A close friend of mine has three children: a 24-year-old, a 22-year-old who graduated last year, and one more still in school. She says she and her husband made a conscious decision to help support all three until they hit 25.

Why 25? “I feel that when you are 25, you are an adult and being financially dependent after that is just not healthy,” she says. “I think it is our role as parents to apply some pressure toward independence. The reality is, we are not going to let our kids starve. But telling them we are not going to help after 25 is turning the flames up a lot.”

In the meantime, my friend’s oldest child is getting help with her rent in New York City, her health insurance, her cellphone, Netflix, and other incidentals while she studies fine art. Her middle child has been working at a part-time job and living at home.

“We keep telling our kids that financial independence is the goal,” she says. “But we wanted to give them a safety net so they could practice it.”

Even kids with good jobs and no student loans to worry about are getting help from mom and dad. Another friend, whose 23-year-old works for a wealth management firm and earns a mid-five-figure salary, says she and her husband still pay their daughter’s car and health insurance and have kept her on the family’s cell phone plan.

“She makes a good salary, but rent and expenses are high,” the mom says, adding that her daughter’s job requires that she look professional. “She has to dress well, get her nails done, and drive a reasonably nice car.”

“I hardly know anyone who is not receiving some kind of financial support,” a 26-year-old family friend told me. “Whether it is health insurance, their cell phone bill, or even full rent being paid or tuition for graduate school, pretty much everyone I know gets help.”

This young man, who comes from a small town on the East Coast and now lives in Los Angeles, says his parents originally expected him to be able to make it completely on his own within six months after graduating from college. He did, for the most part—working three jobs as a waiter, a tutor, and at a nonprofit. His parents paid his car insurance for a year and he remained on their health insurance plan until switching to Obamacare this year. Now that he is planning to apply to medical school, they are committed to doing much more, including picking up his rent. All the while, like many kids, he's still tied to his parents with a digital umbilical cord, staying on the family cellphone plan, and Netflix account. When his car recently died, they helped him buy another one. “It just seems like a fact of life,” he says. “Entry-level jobs these days—unless they are in engineering or finance—don’t cover your basic needs.”

It’s no wonder why. The Economic Policy Institute has found that entry-level hourly wages fell on average for both female and male college graduates from 2000 to 2013—8.1 percent among women and 6.7 percent among men. And the unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds remains exceedingly high, at 11.4 percent (compared with 5.9 percent overall).