My wife's cousin is in a similar situation. She never left home or got a job or a driver's license because she was always too scared, and her mom always let that slide, since she didn't want to make her daughter scared or uncomfortable.

She thought her job was to protect her daughter from all the stresses of the world until she was ready, but failed to understand that she won't be ready until she's experienced some of those stresses in a controlled environment like most kids do when they're in their teens and their parents push them to get a job and a license.

It came from a place of kindness, but ended up being a major mistake that now both the kid and the parent are paying for.

This situation may sound ridiculous, but I've got a cousin over 40 in essentially the same position. Never worked a day in her and still lives with her parents. No one really knows what's going to happen when they pass, but no one appears willing to let her live with them. Myself included. Not that i'vd be her first choice anyway. I live half way across the country.

Again, assuming this has any basis in reality, I think it's likely that the parents have made many attempts to get the guy to change before and this is the last resort. They probably didn't wait 38 years and then one day just decided "this is it".

to cut them off cold turkey

How are you reading it that way?

Having to "beg dad for money when I want a pizza" doesn't sound like someone being coddled, it sounds like someone who's been told a thousand times to get a damn job and move out. Plus they're not even kicking OOP out immediately, they're giving them until their birthday.

I mean it is obviously fake, but still

Even worse they raised a kid with no will to fly the coop AND they rejected a intergrated multigenerational house hold.

Most cultures on earth and for most of history you lived with your family your entire life, or moved to another house hold. To start a new household was abnormal.

So you either need to raise your kid to the new standard to want to stand on their own and start their own household. Or you embrace the old and stay together and create a multigenerational household.

To do neither is objectively abuse.

I'd assume that he has some kind of chronic illness (or several). If he didn't at the start, he definitely developed one living like that.

While the time from child to mid twenties is definitely the parent's fault, after that point you can try every trick in the book it won't achieve a thing. Once someone masters weaponized incompetence they basically need a life or death wake-up call to do anything about it, and even then they might still not learn anything.

No one's literally impossible to reform, but many people cross a point that requires a practically impossible amount of investment to reform.

Getting a car without a job is very difficult.

I regularly tell my parents that the reason I am not like so many Americans, is that I have a supportive family. I live with my parents, but I would likely be homeless if they weren't here for me.

Me at 22. Was homeless as well. I make decent money now almost twenty years later and I still look at prices and think back when I used to dumpster dive.

It sucks at 19 and isn't really fair because getting started is so much harder these days. Now imagine you were twice as old and had never tried to do anything with your life.

I mean 20 adult years and never having a job indicates some real problems. What they are is anyones guess but you'd think they could have managed to get something in those years that could at least buy pizza and games if not a bit of rent and a beater.

The parents probably feel like they're out of options in terms of how to make him move in a positive direction and they are also running out of time as they are or reach retirement age, how can they afford themselves and him on a fixed income?

If he was 18, doing some sort of education/training, or just lost financial footing for a bit that's one thing but whatever is going on there is something else.

I'm in my 30s, back at my parents' for the umpteenth time and I hate it but goddamn am I grateful.

my last unemployment check just hit my account. Not even a single call back in 6 months. I’m scurred.

Is no one here going to tell me why this is fake and gay?

Given the type of person who frequents 4chan, it is likely the most heteronormative and real-ass thing ever posted in green.

Wait, you guys don't have that? US I assume? Damn, does your government do anything?

Every time I see when of these stories I feel a little better that the one thing didn't fuck up in life was helping my younger brother transition from dependent child to independent adult. It's so easy to do it without breaking them but we lionize being cruel to young boys. As if cruelty is what grows them.