Photo by David Fitzpatrick.

As the departure of the Hippie Child from the family home looms (OK it’s two years away and we still have to get through the HSC first, and then get accepted into a university, but you know me ponder philosophically, worry neurotically and imagine vividly – so ALREADY I’m thinking about what life is going to look like once she’s gone). One of the downsides/upsides of moving to regional area is that it’s quite difficult for your children to stick around if they want to go to uni.  A new university is being built down the road from our house but it’s unlikely to be operational or offering courses she is interested in by the time she leaves school.

I think I’m secretly planning they will both head out into the wide world do their study, travels, career type stuff and eventually head on back here to raise my grandchildren within a five-minute car ride from my house. Yeah I know you will remind me of this fantasy in ten years time when I am blogging about catching a plane overseas to visit my little grand darlings because their mummies went travelling, fell in love with some exotic foreigner and now live on the other side of the world.

Both the girls have expressed an interest in more “creative” work – art/music/photography and it gets me thinking about how you afford to be any type of artist in this world where owning a house seems to set you back half a million dollars and the bills are getting larger by the second. Working in an industry that has traditionally been undervalued and under appreciated with pay packets to match makes any of the other life aspirations difficult to obtain.

I’ve written before about going for your dreams at a young age and not having a Plan B to fall back on. I was reminded of this last night when Jennifer Byrne interviewed author Tim Winton she asked if he had ever had a plan b “never” he replied. He was amazed at his own confidence and failure to listen to “conventional wisdom” but argued “conventional wisdom can be crippling”. Winton hit the jackpot with his novel Cloudstreet , it’s success gave him the financial means to continue a long  career as one of Australia’s top writers.

Similarly Elizabeth Gilbert speaks of the freedom only money can buy in an interview on The Hoopla today speaking about Eat, Pray, Love.

“But in the long run what it’s given me is something that very few women have had, and very few women writers have had throughout history, which is autonomy. The financial success of it, if I could be so bold to speak of it and I know it’s not considered polite to mention these things, but it matters in a creative life.”

It enabled her the time to craft her new book The Signature of All Things.

“That’s the gift and that’s the gift that keeps on giving. There could be no The Signature of All Things without Eat, Pray Love. Part of the reason The Signature of All Things is exactly the book that it is, is because of my desire to honour that incredibly rare privilege—not just in my own name—but in the name of so many women who were given that freedom. I just thought, ‘don’t go small—write the book deserving of the time and the privilege and the luxury that you have to do something like spend three years doing nothing but studying nineteenth century botanical history and funding that study completely yourself.”

So here’s hoping the kids have some talent and can manage to crack the big time with at least one financially successful project. If not we could all be living in the half-finished wannabe McMansion enjoying what Bernard Salt calls the KIPPERS (Kids in Parent’s Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings) phenomenon. In an article yesterday Salt argued that eventually the KIPPERS have to be set free to sink or swim on their own merits.

Salt makes an interesting point about the different skills sets between those who look after themselves early compared to those nurtured into their twenties.

“Perhaps at some stage in the 2020s when today’s 20-somethings are vying for middle management positions within the Australian economy there will be a distinction between those who were nurtured into their late 20s and those who made their own way from an early age. The former group may be more naturally predisposed to risk-taking entrepreneurialism; the latter to operational and management responsibilities. There are more operational jobs than entrepreneurial jobs in the Australian economy. Perhaps in a decade’s time we will be talking about the curse of the KIPPERS: the concept of extended nurturing is all well and good at the time, but in the long run it may not prepare 20-somethings for the vicissitudes of life after 40.”

I wonder if the world of the 2020s may not need more risk-taking entrepreneurs, given the massive changes we have seen over the last 20 years, perhaps we will need more people able to think-outside-the-square?

But what if the kids didn’t need to be kicked out into the big bad world? Could generations successfully cohabit to enable the pursuit of passionate careers as opposed to the work-for-the-mortgage treadmill? Perhaps it’s not so much a self-indulgent trend by spoiled children and overprotective parents but a return to earlier times when financial circumstances saw families living together longer. Giving benefits such as the “village” of extended care-givers to raise children and the economies-of-scale of pooling resources?

What do you reckon – better to let  ’em fly free early or would you like to have the kids hang around longer? It seems a shame to see them go just when they are starting to get interesting. And while we are at it, am I right to encourage a career in the arts instead of something more conventional?