Mrs. Pete, I wonder why they didn't do it like people did in the olden days? My mom was born late 40s, and they took baths in a washtub in the kitchen with water heated on the stove. I think that several of them even had to share the same water. I have wondered if this is where the saying, "don't throw your baby out with the bathwater" comes from.
Too bad your parents didn't consider a washtub.
I don't think that option was ever considered -- I know I didn't think of it.
Thing is, the whole winter, they kept promising, "We'll buy the parts this weekend -- quit complaining. It's only a few more days." They'd buy the parts a month later. Then the parts'd sit unused for a month. Then they were the wrong parts. But the promise was always,
"Just a few more days." We did have an oil heater to warm the bathroom, but that didn't make a bit of difference in the temperature of the water.
Except the adult child is 22 and is very capable of moving out. Instead the adult child complained about the living situation. Must have been better than the alternative ... Sure, the first choice should be to share the house with your parents. But if you, as an adult, make a choice to live with your parents, you shouldn't take your issues to the court system. Instead, move out.
I don't understand some of these posts, this isn't an argument of whether he is over the line between frugal and cheap. He is an abusive father. Your argument could be used for the wife: "She is an adult, why doesn't she just move out?". There are extenuating circumstances in this situation.
The recently convicted man...would whip his children with a leather belt if they didn’t follow what he called “sensible practices”
...
In her own words, here is how she described her life:
“It was Hell and we had to get out.”
“Hopeless ... you give up.”
“I used to wait for spring ... just surviving ... sad and hopeless.”
Second paragraph of the article, he beat his children. And though not stated in the article, you don't think he threatend to beat the other children if one of them (paticularly one bringing more money into the family) "ran away".
How is this situation not appropriate for the justice system?
I can see that kids
need some help in bridging the gap between being a kid living at home to becoming an independent adult living on his or her own. It's a whole lot easier to move out if your parents are helpful: That is, if they give you some old furniture or at least some kitchen equipment, help you by co-signing for your first apartment, and so forth. One thing in the article said something about the kids being kind of "isolated", so they might not've had friends who'd want to become roommates. And kids who are raised in this type of environment (being whipped for things like taking showers?) tend to have a bit of a warped thought process. And without knowing for certain, I'd bet that Dad was throwing roadblocks in the kids' way to prevent them from moving out. After all he had them working, yet HE was controlling their money. From his point of view, it was worthwhile to keep them at home.
The comment about perhaps the 22 year old thinking he was helping the younger children resonates with me too. I was the oldest in my family, and I felt a responsibility to help my younger siblings make college choices, etc. I helped them pick first apartments, lent them my car, and so forth -- our parents sure weren't helping them any more than they helped me.
The mom makes less sense to me. She's an adult, and she should know that she had options -- battered women's shelters, etc. She can't have thought it was better for the kids to stay in that environment.
What I've said about my childhood doesn't hold a candle to this story, and still I can look back and see that I had options available to me that I didn't recognize at the time. For example, I see clearly now that I should have joined the military right out of high school. I didn't even consider it then because it's not what girls did, and it's not what smart kids did.