No. Absolutely, positively not. No.

I am utterly astounded at the immense selfishness of the girl in question. The mother, while it is difficult for her to feel resentment, has every right to resent (maybe not her daughter) but her daughter's horribly selfish actions.

The ENTIRE family is going through something horrible and painful. The ENTIRE family needs to get it together and pull together to make things work.

How difficult is it to sweep floors? How long would that single chore take? One hour. Max. And I'm being generous and taking into consideration it might be a big house. How difficult is it to wash dishes? Fifteen minutes. Dust? Again, one hour.

One hour out of the day. That is INCREDIBLY small penance to the woman who birthed, raised, and CARES for her. That is a drop in the bucket compared to the father who brings home the dough AND does a ton of housework too. One hour every other day, half an hour when she gets home, fifteen minutes before going out with her friends is hardly anything to have drama about. It only means she'll have less time to spend with her friends, and, oh, God forbid, two or three days out of the week she might not see her friends.

Steriotypical teenagers.

What happens if one of her friends finds themselves in the situation her mom is? Would she dump that friend too, claiming that she needs to have fun before 'living in the real world'? Honey, the second you're BORN you live in the real world. In my family, it's a point of pride to be able to help our older, not-so-able reletives to maintaine a good, nurturing way of life. And yes, they go to school and work. In a third world country (Philippines). And guess what? They go out with their friends too. They have fun. They're always smiling, and they have it a TON harder than most people here in the US.

I am just amazed at how lax so many parents are. They think they're nurturing some idiot sense of innocence and childlikeness before they hit 'the real world'? No. I have friends who think like this girl thinks, and their parents let them get away with it.

They have no idea how to use a mop, they can't cook anything other than hot pockets and GOD help them if they ever even look at laundry. Part of the later years with our parents is about learning the practical, everyday skills we need in our day-to-day lives. Even if mom is 100% fine, I'd still be astounded for her to let her practically grown daughter flounce through life unaware of the neccessity or practice of basic life skills.

She's not asking her to scrub the bathroom grout with a toothbrush, for Christ's sake! She's asking for help with such basic, frivolous chores that doing them when they need to be done should be second nature by now. These things take hardly any time and, aside from dishes, don't even need to be done every single day.

Who am I to judge? At seventeen I worked, I studied, I went out with friends and I participated in Saturday Morning House Cleaning. At nineteen I worked 12 hours a day (if you include commute) and, yes, I studied, I went out with friends and I participated in Saturday Morning House Cleaning.

There are things more important than friends. Helping your ill mother, and spending time with her is one of them. I don't care what psychobabble people toss at me. I love my mom, and god forbid if she EVER fell ill you're darn right I'll be putting off movie night to Sunday evening and limiting coffee outings to one or two hours to help her out and spend time with her.

And, guess what? I'd do the same thing for a friend who fell ill, too.

It isn't just about the parents. It's about the person their daughter is and how horribly selfish she is that she can't spare a bit of time here and there to help out with incredibly easy things. Like I said, it isn't even expected to be done every day, and they are incredibly simple chores.

I can only wonder what will happen when she gets older and she's the one who's in need. Karma happens.

Enjoy, you selfish brat.

BRAVO!!!!! I remember me and my sister standing on kitchen chairs at the sink doing dishes! And the two of us toting the laundry basket full of wet clothes out to the clothes line so grandma could hang them out. When we got tall enough, we toted, hung, and took them off the line. We mowed, vaccumed, ect. Now, my 10 year old son does dishes, vaccumes, cleans bathroom and is learning to sort the dirty clothes by color and wash them. Kids need to feel important and they love to feel needed. When they are younge they love contributing because it makes them feel important and needed. When they become adolescents they complain about it, but when they become adults they are thankful that they were made to do it. Because it taught them responsiblilty and team work and it taught them that no one gets a free ride. We have an obligation to raise our children not to be selfish and self centered. And the Bible says in Proverbs, "A child who gets his own way brings shame and heartache to his mother." That means if you spoil them they will end up breaking your heart and make you feel ashamed that they are your own flesh and blood!

Right on Brainrat!!!

Emily needs to be fired. She's a prime example of why so many today's kids are lazy, spoiled rotten brats that have no empathy for others. It will be fascinating to see the divorce rate in the near future!

Heck yeah! My mom and aunt did that for us when we were little - bothered to take the time to teach us housekeeping skills. And it's probably much easier on the adult to just go ahead and do it themselves than supervise a kid doing it and having to do it over to catch the spots the kid missed.

Good on you for teaching your kid! He'll be one of the few in the next generation who has empathy and basic life skills. I think this is another reason why we have so many young imbeciles going through life without a care about their environment, their government's politics or even young idiots commiting many of these horrible crimes - they lack empathy. They've never been taught what it's like to be part of a whole, functioning unit in the home, so how the heck can they learn to coexist in society? They can't.

It's time parents take a page out of your book, my mom's book and learn from the parents who actually have common sense. It's not even just about family and home - WE have to deal with their kids in the workplace, in government and in general society when they grow up. I, personally, dread working alongside my generation and a younger generation of dissasociated, selfish morons.

You bring up a good point, tequila! It will certainly be interesting to see the state of family and marraige in the near future. People need to quit blaming gay marriage and media hedonism on the failure of their families and STEP UP TO THE PLATE. Seriously, people are crying foul about destroying the American family - well, MANY families (not all) seem to have that down to a T all by themselves.

I never liked Emily. I was sincerely dissapointed when the 'original' Prudence left, and with her, apparently, so did common sense.

Absolutely it's easier to do it yourself, rather than taking the time, listen to the complaining, accepting the attempts which aren't up to your personal standards, and risking breaking dishes or getting your whites washed with red socks. However, I know around our house, there are several chores that almost never get done (even now that the kids have moved on), because my own mother and my m-i-l each thought it was easier to do it themselves than have us do it. Or in my case, that chore was someone else's, so they saw no reason to show me how. Now that we're adults, we know they need to be done, but are pretty inept even at our ages in how best to deal with it.

My kids chores rotated regularly. When they got older, and had a basic understanding of how each of the chores we did do regularly were done, I let them choose the ones they preferred. Even when my son was in diapers, I'd hand him a plastic grocery bag tied up with trash in it, and have him take it outside to our trash can. Sometimes it takes a little patience and creativity.

Not that any of this is relevant to the LW in question. She has stated in another post that her daughter did chores till recently.