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My latest book applies a light touch to an otherwise heavy subject: the environment. With Adventures in ECO Land: My Humorous Take on Going Green, I set out to help readers laugh and learn. I set the table with amusing personal anecdotes and then serve up hearty portions of food for thought.
More single and married mothers are working outside the home, no matter what their children’s ages. 71% of women with children under the age of 18 are in the labor force.
They have increasingly taken jobs that are full-time and year-round. They have to: Their incomes make all the difference between their children living above or below the poverty line.
He or she could have a bright future in the real world!
The government estimates that there are over 30 million jobs that pay an average of $55,000 a year and do not require a bachelor’s degree. If the skilled worker owns his own business, of course, he or she can earn much, much more.
In between beating my husband—which I find really helps pass the time during lockdown—I put together the third book in my Business-Minded Teens series. Called Keep ‘Em Rolling, it’s the story of Sunny, a Chinese-American girl who wants to go into auto repair. This puts her on a collision course with her father-the-computer-programmer.
Of all the issues that plague parents of adult children, dealing with difficult in-laws is number one. In Parents of Adult Children: You Are Not Alone, I come at this thorny subject from different angles, including Dear Abby-like scenarios. Read the following brief scenarios and see what the panel has to say about them. Then ask yourself, how would you handle it?
All matters financial – giving gifts, handing out subsidies, leaving an inheritance – can cause a lot of angst among parents of adult children. With the best intentions in the world – especially in this era of COVID-related hardship—parents are often of a mind to give their grown kids money today as opposed to leaving it to them in their wills.
We only have to look around us or among our own relatives to see that families today come in all sizes and shapes. They’ve been reconfigured by divorce, remarriage, cohabitation, adoption—often across racial and ethnic lines—and the weakening of taboos about “marrying out.” Still, for those of us in the older generation, it’s hard to let go of that Norman Rockwell/Leave it to Beaver image of the “ideal” American family consisting of father in his suit, mother in her apron, and their two perfect offspring who look just like them. As we used to say in New York, “fugedaboutit!” Here’s what’s really happening in U.S. households today, demographically speaking.
Grandparenting is healthy for us. Being in touch with the
younger generation literally beefs up the immune system.
-Lillian Carson, The Essential Grandparent