Are you obligated to subsidize your parents’ lifestyle?

Every culture has different expectations around helping out your parents as you get older. In some cultures, there’s no inherent obligation to help the people who raised you. In others, it’s unthinkable to do anything less than your best to help out your parents. We all grow up with different families and different expectations within those, and it can be hard to square those with our own individual realities sometimes. And our own visions about what our own family should look like can change over time. You might grow up thinking a certain way, and then once you branch out on your own, you start to redefine your relationships to the people you’re related to. Maybe once you’re out there on your own, you realize how precious your independence is to you, and how you would do anything to keep it that way. But maybe your parents have a different idea. The sun and the story were facing that dilemma when his mom was going through a tough financial situation. She was accustomed to a certain kind of lifestyle which her current reality prohibited her from living. She wanted to keep things a certain way, and expected her son to help her out with that.