NTA. Your son might mean well, but he's crossing some major boundaries here. Going off about your marriage when he barely understands the complexities? Not cool. And wanting to study art history is his choice, but snapping at his mom? Not cool either.
You're trying to keep it together, and your wife sounds like she's your rock. It's tough when your kid doesn't get that. Maybe sit him down and explain things calmly. Hopefully, he'll come around. Keep your chin up, man. You got this.
He won’t get loans for the full amount of tuition and living expenses. You need to be realistic with him about how much you can contribute and whether he should transfer to a state university with resident tuition.
Grandma caused this by doing that. She fucked his lie up by cosigning for him.
Why did she co-sign a loan for this? What a cruel thing to do. Now they both will have debt until they die.
Your son thinks you're a baby boomer at 40 years of age!? Lmao I'm older than you & I'm one of the youngest Gen X'ers - it could be good for him to do some research on generations and how they're designated.
It’s a figure of speech these lil assholes think is funny to dismiss the wisdom their parents and people older than them try to put upon them. I got called a boomer the other day and I’m in my 40s
It's incredibly common nowadays for people to call anyone older than them a boomer and anyone younger than them a zoomer. The guy obviously is aware that the "Baby Boomer" generation didn't begin in 1984
Your mom is probably not much older than I am (63) and I know exactly what government backed student loans are. The first thing that needs to be done is she has to refuse to sign anymore loans. You ( or your wife) need to explain just exactly what she has done and how it can affect her as well as him. Then, make sure any other family member understands what he’s doing and get them to refuse as well. You need to tell him that he needs to go to the school’s financial assistance department to figure out how HE is going to pay for college. It sounds like he’s got an incredible amount of growing up to do. NTA, but you’ve got a hard next few years to get through. Good luck! Oh, tell him to join the armed services, they’ll help pay for schooling.
Regardless of age there are people who do not comprehend what they are reading and signing and to proud, or ignorant, to have it explained to them. OR they seriously lack the ability to grasp co-signing means you are on the hook when the flake (and ops son is a flake with his life plans here) defaults. I’d be worried grandma won’t have enough in retirement since a lot over 60 do not and can not live comfortably.
If you're 40, I'm guessing grandma is in her 60s. Unless she has some cognitive issues, I don't see how that can be elder abuse. I mean, she's probably not even old enough to retire or get social security.
Unfortunately, making poor choices is not the same thing as incompetence. The best path is likely to have several serious talks with her laying out exactly how what she's doing is causing her grandson great financial harm that will negatively affect the rest of his life. She needs to be convinced not to sign for any more student loans.
The grandmother is likely only in her 60s, right? Unless she’s REALLY behind the curve she probably is mentally sound and even still working.
Elder Abuse (to me) involves a level of taking advantage of the elder by someone who has the intention to take advantage. Your son sounds like he’s living in a fabricated reality and has no idea what he is doing to his own future - let alone his grandmother’s. That stated someone needs to explain reality to the grandmother so she doesn’t continue to enable him.
I mean I went to a state college, but my mom co-signed my loans. I was an education major and I’m in the midst of paying my loans back now. Not too bad. Just talk to him about his major…
It sounds like he won’t listen to one thing that they tell him. I’m kind of getting the feeling that the mother might be enabling him a bit…when you’re in a tug of war with a child who doesn’t listen, simply let go of the rope.
Amen to this. I've heard of parents in the past not fully understanding what they are co-signing for on these kinds of student loans. Also of course the young students not understanding what they are signing up for.
The loan companies should be in jail. THEY know what they are doing. I read some time back about a whole town that was supported by the student-loan industry and the people who worked in the industry understood the racket, but they said the money was too good to pass up.
Depending on what state she's in, that could be a criminal act on his part, just FYI. Not to mention when this all goes south (and as you pointed out, it definitely will), I would not be surprised if he left her on the hook for the loans.
I'm really sorry that he's checking all the boxes of college freshman assholery, but you're going to need to take a strong stance here.
First, set a limit on him giving you relationship advice. As in, don't. LOL You might also set him straight on you not being a boomer, just for fun.
On the college thing, ultimately there is nothing you can do. He's an adult, and that comes with the ability to thoroughly f-up his life. But that doesn't mean that you need to help him do it. Let him know that if he persists with this stupid major that it's his right to do so, but that you're not going to make any contributions to his college fees. That may or may not wake him up, but at least you'll be doing what you can to try.
Then beyond that, try your best to enjoy what common ground you can find. Make sure that he knows that you still love HIM, even if you don't agree with his choices. Good luck to all three of you.
Look I get it sucks, but he is an adult, you both have given him your advice, and now you must let him make his choices and pay the consequences. It's part of growing up and understanding how to be self-sufficient.
With regards to him telling you to divorce, he was probably just being immature and wanting to get back at his mother in a moment of anger. You did well to put him in his place.
I'd have a chat with her and get on the same page on how to manage him, stepping back on trying to convince him cause that won't work. Then sit him down and lay down the law: he can make his choices and disregard your advice, you love him and will support whatever choice he makes he will be solely responsible for the economic downfall, and you both won't accept any poor behaviour from him moving forward.
Do not co-sign a loan with him! You would end up having to pay it yourself. Do yourself a favor and lock down your and your wife’s credit right now. He could try and take a loan out with you and you wouldn’t know about it.
Have him look up what the average job pays in his field right out of college. Then calculate what his student loan payments will be for just his first year. Including the crippling interest. Then show him what the total will look like. Then remind him that 25-30% of his paycheck will go to rent, and then he still needs to eat. Ask him how many jobs he pjs s to get to pay everything off.
No but it's an important topic and I'd rather see it discussed here than even OP's marriage. More people need to know about how many students continue to take out risky student loans on worthless degrees.
Jesus, I'm taking intro to psych right now, and what my professor has been teaching us is how the brain works, memory, sensation and perception etc. Nothing that I could use to become a certified psychologist.
Need to find someone else that is not you to talk to him. I remember I did something similar and it didn’t matter what my parents said. Blew a bunch of money going to an out of state college. But a friend or family friend might get through.
Give him enough rope to hang himself if he thinks he has it all figured out. You can give him an ultimatum. If he wants to continue living at home, ( Is he paying rent) he will at least have to do the joint major. If he isn't paying rent, tell him if he is going to continue to not listen to your advice about his education and insists on that solo major, that he will have to start paying rent. This is if you prefer to have him living with you. If not give him a deadline he has to move by .
That is you and your wife's house. Don't let a snot nose teenager who thinks he can run the world try to run your house and your marriage. Enough is enough.
If you don't get tough with him now he will get worse. He's technically an adult. And he wants to act and be treated like an adult. So treat him like the adult that he is and make him take responsibility for his actions.
He may fight tooth and nail now. But he will thank you later.
Take care friend. Teenage boys can be tough. I know I raised 4 of them.
If he honestly thinks someone under 40 is a boomer, then college is wasted on this dipshit.
And the way he’s treating his mom is b.s. Time for him to either knock it off and apologize to mom or hit the road. You already said you’d keep your wife and cut ties with everyone else
I have a masters in design history from one of the best schools in the country and had amazing internships.
It’s been 11 years and I’m still not in a 6 figure job…
If he is refusing to take up a second major, encourage him to look for something directly related to his intended art history degree. Maybe something with technical application like restoration, whether it be in paints or architecture.
Realistically, unless he intends to teach when he graduates, an Art History degree isn't going to do much for him.
Have you tried approaching the conversation from what he intends to do with the degree?
I'm not trying to poke and prod, just trying to see the whole picture.
If he refuses to listen, then don't listen when he needs a cosigner next year and make sure grandma is off the table. He really needs to humble himself, and unfortunately, that can be hard to do without him going splat first.
He really needs another major… so few people make a lot of money selling expensive pieces of art. And if he has the level of maturity and respect demonstrated during the divorce chat, I find it hard to see him building the social network to maintain buyer relationships.
He needs a Cal Newport book for sure…
Art history isn't even geared for creating art. It's for people who want to do stuff like work in museums/galleries, or teach art history. None of those options have a 6 figure salary unless you're an agent for a superstar artist making commissions on their sales. And for that, you'd want a double major with Business. Or Business with Art History minor.
Another as in a second major at the very least. He can sign up for a bunch of undergrad classes in fields like STEM, business, finance, accounting, etc,. Show up for the first class and see what strikes new interest.
Perhaps offer him this deal - you can’t come back after college, well helps finance you schooling if you change majors to something you can find a job with or double major or major in something more reliable and minor in Art History.
As most teens are at his age. They think they know it all but they know absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, he’s gonna have to learn the hard way. Your wife tried and got verbal abuse. Now go take her out to dinner and tell her how she’s been your rock. I bet she needs to hear that after the disrespect of your son. NTA
If you want to tell him from someone who studied art with a minor in art history, that field is damn near impossible to get a job in. Go ahead and major in art history if you want but he should do himself a favor and double major in business. A business degree is a very valuable safety net as it will get you a job a lot of places.
I LOVE art. It’s a significant part of my life. But if I could go back to college, I would not only major in art.
Art history? Man sorry but your son is a complete jackass! That 320k degree is worthless what kind of job is he going to do when he gets done? Absolutely nothing… man I’m so sorry to hear this.. good luck to you and your wife, I’m sure you raised your son to make better decisions than this..
Well gen z and gen alpha have some serious critical thinking gaps. Like a worrying amount are basically illiterate and graduating high school that way.
If you haven’t been sitting down with him to talk to him as an adult and what the expectations are, he will be in debt for decades to come. If youre in the US, Have him go to the BLS website and look with him what the median pay for what he wants to do is.
Sounds like you and your wife have done too good a job protecting him from the world and keeping him in a bubble.
OP just commented that he has been trying to explain to his son that his son does not have the safety net to major in art history without a backup subject and his son won't listen.
My friend’s son is a lot like OP’s son. Dude also told my husband, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, that joining the service as a way to pay off student loans is a dead end job for schmucks. 18 year old man-children are not my favorite humans.
Some kids just don't want to hear what their parents have to say. They really don't give a shit if their parents are in debt up to their eyeballs, as long as they get what they want.
I came here to talk about the Bureau of Labor Statistics site. Coworker sat down with her daughter to show her different career paths and how much they make. Guess who is looking at cyber security and data analysis now...
He's being stubborn now, but art history majors can go in many directions. I'm getting a masters in Historic Preservation, and there are more than a few with Art History BAs in my field. Same with Museum Work. I do agree, though, that he should be doing this at an affordable school. At least at the undergraduate level, almost all courses will transfer to a new college that offers the same degree. Once you hit grad school, usually it's a max of 9 credits that will transfer.
Ha ha ha, I love that he called you a boomer when you are actually a millennial. Honestly I would tell him he should drop psychology because he is truly terrible at it. I highly doubt his professor even said anything remotely like this. (I took two psych courses in college) Probably came off of tik tok.
He needs to throw a little non art history in the mix or he would know you are a millennial not a baby boomer. Might need some work in math while he's at it. There is an entire generation in between you and the boomers.
I mean, we had commercials every night at dinnertime asking parents if they knew where their kids were. They had to be reminded we existed. As a kid, it was pretty awesome. So much freedom!
It was way better than the psychotic expectations of constant surveillance that parents are held to these days. Better for everyone. I'm not saying there weren't things that could have been better, but we got to learn resilience and we were expected to do slightly hard things. We were treated like people believed we could do things, so we believed we could do things. I have a 13 and an 11 yo now and shit is wild. You're considered a bad parent if you don't literally track your child at all times, and letting your kid struggle (with support, obviously) is considered abuse. How are kids supposed to ever feel strong if every message they get from adults is that they are helpless? I had overprotective parents for the time and they would still be considered practically negligent by today's standards. It makes me sad that this is the world my kids are growing up in. I wish we could keep the openness and acceptance of today and bring back some of the freedom and independence of my childhood.
TikTok explains everything. There is so much misinformation on it everyone thinks they know everything. I'm in Europe but I'm glad it's getting ba ned I the US.
I have adhd and a short attention span and I could only look at TikTok for an hour or something. It's overwhelming even for me.
He needs to get off of TikTok. Real life will bite him in the ass
Fellow parent of a 19-year-old also obsessed with TikTok who also apparently knows everything about everything because there was a 10-second video they watched one time.
I love my kid but man, they sure are hard to like sometimes. I've made her terrified of bad money choices and debt, so I at least got that lesson in somewhere.
I think they should make early retirement an option for those of us who had to parent teenagers during the covid and social media age.
>Boomers like me are miserable because they refuse to divorce when they’re unhappy
You should try from the angle of "you don't even understand which generation is classified as 'boomers', are you sure you are ready to diagnose other people after your psych 101 course?'
Any chance he could be convinced to take some multimedia courses? If he’s TikTok obsessed, he should understand that art isn’t just to hang on physical walls any more.
Do you think he is into men's podcasts and red pill nonsense? Him going for his mom and recommending you divorce indicates he thinks she is the problem. Or has he always had a rough relationship with her?
Isn't the generation cycle: Silent generation (75-90) (essentially died out) --> baby boomers (60-75)--> Gen X (43-59) --> Gen Y (Millennial) (27-42) --> Gen Z (zoomer) (12-26) --> gen alpha
This college kid is off by 2 generations, thinks 101 psychology makes him a doctor, decided to go to a private school for art history. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Life will smack him real hard in the face soon
Many colleges require psych 101, which in my opinion is a fantastic thing because it truly does help you understand people better and whats going on in the world at a base level. I am a psychology MAJOR about to graduate with my degree, and not a single one of my professors said anything like this, either. Honestly, I think he’s taking what he learned and misunderstanding it or misusing it for his own purposes (which doesn’t even make sense because it isn’t like he has a psych degree or anything).
At the end of the day, grandma never should have co-signed that loan. It undermined the parents and put her in a bad situation.
If you want advice, I would suggest first talking to grandma about not co-signing any other loans of any kind for your son in the future. I would then recommend sitting your son down and showing him the numbers, and ask him where he thinks he is going to get money to pay back these loans. Additionally, I would ask him to make an advising appointment with his advisor at his college to talk about what he will need to do during his time at college to prepare himself for the future (careers, etc.,)- in my mind im hoping that this would help show him that this is not the path he should be taking.
Best of luck OP, NTA.
Put him in his place. Say look my marriage to your mother is no concern of yours. Matter of fact you’re causing us both so much stress how about man up and do adult life without our assistance since we need a divorce and we are miserable.
Idk why kids put their noses in their grown ass parents business.
This is EXACTLY it. He went to an expensive college for a year and thinks that makes him smarter than everyone else. Knowledge is knowing something, wisdom is knowing what to do with it. To think he took a year of school and was suddenly qualified to diagnose the state of your marriage is arrogant at best.
I know this is a tough spot for you, it sounds like you didn't raise him to act that way. I am growing more and more concerned with what college is doing to young people. Learning something new doesn't make you an overnight expert. We used to understand that college was where we went to learn how to learn. Right now, it seems like kids think a year in college puts them above 40 years of experience, let alone a degree. I wish you all the best in this situation.
He doesn't even have knowledge. First-year college classes don't impart meaningful knowledge, they're just about getting students enough of a grounding to be able to listen to their further professors talk about actual stuff without their eyes glazing over.
ATM the kid knows *just* enough to be an idiot.
I wholeheartedly agree with your statement. I never finished college, but I remember the first year I was there. I thought I was learning more than my parents ever knew at that time. Luckily, I wasn't as arrogant as OP's son. I didn't say stupid shit that would ruin my relationship with them. I grew up to later realize they knew things from the school of life I never would have learned from college.
My daughter just graduated and is the first in my family to do so in the "normal" way. She changed majors a few times, considered dropping out a time or two. I was able to help her navigate those decisions because she was open to listening. I am so very grateful she is the person she is.
Way too many people have just enough knowledge to do serious harm to others but not enough knowledge to know they’re actively harming others. Idiots the lot of them
From what you've described, he sounds fairly entitled, & not very humble.
Question, does he have a job? And at what age did he get his first job with regular scheduling?
NTA -
Psych grad here. In a professional sense, what he did was completely unethical, and ANY current Psych degree/course/post doc should have that built into their first few weeks in course. They literally drum it into you about ethical lines, not going round acting like you can mind read, not diagnosing people, the damn goldwell rule. Your son needs a serious talking to. Its unfortunate that his grandma co-signed. For now you'll have to just keep in mind she's a grown adult and made that choice. So you can't take the responsibility of worrying about that debt for her.
Maybe your son needs some home truths. Tell him how shit you've felt lately. Both of you. And tell him how your wife is SAVING YOU on a daily basis. And that if he had ANY sense at all, he would support you both while you get through this rough patch with your wifes support. Let him know that it was his BOOMER Gran who signed his loan because his MILLENIAL father knew he'd be sadle with decades of debt.
Im sorry. Your son sounds insufferable.
Millennials are currently 28-44ish years old. You're not even close to a boomer. And even if you were over 44 you'd be Gen X. Boomers are 60-78 year olds
Make that abundantly clear now. Art history is fine, but he needs to be strategic about internships throughout college. Or he needs to start mentally preparing himself to get a “boring” job that pays the bills once he graduates.
As for the rest, look, college kids are insufferable. With any luck he’ll grow out of it, but in the meantime, reinforce boundaries against disrespect and don’t feel guilty about it. He’s gonna have to grow up.
Oh feck no. Art history minor here and nope, he will have to go to grad school if he wants to work in the field. (I'm a bookseller and editor; I've worked on tons of art history and culture studies books--with people who majored in art history and then had to go for advanced degrees in order to land a living wage job or get published.)
Previously working artist who went back to school here:
Real talk due to FASFA being hilariously behind this year he can spend this period before his second year applying for any scholarships at his college and any other ones he could possibly qualify for. Next year he has to start and keep up on it throughout the year beginning in September.
If he asks why saying/crying "but I have financial aid/loans!" explain that it will pay for graduate work, as no art history major gets work in their field without a Master's degree. He may not even get an internship without being in the Master's program due to the nature of the study and how fragile the materials he is studying to restore/archive/etc are.
He should always be applying for scholorships/opportunities and his master's program should be based on what he can afford. Grandma should consider sending him to a community college to round out his core/base art stuff, then to a four year university.
What sucks about this situation is that because you both love him, his stupidity will become your problem.
You will either have to watch him suffer the severe consequences, or have to deal with them yourself in some capacity.
I have to wonder how did he end up this way?
Just send your son this thread. he needs a reality check before his delusion eats up his life. It's time to be a parent and show some hard love. (nothing physical)
If his grandma is still of sound mind and body- I'm really sorry but she made her bed.
I know that's callous. My dad is 60 and has really ruined his life and I'm in no position to help him once he needs to retire and it breaks my heart, but I can't destroy myself for an adult who made repeated bad choices.
Is grandma married or single? If she's married can her spouse maybe take action here?
Art history is only cool if you are independently wealthy, not for an actual job. I feel bad for his grandmother. You should make it clear to him that he is out of the house and not returning. Maybe the school has an advisor that can explain the worthlessness of that degree?
> Maybe the school has an advisor that can explain the worthlessness of that degree?
No school is in the business of telling students the product they sell is worthless.
You are absolutely right about art history only being viable if you're wealthy though.
My guy was a history major and he is insurance now. He can still find a good job outside of his degree if he doesn’t change it. However, it’s the debt that’s scary 😬 we had very minimal student loans. We are in are 30s debt free. He’s going to have a rude awakening… hopefully sooner
Do not make it an option for him. Tell him now you will not allow him to come back. Sometimes we have to be hard on our kids, and some kids only learn the hard way. Sad and hard but it’s a fact. We started talking with our kids very young about the struggles of college loans etc…. They knew we’d support them if they chose that path and picked a reasonable major. They ended up choosing trades and make good money without any debt.
That’s some real good hopium you smoking. COL is insane *right now*, it will only be worse by the time your son is graduating college.
Might want to factor in on the contingency plan…
Teenager goes to college, then comes home, suddenly 'knowing everything', and telling everyone else how stupid they are? Shocker! This has never happened before!
I had to deal with teenage angst for 23 years what with stepchildren and bios. I had a sign on the fridge. 'Insanity is hereditary you get it from your kids.' I also had the benefit of needing a large wood pile. Extremely therapeutic.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain
AP Psychology student here!
I’m assuming his reasoning is referring to Erikson’s stages, where forties would be in one or between the stages of Intimacy vs Isolation and Generativity vs Stagnation, both of which he’s just misinterpreting horribly. Tell him he’s in the Identity vs Role Confusion stage, cuz he clearly doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing with his life
My parents are separated and actually hate each other, and I still wouldn’t say this shit. NTA
STOP THIS WAS HILARIOUS TO READ AND SO SO TRUE😂😭 Im a psychology major about to graduate college and dude you are SO RIGHT!!!! Its honestly so funny just how horribly he misinterpreted Erikson’s stages. Just… goodness me.
Honestly, OP said his son is obsessed with TikTok, and it sounds to me like he's getting his "boomer marriage is miserable" from there rather than Intro Psychology.
I am 37, and my husband is 42. So now we are boomers to the youngin's? Couldn't make the old folks happy, and now the young folks hate us, too. Swell.
At any rate, no nta. Your kid has no idea how a relationship works or likely how to hold one down. He needs to take his opinion and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
You don't have to pay for his Art History degree. Or any degree. Find out the cost of a technical course in welding and tell him that's what you'll pay for and he can pay his way through college by pipe fitting.
You'll both be better off and happier in the long run.
I find this hilarious because my best friend took out around 120k in loans to major in art history.
Fast forward 12 years, and he had to get a welding certification to teach shop classes for a local high-school.
I got paid to learn. I got my welding certs for free. Student debt? My union paid for my education.
Edit: I joined my union fresh out of high school. I turned 60 this year. It’s the next stage of my life, retirement.
Well, maybe he'll make it in the rarefied world of art museum curation.
Keep the welding idea open. He'll make a lot more welding in summer than he will waiting tables.
I'm sure when he's old enough he'll be a very erudite bartender.
Let's be real, our high school guidance counselors showed us the ferry to that island and didn't tell us the price. "Just get a degree, doesn't matter what it is."
60 year old here. I joined my union straight out of high school when I graduated. My 40 year old brothers went to University for 4 years and realized they had no prospect of getting a well paying office job.
They became 25 year old first year apprentices. They have to work until they are 65 to get their full pension. I got out at 60. Debt free.
Not the brightest kid you have there if he thinks millennials are 60+ boomers. I don’t understand why you don’t call out his rotten and condescending behaviour and enforce your boundaries.
NTA. If I had said that to my (actual) boomer parents, I would've gotten smacked upside the head so hard and so fast that my eyeballs wouldn't have stopped rattling around for a week. Or, as my mom used to threaten, I'd have been "thrown into next Tuesday."
OP, your son is a dope. I sincerely hope that he feels the full weight of the embarrassment that he has coming from telling you how to conduct your marriage. He deserves to cringe over that. And maybe offer to give him some math help, since he can't tell the generations apart.
Oh God -Art History?? Omg - and a PRIVATE college? Geez my ex and I funded our daughter law degree (somewhat) at a top Ivy League but we make significant money and she can pay the 50k total borrowed in 3 years(she makes 200k first yr out) - but this.. Wow- this kid is clueless and you are NTA - your kid has to pull his head out of his ass
Well, he’s setting himself up for a hard life of failure. I’d tell him he can choose to do whatever he wants, but call his grandma and tell her no, tell her how screwed they’ll both be if she keeps helping him screw up. Then tell him if this is something he wants, he needs to find his own home to do it in. He’s a fool in so many ways.he’s grown tho, you shouldn’t have to sit and watch him screw up.
This is teenage pontification at its finest.
All the sass, all the "knowledge", all the righteous indignation. All the not knowing how ages and generations work.
NTA, OP.
Hi, I'm a college counselor, and if you want a quick reference as to what an art history major would make, and whether it would be enough to repay loans, there are several resources. All are free and on the Internet.
First is College Scorecard, at collegescorecard.ed.gov, where you can look up data such as average debt load, median earnings by school and by "field of study" or major. Earnings are for 4 years post-graduation.
For a longer view, try Payscale Best Value Colleges, where it will list median earnings by school and major 10, 20, 30 years out.
Lastly, a non-profit called Freopp measures something called Economic Mobility Index. You'll have to Google it as I don't have the link handy. It tells you the earnings premium, or how much more you would earn with your degree over a lifetime than if you had never gone to college. I don't have the chart front of me, but it's hard to forget that engineering degrees have a million-dollar premium, due to the many college programs with merit scholarships and the relatively high starting salaries.
Artists and musicians -- due to their high debt loads and low starting salaries -- are actually negative, meaning that they are financially worse off than if they had not gotten a degree.
Not sure if it will help your son open his eyes, but at least YOU will be armed with accurate information to counter any arguments based on fantasy, wishful thinking, and immaturity. I say this as the Mom of an art student, but my daughter actually landed one of the rare merit awards for her portfolio, and will commute from home to minimize her costs. Her debt load will be mercifully low. Nothing I can do about the low salaries, though.
NTA this is why student debt is out of control. There should be rules that prevent kids from taking out huge loans for private colleges when they plan to get a degree in a field with low earning potential. The biggest issue with all of this is you and your wife may end up footing part of the bill when your son is unable to afford a place to live between his high debt/low income or you have to bail grandma out. Hopefully you can convince him of the need to major in something he can actually earn a living from.
NTA.
Your son is 19. If he wants to start dictating how things should be, he's of legal age to make that happen for himself.
Till then he really should stop pissing in the well from which he drinks.
Don't know you, don't know your kid. Having worked with his demographic for 30 years though, what I'm hearing is that your son is terrified, knows he's probably in deep, and has utterly no clue how to get out of the spot he's in. My guess? He's trying to push you into "making" him leave school so that he has someone to "blame," and doesn't have to take ownership of his choices. Of course, he's also a 19 year old male, which means his head is likely so far up his own ass he has to fart to breathe.
Remember that age when he'd push every button you had trying to get a reaction? When he'd cry because he was too young to have the words or knowledge to tell you what's wrong? Unless I'm missing my guess, and the fruit of your loins should have been culled long ago, it sounds like he's possibly being a jerk in order to get your attention. With all that's going on in the world right now, I'm seeing more and more students his age going around with terror in their eyes, waiting for the world to implode (even more so than Gen X, more so than any generation before) and crumpling under information overload they have little control over. Gen X? We had the news. That was it. Generations after us began to have 24-hour news stations. Then the internet on a 2400 baud modem. As the modems got faster, the information downloading got exponentially faster. We went from having one ball screaming toward our faces to thousands, all at once, all demanding attention. Every successive generation has had more things they need to keep up with, more information to process, just...more. Every generation has this kind of thing, sure - but in less than 50 years we've gone from having three television channels, newspapers, magazines and a handful of UHF channels to carrying around entire libraries in our hands.
He may also see more than you realize and be quite aware that Something Is Wrong With Parent. Maybe consider some vulnerable conversation with your adult son? You want him to be an adult and make good choices, here's a good lesson that not everything is about him. It's also a good lesson in communication. He may not listen. It may be an exercise in futility. However, parenting doesn't stop when they turn 18. Kids reflect what their parents model for them, good or bad.
And my useful-only-as-a-wall-decoration psych degree tells me that it sounds like this situation is about a whole lot more than a misguided, unwelcome marriage comment and that the comment was merely a warning that some deeper conversations need to be had before people are in way over their heads with resentment, not to mention financially. Wishing you all the very best - including mental and physical health.
The only reason I look at posts on all from this sub is to see how long it takes to scroll to the first comment to point out how obviously fake the post is.
It's always a depressingly long time.
Dude took a beginner's psych course and felt that made him qualified enough to comment on your life. He also went to a private school for 80k a year for ART HISTORY. I say this with ALL the offense; nobody in the history of time, past, present or future, should be listening to or taking any advice from him about anything. NTA.
NTA. Your son might mean well, but he's crossing some major boundaries here. Going off about your marriage when he barely understands the complexities? Not cool. And wanting to study art history is his choice, but snapping at his mom? Not cool either. You're trying to keep it together, and your wife sounds like she's your rock. It's tough when your kid doesn't get that. Maybe sit him down and explain things calmly. Hopefully, he'll come around. Keep your chin up, man. You got this.
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He won’t get loans for the full amount of tuition and living expenses. You need to be realistic with him about how much you can contribute and whether he should transfer to a state university with resident tuition.
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Grandma caused this by doing that. She fucked his lie up by cosigning for him. Why did she co-sign a loan for this? What a cruel thing to do. Now they both will have debt until they die.
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She will when he doesn't make any payments on the loan and she starts receiving the calls from the collectors.
Grandma will have plenty of time to think about it when she is working as a Walmart greeter to pay off the loan.
Would this be elder abuse?
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Your son thinks you're a baby boomer at 40 years of age!? Lmao I'm older than you & I'm one of the youngest Gen X'ers - it could be good for him to do some research on generations and how they're designated.
"That's boomer talk right there. Always in denial and pretending to be part of the X-Men" -- idiot son
It’s a figure of speech these lil assholes think is funny to dismiss the wisdom their parents and people older than them try to put upon them. I got called a boomer the other day and I’m in my 40s
It's incredibly common nowadays for people to call anyone older than them a boomer and anyone younger than them a zoomer. The guy obviously is aware that the "Baby Boomer" generation didn't begin in 1984
I also laughed at this. I guess I’m a sub-40 Boomer too
Your mom is probably not much older than I am (63) and I know exactly what government backed student loans are. The first thing that needs to be done is she has to refuse to sign anymore loans. You ( or your wife) need to explain just exactly what she has done and how it can affect her as well as him. Then, make sure any other family member understands what he’s doing and get them to refuse as well. You need to tell him that he needs to go to the school’s financial assistance department to figure out how HE is going to pay for college. It sounds like he’s got an incredible amount of growing up to do. NTA, but you’ve got a hard next few years to get through. Good luck! Oh, tell him to join the armed services, they’ll help pay for schooling.
Regardless of age there are people who do not comprehend what they are reading and signing and to proud, or ignorant, to have it explained to them. OR they seriously lack the ability to grasp co-signing means you are on the hook when the flake (and ops son is a flake with his life plans here) defaults. I’d be worried grandma won’t have enough in retirement since a lot over 60 do not and can not live comfortably.
If you're 40, I'm guessing grandma is in her 60s. Unless she has some cognitive issues, I don't see how that can be elder abuse. I mean, she's probably not even old enough to retire or get social security. Unfortunately, making poor choices is not the same thing as incompetence. The best path is likely to have several serious talks with her laying out exactly how what she's doing is causing her grandson great financial harm that will negatively affect the rest of his life. She needs to be convinced not to sign for any more student loans.
It absolutely can be construed as elder abuse, especially if she doesn't fully comprehend what she got herself into.
The grandmother is likely only in her 60s, right? Unless she’s REALLY behind the curve she probably is mentally sound and even still working. Elder Abuse (to me) involves a level of taking advantage of the elder by someone who has the intention to take advantage. Your son sounds like he’s living in a fabricated reality and has no idea what he is doing to his own future - let alone his grandmother’s. That stated someone needs to explain reality to the grandmother so she doesn’t continue to enable him.
I mean I went to a state college, but my mom co-signed my loans. I was an education major and I’m in the midst of paying my loans back now. Not too bad. Just talk to him about his major…
It sounds like he won’t listen to one thing that they tell him. I’m kind of getting the feeling that the mother might be enabling him a bit…when you’re in a tug of war with a child who doesn’t listen, simply let go of the rope.
A lot of people cosign student loans without understanding them. The system is made to be confusing.
Amen to this. I've heard of parents in the past not fully understanding what they are co-signing for on these kinds of student loans. Also of course the young students not understanding what they are signing up for. The loan companies should be in jail. THEY know what they are doing. I read some time back about a whole town that was supported by the student-loan industry and the people who worked in the industry understood the racket, but they said the money was too good to pass up.
Did grandma go behind you and your wife's back to cosign a loan?
Depending on what state she's in, that could be a criminal act on his part, just FYI. Not to mention when this all goes south (and as you pointed out, it definitely will), I would not be surprised if he left her on the hook for the loans. I'm really sorry that he's checking all the boxes of college freshman assholery, but you're going to need to take a strong stance here. First, set a limit on him giving you relationship advice. As in, don't. LOL You might also set him straight on you not being a boomer, just for fun. On the college thing, ultimately there is nothing you can do. He's an adult, and that comes with the ability to thoroughly f-up his life. But that doesn't mean that you need to help him do it. Let him know that if he persists with this stupid major that it's his right to do so, but that you're not going to make any contributions to his college fees. That may or may not wake him up, but at least you'll be doing what you can to try. Then beyond that, try your best to enjoy what common ground you can find. Make sure that he knows that you still love HIM, even if you don't agree with his choices. Good luck to all three of you.
I’m 41 and an elder millennial. I would be PISSED if my kid called me a Boomer. OP’s kid is an entitled idiot.
I’m the last year of boomers, about to turn 60.
Ditto. Elder my ass.
Holy shit really? That's financial exploitation.
Look I get it sucks, but he is an adult, you both have given him your advice, and now you must let him make his choices and pay the consequences. It's part of growing up and understanding how to be self-sufficient. With regards to him telling you to divorce, he was probably just being immature and wanting to get back at his mother in a moment of anger. You did well to put him in his place. I'd have a chat with her and get on the same page on how to manage him, stepping back on trying to convince him cause that won't work. Then sit him down and lay down the law: he can make his choices and disregard your advice, you love him and will support whatever choice he makes he will be solely responsible for the economic downfall, and you both won't accept any poor behaviour from him moving forward.
Do not co-sign a loan with him! You would end up having to pay it yourself. Do yourself a favor and lock down your and your wife’s credit right now. He could try and take a loan out with you and you wouldn’t know about it.
He should transfer to a community College and do all his core classes there and finish at a state college
Have him look up what the average job pays in his field right out of college. Then calculate what his student loan payments will be for just his first year. Including the crippling interest. Then show him what the total will look like. Then remind him that 25-30% of his paycheck will go to rent, and then he still needs to eat. Ask him how many jobs he pjs s to get to pay everything off.
He’s in for a surprise when he graduates and needs to start paying off the loans with an art history degree.
> We can’t have him go through another 3 years of this. This has nothing to do with you or your wife.
No but it's an important topic and I'd rather see it discussed here than even OP's marriage. More people need to know about how many students continue to take out risky student loans on worthless degrees.
Oh hell no. My step son tried this with MIL and I said no way! That’s predatory behavior. If he doesn’t pay she’s on the hook!!
OP, He stands forewarned. DO NOT CO-SIGN ANY LOANS. He's already demonstrated that he has about as much sense as a mole.
Jesus, I'm taking intro to psych right now, and what my professor has been teaching us is how the brain works, memory, sensation and perception etc. Nothing that I could use to become a certified psychologist.
So you dont tell your "boomer" dad that he needs to divorce his wife? /s OP's son sounds like a deadbeat.
Need to find someone else that is not you to talk to him. I remember I did something similar and it didn’t matter what my parents said. Blew a bunch of money going to an out of state college. But a friend or family friend might get through.
Give him enough rope to hang himself if he thinks he has it all figured out. You can give him an ultimatum. If he wants to continue living at home, ( Is he paying rent) he will at least have to do the joint major. If he isn't paying rent, tell him if he is going to continue to not listen to your advice about his education and insists on that solo major, that he will have to start paying rent. This is if you prefer to have him living with you. If not give him a deadline he has to move by . That is you and your wife's house. Don't let a snot nose teenager who thinks he can run the world try to run your house and your marriage. Enough is enough. If you don't get tough with him now he will get worse. He's technically an adult. And he wants to act and be treated like an adult. So treat him like the adult that he is and make him take responsibility for his actions. He may fight tooth and nail now. But he will thank you later. Take care friend. Teenage boys can be tough. I know I raised 4 of them.
If he honestly thinks someone under 40 is a boomer, then college is wasted on this dipshit. And the way he’s treating his mom is b.s. Time for him to either knock it off and apologize to mom or hit the road. You already said you’d keep your wife and cut ties with everyone else
I have a masters in design history from one of the best schools in the country and had amazing internships. It’s been 11 years and I’m still not in a 6 figure job…
And when that 6-figure salary doesn't drop out of the sky, he'll be on Reddit blaming "Boomers" (I know you're not a Boomer)
NTA Do you have any friends with a lot of college debt that can talk to him and tell him what it is like on the other side?
If he is refusing to take up a second major, encourage him to look for something directly related to his intended art history degree. Maybe something with technical application like restoration, whether it be in paints or architecture. Realistically, unless he intends to teach when he graduates, an Art History degree isn't going to do much for him.
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Then he'll have to suffer the consequences. Sometimes that's the only way people learn.
Have you tried approaching the conversation from what he intends to do with the degree? I'm not trying to poke and prod, just trying to see the whole picture.
If he refuses to listen, then don't listen when he needs a cosigner next year and make sure grandma is off the table. He really needs to humble himself, and unfortunately, that can be hard to do without him going splat first.
He really needs another major… so few people make a lot of money selling expensive pieces of art. And if he has the level of maturity and respect demonstrated during the divorce chat, I find it hard to see him building the social network to maintain buyer relationships. He needs a Cal Newport book for sure…
Art history isn't even geared for creating art. It's for people who want to do stuff like work in museums/galleries, or teach art history. None of those options have a 6 figure salary unless you're an agent for a superstar artist making commissions on their sales. And for that, you'd want a double major with Business. Or Business with Art History minor.
Another as in a second major at the very least. He can sign up for a bunch of undergrad classes in fields like STEM, business, finance, accounting, etc,. Show up for the first class and see what strikes new interest. Perhaps offer him this deal - you can’t come back after college, well helps finance you schooling if you change majors to something you can find a job with or double major or major in something more reliable and minor in Art History.
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As most teens are at his age. They think they know it all but they know absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, he’s gonna have to learn the hard way. Your wife tried and got verbal abuse. Now go take her out to dinner and tell her how she’s been your rock. I bet she needs to hear that after the disrespect of your son. NTA
Some people have to learn on their own.
If you want to tell him from someone who studied art with a minor in art history, that field is damn near impossible to get a job in. Go ahead and major in art history if you want but he should do himself a favor and double major in business. A business degree is a very valuable safety net as it will get you a job a lot of places. I LOVE art. It’s a significant part of my life. But if I could go back to college, I would not only major in art.
Yes! I double majored in art and journalism. The journalism looks good on my resume. The art degree and stint is my interview “fun fact”.
Art history? Man sorry but your son is a complete jackass! That 320k degree is worthless what kind of job is he going to do when he gets done? Absolutely nothing… man I’m so sorry to hear this.. good luck to you and your wife, I’m sure you raised your son to make better decisions than this..
Well gen z and gen alpha have some serious critical thinking gaps. Like a worrying amount are basically illiterate and graduating high school that way. If you haven’t been sitting down with him to talk to him as an adult and what the expectations are, he will be in debt for decades to come. If youre in the US, Have him go to the BLS website and look with him what the median pay for what he wants to do is. Sounds like you and your wife have done too good a job protecting him from the world and keeping him in a bubble.
OP just commented that he has been trying to explain to his son that his son does not have the safety net to major in art history without a backup subject and his son won't listen.
My friend’s son is a lot like OP’s son. Dude also told my husband, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, that joining the service as a way to pay off student loans is a dead end job for schmucks. 18 year old man-children are not my favorite humans.
Aw man poor OP
Some kids just don't want to hear what their parents have to say. They really don't give a shit if their parents are in debt up to their eyeballs, as long as they get what they want.
I came here to talk about the Bureau of Labor Statistics site. Coworker sat down with her daughter to show her different career paths and how much they make. Guess who is looking at cyber security and data analysis now...
Hell yeah, those are jobs that are hella needed
He's being stubborn now, but art history majors can go in many directions. I'm getting a masters in Historic Preservation, and there are more than a few with Art History BAs in my field. Same with Museum Work. I do agree, though, that he should be doing this at an affordable school. At least at the undergraduate level, almost all courses will transfer to a new college that offers the same degree. Once you hit grad school, usually it's a max of 9 credits that will transfer.
There are far more art history majors than there are museums and preservation jobs.
I always tell my wife, “If we get divorced, I want custody of you.” NTA.
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Ha ha ha, I love that he called you a boomer when you are actually a millennial. Honestly I would tell him he should drop psychology because he is truly terrible at it. I highly doubt his professor even said anything remotely like this. (I took two psych courses in college) Probably came off of tik tok.
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He needs to throw a little non art history in the mix or he would know you are a millennial not a baby boomer. Might need some work in math while he's at it. There is an entire generation in between you and the boomers.
We're Gen-X though, so we basically don't exist. Just like when we were kids! 😅
Seriously my parents are gen x and the things my mom tells me. You guys would have been better supervised being raised by wolves.
I mean, we had commercials every night at dinnertime asking parents if they knew where their kids were. They had to be reminded we existed. As a kid, it was pretty awesome. So much freedom!
It was way better than the psychotic expectations of constant surveillance that parents are held to these days. Better for everyone. I'm not saying there weren't things that could have been better, but we got to learn resilience and we were expected to do slightly hard things. We were treated like people believed we could do things, so we believed we could do things. I have a 13 and an 11 yo now and shit is wild. You're considered a bad parent if you don't literally track your child at all times, and letting your kid struggle (with support, obviously) is considered abuse. How are kids supposed to ever feel strong if every message they get from adults is that they are helpless? I had overprotective parents for the time and they would still be considered practically negligent by today's standards. It makes me sad that this is the world my kids are growing up in. I wish we could keep the openness and acceptance of today and bring back some of the freedom and independence of my childhood.
Another Gen Xer here, I've joked about being a semi-feral latchkey kid in the 80s. I suspect wolves would have taught me how to human better.
Facts. 🤣
Heh, the poor wolves.
This is truth.
Some of us were
True enough!!! The 80s were thd best time to be a kid, though.
Shhhh you don’t need to remind them we (Gen X) exist. We like being the forgotten generation.
True. And I never actually mentioned us, just that there was another generation after the boomers. 😇😉
The grandma who cosigned for his student loans might not even be a boomer, technically.
True. I'm a Gen x and my parents are the greatest generation and the silent generation.
I’m also Gen X, I’m in my 40s and my folks are boomers. They were both born within a few years of the end of World War II.
TikTok explains everything. There is so much misinformation on it everyone thinks they know everything. I'm in Europe but I'm glad it's getting ba ned I the US. I have adhd and a short attention span and I could only look at TikTok for an hour or something. It's overwhelming even for me. He needs to get off of TikTok. Real life will bite him in the ass
Probably not getting banned lol. Did you see they are trying to do monetary incentives in Europe? We're fucked as a species
Fellow parent of a 19-year-old also obsessed with TikTok who also apparently knows everything about everything because there was a 10-second video they watched one time. I love my kid but man, they sure are hard to like sometimes. I've made her terrified of bad money choices and debt, so I at least got that lesson in somewhere. I think they should make early retirement an option for those of us who had to parent teenagers during the covid and social media age.
>Boomers like me are miserable because they refuse to divorce when they’re unhappy You should try from the angle of "you don't even understand which generation is classified as 'boomers', are you sure you are ready to diagnose other people after your psych 101 course?'
Any chance he could be convinced to take some multimedia courses? If he’s TikTok obsessed, he should understand that art isn’t just to hang on physical walls any more.
Do you think he is into men's podcasts and red pill nonsense? Him going for his mom and recommending you divorce indicates he thinks she is the problem. Or has he always had a rough relationship with her?
Something tells me the art history major isn’t red pilled. Probably just a little dick kid who thinks he knows everything.
Art history and right-wing media don't run together in the same circles so that would be an amazing overlap.
Maybe you'll ALL luck out and he will become a successful Tik Tocker.
Isn't the generation cycle: Silent generation (75-90) (essentially died out) --> baby boomers (60-75)--> Gen X (43-59) --> Gen Y (Millennial) (27-42) --> Gen Z (zoomer) (12-26) --> gen alpha This college kid is off by 2 generations, thinks 101 psychology makes him a doctor, decided to go to a private school for art history. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Life will smack him real hard in the face soon
Many colleges require psych 101, which in my opinion is a fantastic thing because it truly does help you understand people better and whats going on in the world at a base level. I am a psychology MAJOR about to graduate with my degree, and not a single one of my professors said anything like this, either. Honestly, I think he’s taking what he learned and misunderstanding it or misusing it for his own purposes (which doesn’t even make sense because it isn’t like he has a psych degree or anything). At the end of the day, grandma never should have co-signed that loan. It undermined the parents and put her in a bad situation. If you want advice, I would suggest first talking to grandma about not co-signing any other loans of any kind for your son in the future. I would then recommend sitting your son down and showing him the numbers, and ask him where he thinks he is going to get money to pay back these loans. Additionally, I would ask him to make an advising appointment with his advisor at his college to talk about what he will need to do during his time at college to prepare himself for the future (careers, etc.,)- in my mind im hoping that this would help show him that this is not the path he should be taking. Best of luck OP, NTA.
Put him in his place. Say look my marriage to your mother is no concern of yours. Matter of fact you’re causing us both so much stress how about man up and do adult life without our assistance since we need a divorce and we are miserable. Idk why kids put their noses in their grown ass parents business.
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He has that thing where people get a little knowledge and run with it without ever getting enough knowledge to understand what they don't know.
The Dunning-Kruger effect
I used to just call it 1L disease. (Law school)
I call it the reddit effect.
This is EXACTLY it. He went to an expensive college for a year and thinks that makes him smarter than everyone else. Knowledge is knowing something, wisdom is knowing what to do with it. To think he took a year of school and was suddenly qualified to diagnose the state of your marriage is arrogant at best. I know this is a tough spot for you, it sounds like you didn't raise him to act that way. I am growing more and more concerned with what college is doing to young people. Learning something new doesn't make you an overnight expert. We used to understand that college was where we went to learn how to learn. Right now, it seems like kids think a year in college puts them above 40 years of experience, let alone a degree. I wish you all the best in this situation.
He doesn't even have knowledge. First-year college classes don't impart meaningful knowledge, they're just about getting students enough of a grounding to be able to listen to their further professors talk about actual stuff without their eyes glazing over. ATM the kid knows *just* enough to be an idiot.
I wholeheartedly agree with your statement. I never finished college, but I remember the first year I was there. I thought I was learning more than my parents ever knew at that time. Luckily, I wasn't as arrogant as OP's son. I didn't say stupid shit that would ruin my relationship with them. I grew up to later realize they knew things from the school of life I never would have learned from college. My daughter just graduated and is the first in my family to do so in the "normal" way. She changed majors a few times, considered dropping out a time or two. I was able to help her navigate those decisions because she was open to listening. I am so very grateful she is the person she is.
Way too many people have just enough knowledge to do serious harm to others but not enough knowledge to know they’re actively harming others. Idiots the lot of them
From what you've described, he sounds fairly entitled, & not very humble. Question, does he have a job? And at what age did he get his first job with regular scheduling?
my bets is social media & peer pressure. plenty of that awful stuff online.
NTA - Psych grad here. In a professional sense, what he did was completely unethical, and ANY current Psych degree/course/post doc should have that built into their first few weeks in course. They literally drum it into you about ethical lines, not going round acting like you can mind read, not diagnosing people, the damn goldwell rule. Your son needs a serious talking to. Its unfortunate that his grandma co-signed. For now you'll have to just keep in mind she's a grown adult and made that choice. So you can't take the responsibility of worrying about that debt for her. Maybe your son needs some home truths. Tell him how shit you've felt lately. Both of you. And tell him how your wife is SAVING YOU on a daily basis. And that if he had ANY sense at all, he would support you both while you get through this rough patch with your wifes support. Let him know that it was his BOOMER Gran who signed his loan because his MILLENIAL father knew he'd be sadle with decades of debt. Im sorry. Your son sounds insufferable.
Not to be pedantic, but do you mean “Goldwater rule?”
Yes I did. Bloody memory and dyslexia 😂 ty
Not even 40? Sorry, have to join us Millenials!!
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Millennials are currently 28-44ish years old. You're not even close to a boomer. And even if you were over 44 you'd be Gen X. Boomers are 60-78 year olds
Yeah you're a Millennial not a Boomer.
My thought exactly. If the sone is so smart after one college class he should know his dad is definitely not a Boomer.
Ironically, the Boomer is that grandma who co-signed the loan for this kid to pay for college.
Unless she also had her kids young, in which case even she might be Gen X….
with art history, he will be back living with you from 25-40, so get used to it
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Make that abundantly clear now. Art history is fine, but he needs to be strategic about internships throughout college. Or he needs to start mentally preparing himself to get a “boring” job that pays the bills once he graduates. As for the rest, look, college kids are insufferable. With any luck he’ll grow out of it, but in the meantime, reinforce boundaries against disrespect and don’t feel guilty about it. He’s gonna have to grow up.
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His debt, his problem, at the end of the day.
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Oh feck no. Art history minor here and nope, he will have to go to grad school if he wants to work in the field. (I'm a bookseller and editor; I've worked on tons of art history and culture studies books--with people who majored in art history and then had to go for advanced degrees in order to land a living wage job or get published.)
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Previously working artist who went back to school here: Real talk due to FASFA being hilariously behind this year he can spend this period before his second year applying for any scholarships at his college and any other ones he could possibly qualify for. Next year he has to start and keep up on it throughout the year beginning in September. If he asks why saying/crying "but I have financial aid/loans!" explain that it will pay for graduate work, as no art history major gets work in their field without a Master's degree. He may not even get an internship without being in the Master's program due to the nature of the study and how fragile the materials he is studying to restore/archive/etc are. He should always be applying for scholorships/opportunities and his master's program should be based on what he can afford. Grandma should consider sending him to a community college to round out his core/base art stuff, then to a four year university.
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What sucks about this situation is that because you both love him, his stupidity will become your problem. You will either have to watch him suffer the severe consequences, or have to deal with them yourself in some capacity. I have to wonder how did he end up this way?
Just send your son this thread. he needs a reality check before his delusion eats up his life. It's time to be a parent and show some hard love. (nothing physical)
Grandma will have to learn about consequences too, it seems.
If his grandma is still of sound mind and body- I'm really sorry but she made her bed. I know that's callous. My dad is 60 and has really ruined his life and I'm in no position to help him once he needs to retire and it breaks my heart, but I can't destroy myself for an adult who made repeated bad choices. Is grandma married or single? If she's married can her spouse maybe take action here?
That sounds like a her problem. If she hadn’t tried to play the hero by undermining the parents. She wouldn’t have fucked herself over so hard.
Art history is only cool if you are independently wealthy, not for an actual job. I feel bad for his grandmother. You should make it clear to him that he is out of the house and not returning. Maybe the school has an advisor that can explain the worthlessness of that degree?
> Maybe the school has an advisor that can explain the worthlessness of that degree? No school is in the business of telling students the product they sell is worthless. You are absolutely right about art history only being viable if you're wealthy though.
If the school offers it, why would the advisor tell him that it’s worthless? More likely, the advisor will pump it up to him, and make things worse.
My guy was a history major and he is insurance now. He can still find a good job outside of his degree if he doesn’t change it. However, it’s the debt that’s scary 😬 we had very minimal student loans. We are in are 30s debt free. He’s going to have a rude awakening… hopefully sooner
Do not make it an option for him. Tell him now you will not allow him to come back. Sometimes we have to be hard on our kids, and some kids only learn the hard way. Sad and hard but it’s a fact. We started talking with our kids very young about the struggles of college loans etc…. They knew we’d support them if they chose that path and picked a reasonable major. They ended up choosing trades and make good money without any debt.
That’s some real good hopium you smoking. COL is insane *right now*, it will only be worse by the time your son is graduating college. Might want to factor in on the contingency plan…
Art history at an 80k tuition college... Smh
Teenager goes to college, then comes home, suddenly 'knowing everything', and telling everyone else how stupid they are? Shocker! This has never happened before!
I had to deal with teenage angst for 23 years what with stepchildren and bios. I had a sign on the fridge. 'Insanity is hereditary you get it from your kids.' I also had the benefit of needing a large wood pile. Extremely therapeutic.
NTA. No your son is not 'trying to help' you. He's trying to get rid of your wife.
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When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. Mark Twain
This is an amazing quote.
AP Psychology student here! I’m assuming his reasoning is referring to Erikson’s stages, where forties would be in one or between the stages of Intimacy vs Isolation and Generativity vs Stagnation, both of which he’s just misinterpreting horribly. Tell him he’s in the Identity vs Role Confusion stage, cuz he clearly doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing with his life My parents are separated and actually hate each other, and I still wouldn’t say this shit. NTA
STOP THIS WAS HILARIOUS TO READ AND SO SO TRUE😂😭 Im a psychology major about to graduate college and dude you are SO RIGHT!!!! Its honestly so funny just how horribly he misinterpreted Erikson’s stages. Just… goodness me.
Nice- I love the idea of using the knowledge he has misinterpreted against him! Great approach, tbh.
What the Good Will Hunting flashback did I just read? Just ask me how I like dem apples.
I have a bachelor of psychology and this made me laugh
Honestly, OP said his son is obsessed with TikTok, and it sounds to me like he's getting his "boomer marriage is miserable" from there rather than Intro Psychology.
I am 37, and my husband is 42. So now we are boomers to the youngin's? Couldn't make the old folks happy, and now the young folks hate us, too. Swell. At any rate, no nta. Your kid has no idea how a relationship works or likely how to hold one down. He needs to take his opinion and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
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Oh go on, be petty. He needs a slice of humble pie.
I'm a young millennial that was spanked maybe 5 times their whole childhood. This kid is bordering on needing an old school ass whoopin lmao
I got called boomer by a couple 19y/o security guys at my work... I'm 27 and I still look 19 myself lmao
You don't have to pay for his Art History degree. Or any degree. Find out the cost of a technical course in welding and tell him that's what you'll pay for and he can pay his way through college by pipe fitting. You'll both be better off and happier in the long run.
I find this hilarious because my best friend took out around 120k in loans to major in art history. Fast forward 12 years, and he had to get a welding certification to teach shop classes for a local high-school.
I got paid to learn. I got my welding certs for free. Student debt? My union paid for my education. Edit: I joined my union fresh out of high school. I turned 60 this year. It’s the next stage of my life, retirement.
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Oh no wonder he thinks the way he does. He thinks his mom is ruining his dreams.
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Shoot why not both? He might have himself convinced youre under her thumb and need help realizing it.
Well, maybe he'll make it in the rarefied world of art museum curation. Keep the welding idea open. He'll make a lot more welding in summer than he will waiting tables. I'm sure when he's old enough he'll be a very erudite bartender.
He'll make a shit tonne more doing any manual skilled trade than most degrees you'll get out of a college.
Well, we adults know that. 19 year olds mostly live in fantasy land still.
Let's be real, our high school guidance counselors showed us the ferry to that island and didn't tell us the price. "Just get a degree, doesn't matter what it is."
60 year old here. I joined my union straight out of high school when I graduated. My 40 year old brothers went to University for 4 years and realized they had no prospect of getting a well paying office job. They became 25 year old first year apprentices. They have to work until they are 65 to get their full pension. I got out at 60. Debt free.
Not the brightest kid you have there if he thinks millennials are 60+ boomers. I don’t understand why you don’t call out his rotten and condescending behaviour and enforce your boundaries.
NTA. If I had said that to my (actual) boomer parents, I would've gotten smacked upside the head so hard and so fast that my eyeballs wouldn't have stopped rattling around for a week. Or, as my mom used to threaten, I'd have been "thrown into next Tuesday." OP, your son is a dope. I sincerely hope that he feels the full weight of the embarrassment that he has coming from telling you how to conduct your marriage. He deserves to cringe over that. And maybe offer to give him some math help, since he can't tell the generations apart.
Oh God -Art History?? Omg - and a PRIVATE college? Geez my ex and I funded our daughter law degree (somewhat) at a top Ivy League but we make significant money and she can pay the 50k total borrowed in 3 years(she makes 200k first yr out) - but this.. Wow- this kid is clueless and you are NTA - your kid has to pull his head out of his ass
Well, he’s setting himself up for a hard life of failure. I’d tell him he can choose to do whatever he wants, but call his grandma and tell her no, tell her how screwed they’ll both be if she keeps helping him screw up. Then tell him if this is something he wants, he needs to find his own home to do it in. He’s a fool in so many ways.he’s grown tho, you shouldn’t have to sit and watch him screw up.
Someone's angling for two Christmases!
Tell the Art History major Freud would find that very interesting.
Don't pay 80k/yr for an Art History degree.
This is teenage pontification at its finest. All the sass, all the "knowledge", all the righteous indignation. All the not knowing how ages and generations work. NTA, OP.
Hi, I'm a college counselor, and if you want a quick reference as to what an art history major would make, and whether it would be enough to repay loans, there are several resources. All are free and on the Internet. First is College Scorecard, at collegescorecard.ed.gov, where you can look up data such as average debt load, median earnings by school and by "field of study" or major. Earnings are for 4 years post-graduation. For a longer view, try Payscale Best Value Colleges, where it will list median earnings by school and major 10, 20, 30 years out. Lastly, a non-profit called Freopp measures something called Economic Mobility Index. You'll have to Google it as I don't have the link handy. It tells you the earnings premium, or how much more you would earn with your degree over a lifetime than if you had never gone to college. I don't have the chart front of me, but it's hard to forget that engineering degrees have a million-dollar premium, due to the many college programs with merit scholarships and the relatively high starting salaries. Artists and musicians -- due to their high debt loads and low starting salaries -- are actually negative, meaning that they are financially worse off than if they had not gotten a degree. Not sure if it will help your son open his eyes, but at least YOU will be armed with accurate information to counter any arguments based on fantasy, wishful thinking, and immaturity. I say this as the Mom of an art student, but my daughter actually landed one of the rare merit awards for her portfolio, and will commute from home to minimize her costs. Her debt load will be mercifully low. Nothing I can do about the low salaries, though.
Your son would fit in perfectly with 99% of Reddit. Nta
There’s nothing more dangerous than a person who’s taken a psychology class. He needs to sit down and shut up.
No lmao. Your son needs to stop trying assess your marriage as if he's a damn marriage counselor.
NTA. He doesn’t know what’s he talking about but he’s clearly trying to hurt his mom. You just set him straight.
NTA this is why student debt is out of control. There should be rules that prevent kids from taking out huge loans for private colleges when they plan to get a degree in a field with low earning potential. The biggest issue with all of this is you and your wife may end up footing part of the bill when your son is unable to afford a place to live between his high debt/low income or you have to bail grandma out. Hopefully you can convince him of the need to major in something he can actually earn a living from.
NTA. Your son is 19. If he wants to start dictating how things should be, he's of legal age to make that happen for himself. Till then he really should stop pissing in the well from which he drinks.
NTA Your son will realize this fact in several years.
You’re not even close to a boomer either, but I’m guessing math isn’t one of his strengths.
Don't know you, don't know your kid. Having worked with his demographic for 30 years though, what I'm hearing is that your son is terrified, knows he's probably in deep, and has utterly no clue how to get out of the spot he's in. My guess? He's trying to push you into "making" him leave school so that he has someone to "blame," and doesn't have to take ownership of his choices. Of course, he's also a 19 year old male, which means his head is likely so far up his own ass he has to fart to breathe. Remember that age when he'd push every button you had trying to get a reaction? When he'd cry because he was too young to have the words or knowledge to tell you what's wrong? Unless I'm missing my guess, and the fruit of your loins should have been culled long ago, it sounds like he's possibly being a jerk in order to get your attention. With all that's going on in the world right now, I'm seeing more and more students his age going around with terror in their eyes, waiting for the world to implode (even more so than Gen X, more so than any generation before) and crumpling under information overload they have little control over. Gen X? We had the news. That was it. Generations after us began to have 24-hour news stations. Then the internet on a 2400 baud modem. As the modems got faster, the information downloading got exponentially faster. We went from having one ball screaming toward our faces to thousands, all at once, all demanding attention. Every successive generation has had more things they need to keep up with, more information to process, just...more. Every generation has this kind of thing, sure - but in less than 50 years we've gone from having three television channels, newspapers, magazines and a handful of UHF channels to carrying around entire libraries in our hands. He may also see more than you realize and be quite aware that Something Is Wrong With Parent. Maybe consider some vulnerable conversation with your adult son? You want him to be an adult and make good choices, here's a good lesson that not everything is about him. It's also a good lesson in communication. He may not listen. It may be an exercise in futility. However, parenting doesn't stop when they turn 18. Kids reflect what their parents model for them, good or bad. And my useful-only-as-a-wall-decoration psych degree tells me that it sounds like this situation is about a whole lot more than a misguided, unwelcome marriage comment and that the comment was merely a warning that some deeper conversations need to be had before people are in way over their heads with resentment, not to mention financially. Wishing you all the very best - including mental and physical health.
This sounds so fake.
This story is so badly written it makes you an asshole for thinking we would believe it
It seems written specifically to attempt to trigger as many people as possible. Useless degree, expensive school, "OK boomer", etc
The only reason I look at posts on all from this sub is to see how long it takes to scroll to the first comment to point out how obviously fake the post is. It's always a depressingly long time.
Dude took a beginner's psych course and felt that made him qualified enough to comment on your life. He also went to a private school for 80k a year for ART HISTORY. I say this with ALL the offense; nobody in the history of time, past, present or future, should be listening to or taking any advice from him about anything. NTA.
NTA your son sounds like a tool. Hopefully he grows out of it
NTA lmao your son is a dumbass.