> Are they wrong? If you had time to apply for colleges because you had housing in high school and didn't have to work all day to pay for food and housing, are you truly independent? If you didn't have to fetch your own water every morning and hunt your food? Maybe you think I'm taking the argument too far, but I see where they are coming from. True "freedom" is a bit of a myth, and shouldn't it be?
I totally get where you're coming from, but I think you're tilting at something of a straw man here.
Consider my own case: I received quite a bit of assistance from my parents, particularly in my late teens and early twenties. By 30 or so, direct assistance from them was limited to non-essentials - they paid for our annual family vacations, for instance, and bought my wife a new SUV when our second child was born. None of those were necessary, but of course we benefited.
The point of individualism as I see it isn't to be able to say "I accepted help from no one to get to where I am", but to be able to say "I am secure where I am, and need help from no one to maintain that security." It might seem like a subtle difference in phrasing, but it's actually not.
One of the biggest reasons I work as hard as I do to build wealth is so my children will have the best start in life I can give them. That doesn't mean that I'm going to give them a big chunk of cash - or any cash, honestly. That means that we can homeschool them, my wife doesn't have to work outside the home, and we can afford to give them experiences that many (or most) their peers will likely never have.
My dream isn't to create heiresses that never have to work. My dream is to give my daughters a childhood that prepares them to be the absolute best people they can be, and from which they can springboard to the life they decide they want.
To put it another way - if, in thirty years, my daughters are living a life of luxury having never hard to work hard for it or stress about money, I will have failed. If they're living a secure and fulfilling life, then I've succeeded regardless of what socio-economic class they fit into.
> In any case, other cultures have taken on the idea of familial responsibility and wealth to great success by their own measures. Just because it is different, doesn't mean it's bad.
I completely agree here. My parents cared for my maternal grandparents throughout my childhood. First they move them close and kept them in their life (and took advantage of "free" childcare). Over time they moved them closer still until they needed on-site care, at which point they bought a larger home and built out the walk-out basement into an apartment for them. They were part of my family life until I myself was an adult, and my parents took full responsibility for their care.
I'm 35 today, and see myself stepping into the same role for my in-laws. My parents are both healthy and financially secure, but my in-laws are not. They're still able to live on their own (and likely will be for a couple of decades now at least), but I've taken responsibility for their transportation needs and provided them with a reliable, new vehicle that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford. I'm working on expanding my personal investment portfolio into residential real estate, and expect that within a few years I will have moved them into a "rental" property that my wife and I own, at which point I will consider myself responsible for their housing. If the time comes that one or both of them need 24/7 onsite care, then they'll probably be living either in our home or very nearby.
From my perspective, this is what family means.