Should Mom or Dad Really be "Last Hope" in Middle-Age?

I read with curiosity this article on middle-aged "kids" coming home to live with mom and dad:

After being laid off from her job as an events planner at an upscale resort, Jo Ann Bauer struggled financially. She worked at several lower-paying jobs, relocated to a new city and even declared bankruptcy.

Then in December, she finally accepted her parents' invitation to move into their home — at age 52. "I'm back living in the bedroom that I grew up in," she said.

Taking shelter with parents isn't uncommon for young people in their 20s, especially when the job market is poor. But now the slumping economy and the credit crunch are forcing some children to do so later in life — even in middle age.

Financial planners report receiving many calls from parents seeking advice about taking in their grown children following divorces and layoffs.

Should older parents really be digging into their savings and retirement to help their middle-aged children? One financial planner in the article says to be careful:

"I almost have to act like a financial therapist if you will," she said. "'Here is the line I'm drawing for you. That's fine. You can do up to this point, but at this point, now you're starting to erode your own wealth.'"

What is going to happen to these parents who use their savings to help kids when they need it for their own retirement? If their kids are self-centered enough to take their parent's retirement from them, will they really help the parent later on down the road or will they be more like this woman, who wrote to the Huffington Post complaining that her mom was a pain in the ass?

If the latter, what are the chances that the middle-aged kids will go on to return the favor and support mom and dad if and when their money runs out? Probably pretty unlikely. Perhaps a better investment for parents of middle-aged kids without jobs, income etc. would be to present them with the book, Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream. A young man goes out in the world with 25 bucks to see if he can build a life:

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

The effort, he says, was inspired after reading "Nickel and Dimed," in which author Barbara Ehrenreich takes on a series of low-paying jobs. Unlike Ms. Ehrenreich, who chronicled the difficulty of advancing beyond the ranks of the working poor, Shepard found he was able to successfully climb out of his self-imposed poverty.

Perhaps there is a lesson here for older adults asking for hand-outs from mom and dad.

Update: Neo-neocon has more thoughts on baby-boomers moving home.