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1. With what current societal trend does the article deal with? What is the Boomerang Generation?
2. What are the two reasons which set off the “boomerang effect”?
3. Think of the pros and cons that a parent-child reunion poses to 1) parents;
2) grown-up children.
4. What are some of the ways to keep up the delicate balance in a new familial arrangement? What should be required of both parents and children in order to maintain their relationship on an equal footing?
5. What is your personal attitude to the problem covered in the article? Would you rate the Boomerang Generation as an inevitable phenomenon?
6. Does a similar trend exist in Belarus? Ground your statement.
Text C
Could You Throw Out Your Child?
Sometimes relationships with your kids can reach breaking point. These women felt they had no choice but to ask their children to leave home.
When Mary Carson’s elder son Paul was 16, he left school and started work as an electrician. It was the start of his parents’ nightmare. Every Friday, on payday, he’s come home drunk, scream abuse at his mother and play music until 4 a.m. On one occasion, he even picked a fight with his dad. “When he was sober, he promised us he wouldn’t drink again but he always did,” says Mary, a 57-year-old personal assistant who lives in London with her husband Charles, 58, a security officer. “He was normally a very gentle, loving person but when he had a drink, he turned into a monster. It affected our family terribly – we never knew what Paul would do next and the atmosphere at home was tense.”
Then Mary discovered Al-Anon, an organization which gives support to families of drinkers. “They helped me understand that if I really wanted to help Paul, I had to make him stand on his own two feet,” explains Mary, who has another son, Anthony, 27. “If I continued to give him money, food and shelter, he’d carry on drinking.” Mary and Charles decided they had no choice but to ask Paul to get a place of his own. When he refused, she found a B&B and asked him to leave. “He asked me how I could do such a thing and said we were cruel. He wasn’t drunk at the time and was being reasonable. When he left it felt as though I’d torn my arm from its socket.”
Paul moved from hostel to hostel and continued to drink. Initially, Mary and Charles kept in touch with him, and occasionally he’d move home for a few weeks. But he went back to his old ways so Mary felt she had no choice but to cut him off. “We learnt not to think about Paul and I even changed my phone number,” she says. “It sounds harsh but nobody can understand unless they’ve been in the same position.” By the time Paul reached his mid-20s, he’s become a heroin addict.
“Although Paul got worse, I got better – because by now he’s stopped asking to come home. We wanted him to go into rehab but he wouldn’t.” Then, four years ago, Paul was arrested for shoplifting. One of the conditions of his probation was that he got help for his addiction. After treatment, his parents finally took him back – he was so weak from the drug-taking they feared he’d die. Now 30, Paul’s been clean for seven months and is still living at home. “We’re taking one day at a time but we’re crossing our fingers that things will work out this time,” says Mary. But she doesn’t regret throwing out Paul. “If I hadn’t, none of us would have survived. I had to think of the whole family and not just one person.”
NHS consultant clinical psychologist David Spellman has counselled many troubled teenagers and their parents. “If a child threatens violence or is aggressive, I can understand why a parent might ask them to leave,” he says. “There comes a point when it’s not in anyone’s interest to live together.” But it’s possible, he says, to have a relationship with a teenager from a distance. “Ideally, I’d suggest a cooling-off period. Send your child to a friend’s house for two nights rather than kicking them out and locking the door. This can act as a wake-up call.”
Yet even this doesn’t always work as Joanne Young, a 39-year-old pharmaceutical operator, discovered. She asked her son Daniel, now 22, to leave when he was 16. Now she regrets it. “He’d got his girlfriend pregnant, and I thought he should face up to his responsibilities, so I suggested he go to hers for a while. I was also fed up with him not getting a job. He’d come in late and be rude to me and to my partner, Simon. Two weeks later, I found out from a friend that Daniel had gone to a hostel and he was going through a bad patch with his girlfriend. I went round immediately and asked him to come home but he wouldn’t. He was too angry and hurt. My daughter, who’s five years younger than Daniel, was really upset, too. It had a terrible impact on the whole family.”
Although Daniel was in contact with his dad, he wasn’t so close to him that he was able to go to live with him. Then, to Joanne’s horror, Daniel disappeared from the hostel and she spent weeks scouring the streets trying to find him. “I was terrified he’d been hurt or left town and I’d never see him again”, she says. “I blamed myself. About two months later, I spotted him down a side street. He looked unkempt and ill and I just cried. I said I was sorry about asking him to go but he wouldn’t come back.” For two years, Joanne saw Daniel intermittently; sometimes she wouldn’t see him for weeks. Then, a year ago, Daniel turned up on her doorstep. “He broke down in tears and said he wanted to come home. I cried with relief. He lived with me and Simon for six months. Mercifully, they got on well, which they hadn’t before, and we were all glad to be back together.” Then Daniel heard about a local organisation called Foyer, which provides training and help for young people. Wanting more independence, he moved into one of their hostels, although the family see each other regularly.
Joanne wishes she could turn back the clock. “Parents should stop and think before they ask their child to leave. Don’t cut ties, however angry you feel. We’re close now but I lost five years of my son’s life.” But Daniel, who sees his son regularly, thinks his mother did the right thing. “I was hurt and angry at first – that’s why I refused to come back,” he says. “But it made sort myself out. If Mum hadn’t asked me to go, I might have continued to have a bad relationship with her.”
Joanne’s case zeroes in on a big problem – if you throw out your child, you never know what you’re condemning them to. “I think we need to be more understanding about the dilemmas young people face,” says David Spellman. Psychologist Charles Wells, who also works with adolescents, agrees. “Being thrown out can shame children and harm their confidence. On the other hand, I’ve known at least two cases where this has brought a child to their senses. Both eventually made up with their parents’. But there isn’t always a happy ending.
Three years ago, Janice Wilding told her 17-year-old daughter Kaylie to leave when she could no longer handle her drink and drugs problem. “She was on heroin and would steal money from me to buy her supplies,” says Janice, a 42-year-old cleaner. “She was rude and nasty to me.” Janice, who lives in Manchester and has two other children aged 15 and 10, admits she was a difficult adolescent herself. “My mother made me find my own place when I was 16 and it taught me to be independent. I thought it would do Kaylie good. The final straw came when she went to a rock festival for a week without telling me. If she behaved like that, she was old enough to live on her own.”
Janice, who split from Kaylie’s dad when she was a baby, knew a friend of Kaylie’s needed a flatmate. Alternatively, she could find a room through the paper. Kaylie worked in a shop so she could afford it. Kaylie was furious and told Janice she never wanted to see her again. “I know she’s all right because she keeps in touch with a friend who lives nearby. Apparently she’s living in London and working in a shop. I asked the friend for an address but she said Kaylie didn’t want to know. At times, I feel guilty. But I’ve also got my other children to think of. We all miss her but I had to draw the line somewhere and I’d like to think that when she’s older, she’ll understand why I threw her out.”
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