Electrical Engineering graduate decides to pursue her PhD despite parents' demands that she get a job to pay their bills so they could retire: ‘I can’t single-handedly support the family’

Some parents expect their kids to give up their future for them; we always thought it should be the other way around.

In a perfect world, no one would make any sacrifices, and everyone would live their perfect, dream lives. In reality, sacrifices are necessary, especially for the people you love. People give up some dreams for others and adapt to constant changes all the time. It depends on the relationships, but many people ebb and flow to help others they love and care for, and they do so wholeheartedly.

The one relationship that contains the most sacrifices is that between a parent and their child. When someone chooses to become a parent, they do so knowing full well that their lives are never going to be the same and that from now on, their kids are always going to come first. They work to put food on their kids' table and be able to afford their school, clothes, and everything else their child might need. They save money to help their kid through college, and work until retirement and beyond so they can move on from the world knowing that their kids are happy and set for life. Every single decision they make only happens after they have considered how it would affect their children, and they would make any sacrifice necessary to ensure nothing bad happens to their kids.

Or, at least, that is what a decent parent would do. An indecent parent might try to flip the script and put the responsibility on their children, which sounds like the case posted by u/Routine_Pool5224 below. This 20-year-old daughter wants to pursue her PhD in electrical engineering, but her parents are protesting because they want her to get a job and help them financially. According to them, they want to retire, which means someone else has to pay the bills and support their two younger sons. Their daughter, however, doesn't think it's fair that she should give up on her dreams so early in her life just because her parents failed to plan their lives properly. They are the parents, and they should be the ones helping their kids, not the other way around.