"Other people at this age have already made a career, but my child still has to rely on his parents to cook for him three meals a day, pay for gas, and when he goes out with friends, he has to ask his two retired grandparents for money," lamented a 62-year-old father in District 12, Ho Chi Minh City.

Mr. Nam has three children, the two older daughters are married and have stable jobs while the youngest son, who is the one his parents take care of the most, is still wandering around, working anywhere for only a few days or half a month before quitting.

With two older sisters, the youngest brother was pampered and hardly had to do any work from big to small. After graduating from the University of Water Resources, he worked in a few places but all of them complained about low salary and low position. Therefore, after 8 years of graduating, he now goes to coffee shops every day or lies down to watch TV, play games, and eats the meal his mother has prepared.

Mr. Nam and his wife sold a piece of land to their son to get capital to open a shop, but the "owner" spent all day playing games and sleeping, and even closed the shop whenever he felt like it. Therefore, after only a few months of business, the capital was exhausted, he suffered heavy losses, and he returned home and asked his parents for money to spend.

"My wife kept urging him to get married and hoped that having a family would help him work hard, but I was so discouraged that I wanted to kick him out of the house many times, but I couldn't bear it," said Mr. Nam.

Illustration: Dissolve.

Mrs. Xuan and her husband in Nam Tu Liem, Hanoi also have to work hard to take care of not only their son but also their daughter-in-law and grandchildren.

She and her husband have a row of rented houses, plus a small business, so they don't have to worry about finances. Her son has been a playboy since he was a child, so he hasn't studied well and doesn't have any qualifications, he's only good at pawning his parents' motorbikes. The family has asked acquaintances to help them find various jobs, but none of them are stable, and after a few days he's just at home playing around.

After urging her son to work for a long time without success, Mrs. Xuan and her husband switched to urging him to get married. When he was 29 years old, the son also brought a bride home, but his habit of not liking to work and playing was still there. In addition, the wife he married got pregnant right away, so she quit her job selling clothes, stayed home to take care of the pregnancy, and after giving birth, she helped her mother-in-law manage and collect rent from the tenants. She loved shopping, so every penny her parents-in-law gave her she spent on shopping.

"Taking the child to the doctor, paying for milk, diapers, shopping for dad and mom... all come from the grandparents' pockets. Now we have to cover the whole family, not just him," said Mrs. Xuan.

Doctor of sociology and master of psychotherapy Pham Thi Thuy, Ho Chi Minh City, said that it is quite common for adults, completely normal physically and mentally, to still depend on their parents. While in many Western countries, children move out at the age of 18 and take care of their own lives, in Vietnam, many people, even though they are married, still depend on their parents.

In seminars or when going to psychological counseling, many parents in their 50s and 60s expressed their concerns about what to do when their 30- or even 40-year-old children still refuse to work and rely on their parents for everything. Most of them have good economic conditions, spoil their children from a young age and only realize the consequences when they are old. They have wealth to give to their children but also understand that "the mouth that feeds the mountain collapses" so they worry that if something happens to them, they will not know what their children's future will be like.

A heartbroken father said that he and his wife spared no expense to send their only son to study abroad, from the US to Australia, and were even willing to sell some land for their son to use as capital for business, but their 35-year-old son was still playing around, without a job.

"Everywhere he went to work, he complained that the job was not suitable, the boss was bad, the salary was low... He used his family's money to 'start a business' but it still didn't work out, he only saw it 'invested' in cars, phones, clothes... The money his parents poured in was like going into a bottomless hole, no matter how much it was, it was gone. My wife and I's health was getting worse and worse, but seeing that our child only wanted to show off and have fun, we were extremely impatient. Advising him was like water off a duck's back," the 63-year-old man confided.

According to VNE