A man took to Reddit to share that after almost two decades his parents not only made an appearance in his life—they want to live with him. He wrote under the username u/OutrageousIndian to the "Am I The A**Hole" forum in a post that has now been voted on over 13,000 times.
The internet supported his decision to refuse their request after he said they kicked him out at the age of 17 for not wanting to become a doctor. Alternatively, he told them he wanted to build an acting and social media career which resulted in losing contact with his parents for 17 years.
"[B]eing a doctor is the only acceptable profession in their eyes and anything aside from that is met with literal abandonment," the Redditor wrote.
He said they reconnected during the COVID pandemic and found out his parents would be moving back to Sydney, Australia where he lived.
"During the last 2 years they never asked me how my acting career / social media stuff went, and basically assumed I was just slumming in it Sydney," he wrote. "To their credit they were correct in that I didn't 'make it big' in acting [maybe the world wasn't ready for a main stream leading role Indian...], or make it at all. I did however 'make it big' as an investment banker and recently made partner at the bank I work."
In 2020, the BBC reported that data from India's National Sample Survey (NSS) showed that around 80 percent of elderly widows and widowers live with their children. The article explained that even if a son has moved out of their parent's home after marriage after a parent passes away, "sons still overwhelmingly take care of their widowed parent, even if they had been living in a nuclear household before."
The Redditor explained in a comment that multi-generational households are common and that parents typically live with their eldest child.
He gave more information about his family's background in edits to the post as well as comments to people following the post writing that he grew up in an incredibly strict household.
He said though his parents were moving back because of his mom's "$750k a year job" his parents realized they could not afford to live in the area they wanted where homes were on the market for more than $20 million, he wrote.
He met up with his parents to go house hunting and at the end of the day, after the disappointing discovery, they went back to his house before dinner.
"When we arrived at my house they thought I was renting a room and enquired how much rent was, I informed them that I wasn't renting and that this was my house," he wrote. "They lost their [s**t], accusing me of lying to them for years and only meeting up to rub their face in my 'probably illegally gained' wealth, and capped it off by informing me that they'll be living with me now instead of with my oldest brother, since they can't be seen living in a worse house then their son."
He said he "laughed" at them and reminded them that they only ever supported his two siblings.
"At that point they threatened to 'cut me out of their will,' to which I reminded them of the fact that they can't even afford to buy it my area, so their will and assets don't really matter to me," he wrote.
Commenters overwhelmingly supported the son's decision to not open his home to his parents.
"Long line of doctors but still gold digging, they didn't care about you but only what you make," one commenter wrote. "Good on you for what you did."
"NTA they didn't care about you for 17 years," another wrote. "They don't get to benefit from your success now."
Newsweek reached out to u/OutrageousIndian for comment.
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