dental hygienist friend of mine made a killing about two years ago buying stocks short. Being the responsible type she bought a house and immediately saw her love life shrivel and die until she started referring to her house as her parent’s house…parents who were mysteriously never there.

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I shouldn’t have agreed to head up what is supposed to be a regular column but as the only member in a functional relationship (Mike you don’t count) I sort of got volunteered. Now as I am sure Mike will point out, I don’t even know what my boyfriend does…but there I would disagree. I know what he does. He pays bills and he pays when we go out. What I don’t know is his occupation. I can live with that. Here’s why.

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