In the previous article “Should adult children help elderly parents?” https://www.b17.ru/article/412621/I suggested considering this issue in terms of understanding the process of separation .Here I will also dwell on this. If the process is completed, then the relationship is built in this way: parents live their own lives: work or go on a well-deserved rest. Their desire to help may be due to: available resources, interests and opportunities (for example, there are opportunities and I will happily spend time with my grandchildren); adult children have gained independence and provide for themselves financially. But we are all living people and various situations may arise in which help may be needed. If an emergency occurs: Children know how to accept exactly as much as they give (without asking for more) They know how to take no more than what they need, that is, they live within their means Questions “should?” and “to what extent?” can arise when child-parent relationships developed in the plane of dependence and fusion: parents gave the child what they themselves wanted, and not what he needed. Instead of developing independence, there are prohibitions or guardianship. This is the desire to protect the child from mistakes, dangers and risks, do not let them face the consequences of their actions. This leads to the fact that children, as adults, are afraid to take responsibility and hedge their bets by getting hooked on the needle of parental support. Instead of support, there is devaluation and condemnation (you can’t handle it on your own, you won’t succeed, do something simpler, I I know what’s best, I’ve lived my life). A phenomenon is being formed - learned helplessness (disbelief in one's own strengths, a mindset of failure, refusal to try to act and make decisions), due to which adult children continue to be in consumer relationships with their parents, because they feel safer.2. The parents themselves had an incomplete process of separation from their parents. And then these dependent relationships continue in relationships with their own children. That same obsessive care and control that you want to escape from. I wrote about this in the article “Why is care annoying? How to react if there is too much worry” https://www.b17.ru/article/412141/Then you can hear similar “should” attitudes from the adult parents themselves: should/should help their adult children, this is close relationships in the family should / must participate and give, so that in my old age I have someone to take care of; I must / must provide a future for my child, otherwise they will think of me that I am abandoning my children to their fate and that I am a selfish mother. I must / must help. What else should I do? Life has been lived. I continue in my children and grandchildren. It is not easy in such relationships. On the one hand, they are safe and comfortable, there is a safety net and the opportunity to exist without making special efforts, without taking risks, on the other hand, life is on credit. This includes the lack of opportunity to live one’s own life, interests, and experience the feeling of one’s own inadequacy and weakness. Feeling pressure from a parent, his control, and, as a result, putting up with imposed advice, rules, decisions. It is difficult to get out of such a relationship. Because you have to take responsibility and resolve the consequences yourself. And there is no guarantee that the level of needs will be sufficiently satisfied, as it was satisfied before. There are several solutions: 1. separate from maintenance, allowing the adult child to face reality and begin to build his own life.2. Gradually, by agreement, reduce the security, giving a field of independence.3. Refuse maintenance and stand on your own feet.4. Leave everything as it is if everyone is happy with everything. I have seen different options. And those who strictly built borders and deprived them of support, and those who gradually came out of patronage, and those who themselves decided to move independently. And one, and the other, and the third method turned out to be an effective solution. Therefore, to the question: should parents?