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I live in an area with mostly retired folks.
It is amazing how many retired folks that I hardly know will pour out their woes of their adult children draining them because they never learned to say no.
Many said they planned for retirement but it is hard having to support adult children every time their kids go from crisis to crisis.
Some have said the spouse sides with the kids.
Others have said they made the mistake of never "weaning off" the kids before they retired.
I am a good listener, so maybe I just attract people who have that problem.
I would hope it is not as widespread as it appears to be.
Unless we have magnitudes or relativity, we don't really know what to write. Your observations might be one in a million or one in three - we don't know.
Adult children. They need to grow up. I fought with my m i l because she wanted to give everything to my kids without them earning it. Her son, my ex husband, learned how to take advantage of his parents on a daily basis. I was NOT going to let her ruin my kids like she did her son.
Happened to some close friends of ours. This family was well off financially, traveling often to Europe, fancy cruises, nice home, new cars, etc.. This was while he was working - he owned his own business. Finally made enough to retire then darling daughter gets involved with a really bad guy who ends up in prison, and she ends up there too. They supported her when she was too lazy to find a job, then spent the rest of their nest egg trying to keep her out of jail. Didn't work, and now they are broke.
I would hope it is not as widespread as it appears to be.
It is. From both a bitter personal experience with a now former SO, and from personal observation and listening to other retirees, am sorry to say that it is. Often it is not only the twenty somethings that cannot find a job, but adult children in their 30's, 40's and 50's with children of their own. While they may get their mail at a different address, they have actually never left home. With entitlement mindsets, they feel that Mom and Dad's primary function is to solve their problems, foremost of which is to provide them with funds. Problems and situations that we older folks learned to deal with in our late teens and early twenties are somehow overwhelming to them. Blame Mom and Dad, they never said no or taught the kids what a budget was, and how to live within one's means.
There is a current active thread about dating and courtship in our older years. In it I posted about a red flag that both single older men and women that are dating should be very wary of. This is the older single person that has a co-dependent relationship with their adult children, ie, controlled and manipulated by them. If encountering such a person, my strong advice is to run like hell, end it at once. You will never be top priority, you will always be number two, behind her/his children.
Totally agree with you, once again, Ani. You and I are cut from the same cloth.
Yep. No one can "make" us do anything we don't want to do. Now, they may try using emotional blackmail . . . we may be put in desperate situations and have to make a decision about "supporting" a loved one as opposed to taking care of our own needs - but again - that is our decision. Unless someone has a gun to our heads, no one can make us do a thing . . . even though I fully realize that some folks know how to wield that "emotional gun" very well.
The biggest gift we can give our children is to help them learn how to stand on their own two feet.
Very common here in Florida, many parents don't allow their children to grow up and become responsible members of society...they still want to be thought of as "Mommy & Daddy". Their common excuse is that they do the enabling for their grandchildren, hard to believe when their children are in their 50's and the grandchildren are long gone.
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Problems and situations that we older folks learned to deal with in our late teens and early twenties are somehow overwhelming to them. Blame Mom and Dad, they never said no or taught the kids what a budget was, and how to live within one's means. 
