What children owe their parents
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is it up to children to support their parents financially? Manuela Saragosa hears from Lamees Wajahat in Canada, who has been supporting her parents to pay the bills since she had her first part-time job. But is it the duty of the family, or the state to provide? Manuela speaks to Professor Sarah Harper of Oxford University, who argues that opportunities for younger generations are better than ever before, and that family obligations have always been a part of life. (Pic of piggy bank via Getty Images).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:06.7 | Coming up, when parents ask their adult children for money. |
| 0:10.7 | My dad, he doesn't ever want to be in a situation where he asks anyone, especially his daughter. |
| 0:15.1 | But my mom, she will make a point to note something. |
| 0:18.9 | Initially it rubbed me the wrong way. |
| 0:22.0 | So now I just will take some aside and give it to and say, let's use this for groceries or let's buy something better |
| 0:26.3 | this month to eat as a family. So what do adult children owe their parents? And is the COVID |
| 0:32.5 | pandemic changing the intergenerational contract? COVID has definitely, I think, raised issues between the |
| 0:39.5 | generations. But I think if we say to young people, you have far less opportunities than your |
| 0:44.0 | parents did, that is a myth that we really have to crush. That's all here in Business Daily |
| 0:49.3 | from the BBC. I'm not a burden to them in the home. |
| 0:56.5 | They don't provide laundry or food. |
| 0:59.7 | It's really a moot point for them to seek me to be ejected. |
| 1:04.2 | 31-year-old American Michael Rotondo there made headlines a couple of years ago when his parents |
| 1:09.9 | took him to court and sued to get |
| 1:11.9 | him evicted from their house. Well, 30-year-old Michael Rotondo lived in his parents' basement |
| 1:17.9 | for eight years rent-free. His parents kept asking him to leave. They asked five times. So finally, |
| 1:24.0 | his parents went to court. Now a judge has ordered Rotondo to leave. |
| 1:28.0 | Michael Rotundo's mom and dad are so fed up. |
| 1:30.9 | They're suing to get him out of the house. |
| 1:33.2 | His parents filed the extraordinary lawsuit following months of repeated attempts to get |
| 1:37.7 | him to leave their home in Syracuse, New York. |
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