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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Blue 
 
 
Question: 
 
How do I help my divorced daughter? 
 
Answer: 
 
Helping a single mom or a divorced daughter is unfortunately 
becoming a very common need in our society now.  
 
Personally, I believe that a single mom has the hardest job that there 
is, because not only are they the mother and the father in many cases, 
but they physically are required to do the job, financially they’re 
required to do the job, emotionally they’re required to do the job— 
and it is a really draining, in every way, job to do, if you will. 
 
We have experienced it personally, in that one of our daughters 
became a single mom, and we had to determine how much do we 
help, and how do we step in and help. We determined that this 
daughter needed a great deal of help, emotionally, financially, and 
physically. And so, we took care of our grandson, and we helped a bit 
financially, and we helped certainly emotionally—we were the shoulder 
to cry on a lot of times, and, frankly, over many years, because the 
pain of that doesn’t go away very quickly. 
 
So, I think, as a parent, you never stop being a parent. Just because 
they’re now adults—in many ways, the needs of your adult children 
are bigger than the needs of your teenage and younger children, 
because their needs are different. A divorce, for example, or the death 
of a spouse, or the loss of a job, or the change in a vocation are big 
deals—and a parent and a grandparent has the opportunity to be 
there, because they’ve been there experientially also. 
 
 
 
So, I look at the finances as being a really small part of the needs that 
a child might have as an adult. The finances are one way that you 
could help, but that’s certainly not the most significant way that you 
could help. You need to be there, and you have the privilege of being 
there.  
 
The real problem here is, “When do you stop helping and begin 
enabling?” And there’s not a right or a wrong answer on that. I know 
this, that there needs to be clear communication between the husband 
and the wife who are in this situation, and there needs to be good 
communication with the child that’s involved, also.  
 
One of the things that Judy and I experienced with our daughter was 
that she was really doing better than what she thought she was, but 
because of her loss of confidence, having gone through this divorce, 
her damage to her self worth because of having gone through this 
divorce. She wasn’t thinking that she was doing as well as what she 
really was. So, our job was to help release her, once again, to self-
sufficiency. The last thing that we wanted to do was make her 
dependent upon us. And she really was self-sufficient. That only 
occurred because we had good communication with her also. 
 
So, ultimately it comes down to a husband and wife having good 
communication, and then having good communication with the child 
that’s involved, also. 
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