Laurel van der Toorn

Maybe the agreement needed to be updated.

And that's why there was this excessive criticism that something didn't feel fair to mom.

Every family has their own understanding of what is fair and how contribution to a household works.

I've been talking a lot with clients lately about the value of domestic labor, right?

That I think it's very undervalued.

Someone that is doing the lion's share of the work at home is not being financially compensated, but that sure is one heck of a contribution because if you were to pay someone else to do all those things, it would cost a pretty penny.

That's so culturally specific.

I think that, you know, the kind of the American way of individual, you know, individualism, we would say no.

And there are some cultures where that it would be a sign of disrespect to not share that information.

So not knowing what culture this mom and daughter are from, I don't want to cast a judgment on it.

But I'm curious about the cultural background.

Well, you know, this brings up the issue that millennials and Gen Z, like very few of us made it without any help from our family post high school, post college, right?

Like the...

It is so normal now for people to move back home for a little bit or get some financial support or have some kind of like hybrid agreement just because being an adult and being financially independent has gotten so much more difficult than it was historically.

And some parents are really great at recognizing how difficult that is, and some are not.

I think that that can be explicitly negotiated, right?

That as adults, you can enter into an agreement.

And I think that we run into trouble when there isn't an explicit agreement.

I lived at home in my twenties for a bit.

And the understanding was that I would cover a certain dollar amount of the groceries.