It's one thing to not be able to pay for college if you have 12 kids you're trying to feed.  Quite another if you insist your child goes, but then you strap them with just enough debt and attach a few strings, so you have bargaining power in their lives.
 
My Dad said he would pay down my loan if I enroll in a graduate program.  

Telesphorus said:

Consider a father who sends his (brilliant and attractive but highly sensitive and socially maladroit) daughter overseas at age 17. When she is 18 and 19 he refuses to send more than a pittance, so that she is thrown on her own resources, and sometimes doesn't eat enough. He tells her "when I was young I had to make way in similar circuмstances." So even though this causes a great deal of psychological and physical distress to his daughter, he justifies his stingy self-righteousness based on the less than optimal circuмstances of his youth. (his mother being abandoned by a very rich man)

Or he says "I worked my way to the top, me me me, why should I give YOU money on a silver platter." Overlooking the totally different circuмstances.

Tele is talking about the Protestant work ethic, which infects many, many Catholics in this country. This is the attitude of a hypocritical, Pharisee, Mammon-driven society, that claims to be family-oriented. But in reality, the dads are jealous of their sons and are simply trying to ruin them -- because they don't want the sons to be as successful as they are and are in competition. They will even be in competition with the sons for women! Perhaps marrying a beautiful young girl to show they still have it. Meanwhile, the sons loathe their fathers, who have driven them into the ground, who arrange things for them that ensures they will be losers, precisely because they can't stand getting old and they get their revenge by destroying their sons, by destroying youth. They are vampires. To ensure their own dominance, they think they have to cut others down around them, to destroy competition, and that includes their own children.

This is the archetype of the Protestant, American father. Have you heard certain kids complain about how they can never please their father? No matter what they do, it's wrong? This is because selfish fathers -- and the male ego is such that it seeks dominance, UNLESS kept in check by God -- cannot stand to see others younger and prettier than they are, they also can't stand to see others more successful than they are. This is the complete opposite of Catholic parents who want their children to have better lives than they did.

So they ruin their own sons out of jealousy, by knocking them down while pretending they want to help them. One of the ways this is done is by the means Tele describes. They say "I didn't have anyone to help me, I will throw you out of the nest and that will make you stronger." It's absolutely heinous. Either the child treated this way collapses and burns out, or he corrupts himself to get ahead -- which perhaps the father did himself.

Parents even do this with GIRLS now, as Tele points out. Making them work in places where they will be in  danger of sin, and will undoubtedly fall. Or cutting them off and making them turn to prostitution, which in the last couple decades has become endemic among college girls. They sell themselves to get through college; or they strip; or have sex with their teachers for grades, or sleep with a potential employer. Do you think if you meet one of these girls once she has become a lawyer, she will tell you how she really got there? No, she will say how hard she worked and that others are lazy... That is the American way. Sin, corrupt yourself, then justify yourself, put up a good front. Make others jealous. Show them how large you're living. But underneath the rot has set in; then come the antidepressants, the ѕυιcιdєs, the self-loathing, the hatred of others that comes from hatred of self. Hypocrites, frauds, abound in today's world.

Americans cannot stand to look at reality and look at themselves; to try to understand why their world is collapsing, and they can't pay the mortgage. All they are afraid of is looking like losers; like Romney's 47%. So they will encourage their own children to turn to prostitution to keep their lifestyles going, all very hush-hush. I am certain this is already happening, because it is happening in Russia and is the logical conclusion of an evil society. These parents passive-aggressively destroy the children psychologically, creating a generation of burn-outs. This happens on a micro scale, within families, and on a macro scale, in terms of one generation selling out the next, by living for themselves and having no care for the future. That is also what happened in recent decades. The "me" generation took everything down, because it was all about -- guess who?

What makes it more appalling is that these same selfish, destructive people then lambast the younger ones for being slackers, for rejecting the inhuman and monstrous society they have left behind them. When you really see it, it is absolutely incredible. It is as if a sadist chops off someone's limbs, then sits and laughs while they struggle to get up the stairs. It is truly adding insult to injury.

You know the worst thing about the Protestant work ethic is that it promotes the "work hard, play harder" mentality.  Far too many modern country songs I can think of refer to this.  You work hard M-F, drink and party on Saturday (you earned it) and show up in the pew on Sunday.  You're liscened to sin as long as you sandwich it between laboring and worship.