Why Children Deserve Accountability, Not Abandonment
The process of addressing this problem often falls to the work force, or to health care professionals due to co-dependancy. Neglect and exclusion often begins at home, a child that is complex in their needs can seem like a burden to siblings and an adult, they can find themselves abandoned and excluded. The narrative can be changed through the way companies respect, develop and understand their workers. However, there is a need to assess responsibilities and form accountability in the structures, with councils, health care professionals and the work environment, so as a collective the weight of process and development is shared.
Survival Needs Go Unmet
For many children, home is not a place of comfort but of strategic survival. Lisa, 17, learned early that asking for too much would lead to rejection, she made herself invisible and tried to act small so she was not a threat to her parents.
Her parents were professionals with ample financial resources, but she was left to fend for herself. She was told that University was not an option without funding. She was told that spending thousands on rent, to disable her future security in a home, was something she had to get used to. A problem she was told, she was entirely responsible for, yet her parents were a hundred percent responsible in her childhood for providing her with a safe home, emotional support, physical care; she was heavily let down with trauma and domestic abuse, yet they found they could abandon her by using the law, as soon as she turned 18. Lisa’s situation is reflective of many who find themselves forced into adulthood without a safety net or an ability to address the issues of the past.
The impact of financial and emotional neglect is severe. While some parents are genuinely struggling, genuinely doing their best, others have the means but refuse to provide. This neglect can be driven by controlling behaviour, emotional avoidance, trauma, neurodivergence, or simply an unwillingness to accept the financial and emotionally reality of raising a child. Yet, this is rarely acknowledged as a form of abuse, despite the clear consequences.
But neglect isn’t just financial. Many children grow up feeling unseen and unheard.
Emotional neglect, when a child's feelings, struggles, concerns and existence are treated as inconsequential, inconvenient, leaves deep scars. Without support, these children often grow into adults who second-guess their needs, loose a sense of grounding, hesitate to seek help and struggle with self-worth, they often are not encouraged to tap into resources of development, or counselling and are expected to just ‘get on with living’, burning out and finding themselves in highly complex situations in which the traumas of their past play out again and again.
Carrying the Burden Beyond 18
Turning 18 should mean stepping into adulthood with support, not being abandoned entirely. But for many children of neglectful parents, it means an abrupt, total cutoff. No body wants to deal with the extensive nature of the problem.
Unlike their peers, with supportive parents who continue to provide guidance, rent assistance, look at changing laws, economic reality, discuss the saving of a deposit, accountability, or help with career connections, these young adults are expected to ‘figure it out’ alone. The result is often years of struggling to secure stable housing, build a career, or escape financial insecurity, many never get past the cycles of exploitation, experienced through work and co dependance, regularly burning out.
Alex, now 24, remembers the day he was forced to leave home with nowhere to go at 17. “I thought I could do it. I thought I was ready. But I had no idea what I was up against.”
Without parental guidance or financial support, he cycled through unstable jobs and substandard housing, unable to catch up with peers who had a safety net. “The hardest part is knowing it didn’t have to be this way, there was no one there to guide.”
The Cycle of Avoidance and Neglect
Parents who financially and emotionally neglect their children are often products of a system that allowed them to do so without consequence, they avoided their own issues and inherited a complex set of circumstances, often never addressed. This creates a cycle:
Avoidant parents see their child as an inconvenience. Sometimes they see the child there, to be in service to them in their old age, rather than a responsibility, or a committed relationship, or an opportunity to 'raise a child' into a strong independent adult.
There is no enforcement of historical or continued responsibility, even when parents have the means to support; this maybe emotionally, financially, through a home or through accountability.
Young adults who grow up in acutely neglectful homes often struggle to break free from financial instability and emotional unavailability, making it harder to provide stability for future generations.
By normalising the idea that once a child turns 18, they are ‘on their own,’ we enable a pattern where neglect is never fully addressed, only passed down.
Breaking the Cycle
If we are serious about ending this cycle, we need real solutions.
Holding Parents Accountable
Legal accounting structures that extend responsibility historically and beyond 18 in cases of clear and acute neglect.
Social services that track young adult welfare, not just in childhood safety but in giving emotional support and career development and guidance.
Awareness that financial neglect and emotional neglect, through disabling 'controlling behaviour' is a form of abuse, not just bad parenting.
Creating Sustainable Pathways for Neglected Young Adults
Job Stability & Growth: Careers that offer not just survival pay but a real future.
Affordable Housing Solutions: Rent-to-own schemes, co-living communities, and financial aid for stable housing.
Financial Education & Independence: Teaching young adults how to manage money, access grants, and build economic security.
Listening to your employees, assessing those that need extra support to fully realise themselves.
Giving Children & Young Adults a Voice
Youth advocacy programs where they can report financial neglect without fear of retribution.
Independent legal representation for young adults and children dealing with trauma and abandoned by their parents.
Changing societal attitudes: Recognising that just because a child is 18 doesn’t mean they don’t need help, that significant childhood trauma can impact for life. Help with enforcing support through mediation, support services, health care professionals.
A Future Without Abandonment
Neglected children don’t just ‘grow up and move on.’ The effects of financial and emotional neglect last a lifetime, shaping their relationships, careers and ability to build a stable future. The transition into independence, should be supported by real guidance, not abandonment and should continue into a person’s future, this creates a community with strong values.
It is time to hold avoidant persons and parents responsible by working with councils, work environments and health care professionals, to provide meaningful financial and emotional support to families, young adults to ensure that the next generation does not inherit the same struggles. The cycle can be broken, but only if we recognise the problem and act accordingly.
No child should have to fight for survival because of their parent’s neglect, at any age.
Ways of Breaking Down Concerns -
1. The Cycle of Avoidance: How Parents Justify Abandonment
Turning Their Backs at 18: Some parents use the law to neglect and abandon their duty of care, leading to homelessness, sometimes during childhood but especially once their child reaches the legal age of adulthood, when there is no plan for the young person in to future security.
Co-dependent or Narcissistic Parenting: How certain parents use control, neglect, or avoidance to maintain dominance or absolve themselves of responsibility using highly controlling and manipulative behaviour.
The Legal and Social Loophole: Systems that do not enforce continued parental and relationship accountability, especially in cases where parents have the means to provide but refuse and the parent gets away with manipulative emotional behaviour.
2. The Long-Term Consequences of Financial and Emotional Neglect
Financial Disabling: Lack of financial support can mean crippling rent costs, limited access to higher education and difficulty securing stable jobs.
Emotional and Psychological Toll: Feelings of rejection, insecurity, exhaustion, entitlement and lack of confidence in building an independent life and relationships.
Social Disparity: Children from wealthy but neglectful homes can suffer in complex ways due to disparity and lack of support through councils and systems designed to help on a ground level.
The need for education around neglect, avoidance and disparity to close the gaps, working with the accountability of survival needs.
3. Giving Young Adults a Voice: Preventing Dismissal and Enabling Accountability
Breaking the Silence: Creating legal, accountable and social avenues for children and young adults to speak up without being sidelined.
Constructive Legal and Social Systems:
Supporting the expanding of responsibilities for parents, in cases of financial and emotional neglect.
Independent advocates who can represent the interests of young adults in need.
Holding emotionally avoidant parents accountable for leaving their children without pathways to stability by providing supportive measures to confront and deal with concerns to move past denial and abandoning behaviours.
Enabling support through affordable education beyond the young adult ages.
Working on the accounting of survival needs, how well they have been met and closing in the gaps.
4. Creating Sustainable Pathways: Moving Beyond Survival to Growth
Job Stability and Financial Security: Ensuring that young adults can find jobs that provide both a sustainable income and future growth.
Reducing Rent Costs and Housing Barriers: Developing affordable housing to buy with ownership through rent-to-own models, and community-based housing solutions.
Practical Skill Development: Expanding access to financial literacy, vocational training and entrepreneurial support for young adults.
Conclusion: Breaking the Cycle and Building a Future
The need for accountability - Financial accounts can be highly descriptive, providing transparent accounts helps to see real concerns and disparity.
Emotional Accountability can be see through support services and the relationship a person has to their primary survival needs.
Advocate for a more structured, supportive system where young adults are given tools to build a future, not just left to struggle through work, health care, social care.
Call to action: How policymakers, educators and social systems can step in to bridge the gap between childhood dependency and adult independence.
The course below brings insight and awareness in constructive process to help families and children with this problem -
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