All I keep reading here is parents do it to teach their kids how to budget properly. People must have really low opinions on their kids intelligence if they feel they all need to be taught to budget properly. Me and my brother were never taught how to budget by our parents, we just worked it out for ourselves using our brains.
I think you are taking it too literally, the mechanism most apply is to gently help wean their kids from being passive no income no responsibility children to adults with responsibilities. Note that many who do this, in hindsight appreciated their parents when they did this to them and saw the positive of it (for them).
Some do it purely on responsibility, i.e. they want to ensure their kids don't just slack around at home and not do anything, i.e. to pay rent you must obviously get a job, getting a job is a step to responsibility..
Some do it for financial responsibility reasons i.e. as a gentle way of instilling just one thing, you have to pay bills first, then the rest is spending money..
Some do it for a bit of both..
The thing is, it's relatively a crapshoot how your kids will react when going from being a 'child' in school with no income and not being allowed to drink (by law
) to suddenly having loads of disposable income and throw out in a world with a lot of potential responsibilities thrown at them, access to drink and being in a cohort that are all finding out together (AKA down the pub!)
For those that do it, charging rent is just a gentle nudge.. its hedging your bets as a parent, there are very very few downsides to charging rent that don't require being equally or more condescending to your children.
You could just do nothing of course, pay for everything and just roll the dice, that's valid, you say it worked for you and you got on in life successfully without any prompting, so good on you..
I think on both sides, anyone lecturing the other to say their parenting approach is 'wrong' is deluded.. you quickly learn that no matter what you do, however well meaning it may not turn out as you expect.. parenting is tough at times!
If I look around in work, we have all well meaning parents, with a variety of styles and crucially a wide range of outcomes.. but nothing correlates..
