Family that doesn’t want to give you overtime pay, paternity leave, two-week notice before termination, etc., etc.
My first week at my current tech job, our ceo gave a little presentation. He said, and I quote, “we ain’t a family. I like everyone here, but make no mistake: we’re a business”
We’re a pretty small (bout 150 at the time) company.
I really really enjoyed that honesty from him.
Had to make sure that wasn’t the Aeon Flux eye. Very different context.
American families are encouraged to demand their children pay rent and throw their children out on the street once they’re no longer legally required to provide for them. Workplaces have that same energy.
In rural areas of Europe, especially back in the day, kids were expected to pick up chores for the household. Clean, go walk the cattle, etc. It’s why big families thrived - everyone had to do their bit. The paying rent could be seen as a modern version of that. But working alongside your family to care for each other would have a meaningful and positive vibe, while the rent thing comes off as alienating and cold.
No they’re not lol. It’s considered very weird to charge your own child rent. Those stories make headlines because even Americans find them shocking. My sister lived with my parents until she was 27 and they never charged her a dime. I could move back in with them tomorrow and they wouldn’t charge me either. This is the norm in American families
Probably depends on what subculture you’re in. This isn’t uncommon in the rocky mountain area, in the white mormon suburbanite type demographic.
In the West Coast I saw teens working and paying rent but only in working class families because housing was so expensive. So more like helping the parents pay their landlord than the parents acting as a landlord.
Yeah we had a lot of that kind of thing, where you get a kid who starts helping provide for family finances when they hit age 18 (some as minors), but it was never like a parents “charging them rent” kinda situation. And I’ve certainly never seen that kind of behavior encouraged in any way. Anyone who charged their kids rent would be considered real assholes. But I’m from Appalachia and Midwestern social circles.
Being in charge doesn’t make you smarter, better, or give you the authority to do anything beyond the job description. Implying family is bullshit and those who you convince they are family have just been set up to be taken advantage of by someone who doesn’t love you.
Source, been the boss or the boss’s boss and so on for decades.
