Father Sparks Debates by Sharing He 'Made His Son Homeless'

In a father’s attempt to get his son to take responsibility for his life, he eventually kicked him out of the house, but the consequences have him worried whether he made the right decision.

On June 17, the unnamed 53-year-old father elaborated on an online post how he got to the decision to drive his son to a homeless shelter.

The son attended a local college after high school, but he dropped out after two and a half years having switched majors three times. Then the son found a job at a local deli department where he worked for two years before he got fired.

The father explained on Reddit how his ADD son sometimes got “overloaded” by his surroundings, which caused him to be slow or wrongly fill out customer orders. But he got fired from the deli three years ago and had not attempted finding another since.

Because the son spent all his time playing video games or being in front of the computer, he not only became overweight, but it became clear that his father had to explain some things to him.

“It got to a point where I had to sit him down and explain that he needs to look for a job because me and my wife are planning on downsizing to a smaller house and will be unable to support him. He never took our conversations seriously,” the father wrote.

Their son said he suffered from depression, which they had been to various psychiatrists to treat. As parents, they even offered him an extra few years to stay on at home to build up a nest egg if he got a job, but he showed no interest in anything they did or asked.

Eventually, the father felt that enough is enough and packed his 25-year-old son’s bags and dropped him off at a homeless shelter. “I told him that he needs to find a job and that me and his mom would not let him back into the house until he has one,” the father added.

But a month later they have not heard from their son, and he has no mobile phone to reach him on. A neighbor reportedly saw their son at a nearby shopping center but was nowhere to be found when his father got there. “I am now feeling extremely worried that this was not a good decision,” the father wrote at the end of his post.

While it sparked a discussion on whether other parents would do the same in this father’s situation, other platform users offered their perspective.

“By definition, you failed your son, but he failed himself too. I have a moderate case of ADD, but I've molded myself into a responsible person with a great job and a fiance despite my struggles and lack of help from my parents.ADD does not make this impossible. It's more difficult, but he made his choice,” one user replied.

But then another user posted an interesting reply to the father’s post. “So at what point in life is parents no longer responsible for their child’s actions?” the user wrote.

Although the answer boils down to the whole point of having parents, it dug deeper into the issue. Some can choose to be able to take care of themselves, while others can’t. And those parents who believe their children chose their homeless lives, have drawn a line in the sand, irrespective of how emotionally painful it was for them.

“I too have a homeless son. He is not using, but I believe not mentally stable. These are the hardest days I have ever experienced in my life. As a mother, our instinct is to provide, protect, feed, and shelter our children. This has become gut retching, heartbreaking and questioning God, ‘what have I done to deserve this,’” a mother wrote on a Nar-Anon Family Groups Forum.

What would you do?

In a similar story, a woman started a debate after she elaborated on why she refused to continue giving her sister financial support.