Why is it important for them to be suppported financially by their children?

[mary_poppins]

I never understood why has my PD M always depended on my father, me and my brothers financially. When I was working abroad and made a lot of money, she'd guilt me into giving her money. If I didn't give her any, she'd make sure I felt as the worst daughter (and person) in the world.
These days she is asking money from me even though I don't work yet and makes me responsible for her own debts and bills. She keeps telling me how sick my father is (he is but that's because he treated himself like shit and refused to get help earlier) and that he needs money for medication. She also complains about her bills and that she doesn't have enough to pay them.

Truth is she has enough and it's true my father now needs more medication than previously but why do I have to be responsible for all this shit? She acts as if it is MY responsibility to foot the bill for my dad's doctor's visits and operations.

BTW, and whenever I refuse to give her money (I stopped giving her money in 2014/2015), she goes to my brothers with the pity party. Of course, my brothers comply because they're in the FOG and cannot say 'no' to her. They have no boundaries. I feel so sad to see that they are almost supporting her financially, how is this possible?

My PD M has a big pension and has my father's pension as well. She has 2 full-time salaries to spend on whatever she wants and that's still not enough for her. She needs my money, too. Also, my PD M is very healthy, in good physical condition and refuses to work to pay for her husband's meds or whatever dr's appointments he has. She thinks it is other people's reponsibility to work hard and make money. She doesn't have to do that. She can just stay at home, watch TV and cook. What a great life she has, right?

So why does she need me and my brothers' money and does she get so dramatic about it? As if giving her money or supporting her is law in her book and not doing that feels like breaking the 'law'.

Is anybody here in the same situation?

[foggyme]

I am not  in the same situation but I have heard this is a common occurrence in asian cultures. I think it has a lot to do with archaic cultures where children are supposed to obey parents, and if I remember correctly from a post you made a while ago which touched on the topic of the war in Ukraine, you are from one (so am I, just not living there anymore). At the same time, I know a lot of people in my home country whose parents think the cashflow should only be from parents to children, even when those children are adults. So can't blame it only on culture. We are a mixed bag when it comes to money and families. It might have to do just with the entitlement your mother feels.

[Boat Babe]

Laziness but mostly entitlement. Sending hugs Mary Poppins.

[donutmoonpanda]

I have experience with this. En-mom is always asking me for money. Money is all she ever talks about actually.

And, no, she doesn't NEED my money. She has plenty of money. She just wants MORE money.

When she was married to my NPD dad 20 years ago she was living the high life. He left her. She got an enviable divorce settlement, but she stopped working after the divorce too. She hasn't worked in 20 years. She's just been burning through the settlement, buying things she doesn't need, things that have no value, like costume jewelry and shoes. Years ago she had a spare room just filled with scarves because she liked scarves that year. How much did she spend on thousands of scarves? Whatever happened to those scarves? I have no clue. It's just a drop in the bucket of her wasteful spending.

She also likes to buy gifts for people to show off as if she has lots of money. I think that's why she stopped working. She didn't want people to think she *had to work*. Meanwhile, whenever someone selling the latest MLM has a party, she goes and buys their most expensive item to show off to her friends. She's one of those people who think it's important to show people you have money, rather than having or saving money. So she takes a lump sum and buys something fancy to show off, rather than saving the money to live comfortably. So as soon as money comes in, it gets spent.

She acts as if perfectly normal expenses are spitefully unfair to her. Like having to pay property taxes. They come at the same time every year, and yet she acts as if she's being robbed. If an unplanned expense pops up at her home, like the water heater goes out, she acts like it's a burden nobody else has ever experienced before. She's been thinking about getting an apartment, even though she owns her home outright (no mortgage) because she doesn't like the expense of having to FIX things that break. How can she pay rent if she can't even buy a new hot water heater? If you can't afford a new hot water heater in the absence of a mortgage payment, how are you going to afford rent?

My mom is narcissistic but her main method of manipulation is acting helpless. Like she can turn up the helpless act whenever she wants someone to take over and do something for her. All she wants is to be taken care of like a little kid. She wants someone to foot the bill on her life. She wants a free pass. That's pretty much what she had with dad, and now that he's gone she's trying to get it from me. She doesn't take responsibility for anything that she does, and that includes all her finances. She'll outsource anything she can.

I think it also plays into her delusion that she's a good mother. She thinks people will see me looking after her financially and think "Oh she must be such a devoted mother, her kids are *paying her back*" sort of thing.

The money thing is largely responsible for me going NC.

[mary_poppins]

Thanks, everyone.

Donutmoonpanda-your answer got stuck in my head. I think this reason is good enough to go NC. It is good enough for me, too. I think both our mothers see us as banks or ATMs to extract money from and that's it. It is incredibly abusive. I think I downplayed how traumatising it is to be used and abused financially by your own mother. As a child, my mother would take my school allowance and used it for herself. I always found it weird that I never got any money from that allowance.

Then, she'd just hand me a small amount-small enough so I can buy a sandwich at school but not afford anything else like going out with friends or stuff like that.

Before I left to work and study abroad, surprise, surprise: my NM decided to retire from her well-paying, stable job that she worked for 20+ years. I know that it was because I left and said I'd work a job to send her money and pay her debts. I did send her money from abroad and I even went as far as to try and get a massive loan to pay her mountain of a debt she had.

Thankfully, the bank turned me down so I resigned myself to only send her x amount of money per month. I did borrow money from her before I left the country. However, she used this opportunity to abuse me more.

After 2 years when I made some calculations and realized that I actually paid off her loan in full, I told her that and she went into a full narcissistic rage. She accused me of treating her poorly because I said I paid all her debt when she didn't think so. I asked her then to show me her calculations so I can see how much I was left to pay and how she calculated everything. She raged at me saying I had the nerve to doubt her, to doubt my own mother. How could I be so cruel to assume she'd make me pay more than I had to??

Truth is I did pay almost double than what I owed her. 
I still have a hard time swallowing this truth because I can't believe a mother can cheat her own daughter financially and think it is OK.
So I do understand you, donutmoonpanda. Financial abuse is on the top of my mother's worst abuses. It really screws with your mind and makes you sabotage your financial health in the future.

[donutmoonpanda]

Financial abuse from one's parents isn't something that gets talked about often enough. I'm reading a memoir though by Axton Betz-Hamilton: The Less People Know About Us: A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity... Her mother 

[Liketheducks]

My mother AND father had an enormous sense of entitlement around this.   We do ok.   We've worked really hard and are about to put a kid through college and eventually retire.    My parents are both poor.   They married as teens.   Neither of them had higher education.   My dad was a military veteran.   Mom was a skilled artist.    Art didn't pay the bills.   Dad had a hard time working under anyone with authority.   He eventually went on disability.   He never held a job for longer than one year.
I was shocked when I saw my family's tax returns the year I moved out and started working my way through college with a part-time job.   I made more income part-time than the two adult parents raising two more children.   
When they separated, my mom became a workaholic.   What she did make, she gave to my then teen siblings.   She was never home.      When she eventually lost that job, it was expected that she would move in.   And, being in the FOG at the time, I embraced the idea.     It was a horrible mistake.   
Mom received benefits, but continued giving them all to my siblings.   They all struggled.   At one point, my mom told me that I was obligated to help because I could and was capable.   Funded mortgage and rent payments, etc.   until it was just too much.   It is another reason why I went from GC to SG overnight.   Sometimes, the best thing you can do for someone who feels entitled to the fruits of your hard work, is give them the reason to work hard themselves.    My siblings are thriving.   They've figured it out and are proud and more importantly financially autonomous.  (And getting there emotionally)    My parents still fault me for not helping.   That being said, it is ok not to fulfill everyone's expectations of you.

[Andeza]

Financial abuse is a big, ugly skeleton in the closet that doesn't get talked about a lot. We grow up in these abusive households that are dysfunctional in some or all aspects, and then when some parents push the financial abuse angle, the kids don't see it. At least, not at first, because that's all they've ever known is the dysfunction. The truth is, their debts are their debts. Their bills are their bills. It's one thing if somebody suddenly loses their job and they ask for help for a month just until they can fill out a couple hundred applications and get something, anything, to make ends meet. But people that repeatedly ask for "help" are just foisting the consequences of their bad decisions off on others. At a point it's not "helping" anymore and sadly just becomes enabling. So long as the "help" money keeps coming in from somewhere, they don't have any motivation to change and improve.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Absolutely. It's emotional immaturity. How childish to expect someone else to take care of you... parentification, and all sorts of other toxic traits wound up in this package. I came through it too. My dad would deliberately spend down their money so they had no savings and my mother felt trapped in multiple crappy jobs while he went and treated himself regularly while she was at work because he felt so lonely with her out of the house. Making her shift entirely not worth it. But she needed more money so she would work more... For me, I had chronic health problems as a teen. (Caused by my abusive environment!) And I was Munchausened and dragged to specialist after specialist and it was all massive supply. But my medical bills were cited as the reason for their poverty so I owed it to them to help them out. Once I married I got lucky that they felt ashamed to have my husband see them as "less than" (in their mind) so they moved on to be vultures on my siblings. It was always my poor mother who worked so hard and had nothing to show for it. She did the dirty work. But it was both of them who felt entitled.

[Sneezy]

How childish to expect someone else to take care of you... parentification, and all sorts of other toxic traits wound up in this package.

I just got off the phone with my mom and thought of this post.  So glad I came out here and read all the responses.  It is parentification - on steroids.  My mom has enough money.  She is not rich, but at the moment she takes in more (from social security and her pension) than she spends (in rent and other monthly bills).  Now at some point, she is probably going to need in-home help or she will have to move from independent to assisted living.  That will change things.  But I've run the numbers and she will still be fine, unless she lives to be well over 100.  And mom hates it when I tell her she will be fine.  She drones on about how she doesn't want to "be dependent on you kids." Which is EXACTLY what she does want.  She wants to cry and moan and have her children support her - financially and emotionally and in every other way.  She can't stand the thought that she is actually doing ok.  She wants misery and pity and someone (usually me, the dutiful child) to step in and take care of her. 

It's similar to her other favorite complaint.  She complains that she wants to stay "independent" which is why I should take her shopping.  When I explain that true independence would be ordering her own groceries or taking the city accessible van to the mall, she gets angry.  Because the last thing she truly wants is independence.  She wants to be the child and turn me into the parent.

[moglow]

I think this goes all the way back to being completely unable to accept responsibility for themselves or consequences for their poor choices. Somebody [ANYbody!] else must do that!

Mine often complained about the fixed income issues - all while she worked, received social security AND Dad's retirement. I doubt seriously she was living high on the hog but based the figures I was told by a cousin, md ended up with considerably more income each month than I did. I managed and at times barely got by, and my house was/is by no means paid for - hers is. Now she's unable to work but her expenses didn't change and no apparent attempt to think it all the way through to reality. THIS is what she wants and THIS is how she must have it, so "somebody" needs to step up and provide without question or discussion? Nope.

[Sneezy]

I think this goes all the way back to being completely unable to accept responsibility for themselves or consequences for their poor choices. Somebody [ANYbody!] else must do that!

This is true in my mom's case, up to a point.  She has made some terrible choices in her life, especially with regard to men and to her health.  But when it comes to money, she made mostly good choices (although some of it was just luck).  She and her husband bought a modest house in a modest neighborhood that appreciated nicely over the 30 years they owned it.  She put a small amount into a retirement account each month and trusted someone from her church to manage it for her and he turned out to be a good guy who knew what he was doing.  Her husband was a gambler, but mom managed to rein him in and keep him on an allowance so he didn't spend all their money.

My mom made good financial decisions and she was lucky and she can now afford to live just fine during retirement.  And so I do not understand the moaning about money and how she is going to end up dependent on her children.  She can't stand to be content.  She must cry and carry on and act like everything is awful, even when it isn't.