Are you making the payments on the loans your parents co-signed for you?
If there are loans they took out for you, you should agree on what you owe for those & make payments directly to the lender until your obligation is taken care of. Don't give the money to your parents unless they've already retired the loan.
I am not, and they have never asked me to pay the portion that they have in their name. I actually don't even know if my name is on them at all, which I guess is bad, and I should find that out. What they said to each of us when we were in high school was that our only job was to get a good education, get good grades, and afterwards, get a good job, and that they would take care of college, essentially. I have done that, but now that I am out of college and heading towards a stable financial situation, I feel that it would be the right thing to do to offer to help pay the loans.
I feel like your family is my family, and you are me. So much of what you have said resonates with my family experience. I have the UMC parents who gave me lots of financial support growing up and in college and gave me lots of good financial advice, yet ended up tanking themselves financially, and the irresponsible younger (middle) brother who made lots of bad choices, spent all his money, mooched off parents, felt he deserved financing of his "dream" by other family members, even though he was a quitter but delusionally believed he was a hard-worker. So, about three years ago, my parents ended up pressuring me and my youngest brother to give them very substantial loans to bail them out of their financial collapse (in a matter of months, several things came to a head -- crazy over-extending themselves with monthly expenses, paying interest only on nearly all their loans, two lay-offs, divorce, and needing to sell our 30-year house). Then, my middle brother and my parents pressured me and my youngest brother to loan a few grand to the middle brother, as the parents had already fully tapped-out their cash and credit to give to him. At the time of these loans, I was barely 30, and youngest brother was 25.
Anyhow, at this point, things have turned a corner for the better, but it has been an extremely stressful, dramatic, emotionally draining, and scarring experience over the last few years. As someone who has essentially been in your position but caved, please let me warn you, tell them HELL NO!!!!! Actually, say "no" politely but very firmly. Do not get into a discussion of why or why not, just, "I'm sorry, but no I cannot do that. I've made my decision, and I'm not comfortable discussing this any further."
It was so, so, so hard for me to battle my feelings of guilt at the thought of saying "no" to desperate family members, and I lost that battle and loaned the money. So, I totally get where you are coming from and your internal struggle to wrestle with how to handle this. But I eventually learned to set up boundaries -- boundaries with family is a VERY important lesson that took counseling for me. After those loans, Bank of Older Sister and Younger Brother closed shop. I am fortunate to report that, at this time, all borrowers are paying us back, but it was still a poor decision for me to concede to that lending relationship, especially as to middle brother. It changed the family dynamic in ways that I wish not. It has been emotionally damaging for me, and I feel compelled to steer you away from this outcome.
Oh, and the reason I originally quoted this part of the thread is that you can find out whether your name is on any of the student loans your parents still have for your college education very easily by requesting your free credit report online. This will list all your credit cards, real estate loans, auto loans, student loans, and other. You'll be able to see which are still open and what the current balance on each is, as of the last time the lender reported it to the credit bureau (typically within the last month or two). There are a number of ways to get your free credit report; every six months, I use
www.quizzle.com, which provides the Equifax report for free.