Okay, despite my "never had an allowance" statement, I have to come clean. While I never got any allowance, they did pay for my books and my tickets home. I was given a Visa card for this purpose and WOE if I ever dared to use it for anything else. Except... except... at some point, my father must have accepted that books also meant a trip to the regular bookstore every couple of weeks where I could pick up my pleasure reading. I have no memory of this actually ever being discussed.

When I was in library school (this is after law school) my father had a heart attack and subsequent quadruple bypass. My mother paid the bills while he was recovering and found the Visa statement with my trips to the U. bookstore and swears she never knew he was paying it all those years, and we all get a good laugh out of how my father and I assumed that a novel or two a month was a necessity of life.

aww... I would agree, of course.

I never got any sort of an allowance. I'm not even sure how I had money to spend in college; I think a lot of it was money I saved by not spending my stipend when I did research in the summers. I think I made several hundred dollars the first summer at Rice because I stayed rent-free at the Masters' house but still got the full living stipend. And the following summers, I also came out ahead a little. I think I bought my own books and stuff too, but my parents paid tuition/room and board. And they always gave me money when I visited, like a hundred bucks or something. I didn't really keep track of my money, I guess, since I didn't spend it that often.

Oh, they paid for all my plane/bus tickets home, though.

I just read some article that was talking about how it was leeching into these kids in the workplace as well.

How would this, um... work? Wouldn't the kids' workplace just tell the parents, "This doesn't concern you" and leave it at that?

the guys at High Hat *love* my Rescue Me/ World Trade Center article.

Awesome! But they'd be nuts not to. It's a kickass piece. Just be sure to ping Tim Goodman about it when the issue goes live. I mean it. ::stern face::

I got an allowance all through high school - something on the order of $5 a week, with extra money for big PITA tasks. In college, I was on the cafeteria meal plan and I could use my student ID to buy books (um, and candy -- it's where I acquired my shameful marzipan habit) and charge them to an account that my father paid off, but actual walking-around money came from me and me alone. Which wasn't bad; I spent a lot of time shelving books in this library, and then I switched to the more lucrative late-night campus patrol, where I got to walk around the Shakespeare Gardens with Greg Rucka, quite possibly the coolest thing I ever did at college (okay, actually the only cool thing I ever did at college).

Phone calls once or twice a week, from the payphone at the end of our hall. Letters or postcards several times a week from both parents, once a week from me (but much more often to friends). No cells, no email. And I don't remember anyone getting frequent calls or visits from parents.

Holy shit, that was going on twenty years ago. t is old

They never have to deal with problems because their parents always fix them, so when they get out into the world, they have no coping skills.

This is the bulk of what I do as a coach. Teaching coping skills and strategic life skills.

Oh yeah! No email. Totally used to write letters all the time!

Okay, JZ, but Mr. Goodman probably thinks I'm a nut already.(Although we do have the same taste.) But I am a well-written nut, right?

I had a small allowance in high school because I only ever worked in the summer. Plus gas money (and a cheap but reliable car) once I turned 16, because we lived 7 miles from town and my parents were sick of waiting around to pick me up from band, drama, and Scholar's Bowl team practices that inevitably ran over. By senior year I didn't even have a curfew, not that it mattered since I had little to no social life--my parents only asked that I promise never to ride in a car driven by either of two boys from my class whose reputation as reckless drivers even for 17-year-olds my mom was aware of because she was a substitute teacher at my school.

In college I had a work-study job for spending money. My parents would send me off at the beginning of each semester with a check to cover a typical semester's books. I called once a week, collect.

My dad paid me one dollar per hour for doing farm work. But as part of that deal I got to use the family cars/truck. None of my friends had regular access to cars, so that came in handy.