Forget Brother, Can You Spare a Dime？ The theme song of this recession might well be "Moth

er, Can You Write a Check？" The distressing economy has resulted in increasing numbers of parents and grandparents helping out their strapped adult children and grandkids with home down payments, credit-card bailouts(紧急财政援助), and spare cash--often at the same time as parents are trying to confront new retirement budgets.

"We are seeing a ton of this," says Ross Levin, an Edina, Minn., financial adviser. "Sometimes it's a great idea and sometimes it is not. You have to make sure you put on your own oxygen mask first."

Some 62 percent of visitors to Grandparents.com have helped their kids financially in the past year, with 70 percent of that group handing over cash to help their adult children and grandchildren with daily expenses, says the site's CEO, Jerry Shereshewsky. Another popular category is housing; in the last year many parents have coughed up down payments to help their kids get into homes while the 8,000 first-time home buyer's credit was in effect.

Then there's the debt-bailout situation. A survey recently conducted by Creditcards.com for Newsweek found that 42 percent of folks with adult children have helped them pay off car loans, credit cards, medical bills, and more.

None of this is surprising to Shereshewsky, who sees the trend as a natural result of changing families and the distribution of wealth. "This is where all the money is--and it's where the money is, despite the fact that we've had this meltdown." In general, the baby-boom generation is far wealthier than their children are, and has a lower unemployment rate than 20-somethings. He says that the vast majority of multi-generation households now involve adult children (and sometimes their children) moving in with aging parents. Baby-boom parents generally aspire to helping their kids and their grandchildren and don't want to wait until they are dead to do it.

"You should give while you're young enough to enjoy the fruits of what you're doing," says Shereshewsky, who is personally considering getting a reverse mortgage on his home when it comes time to help his 20-something kids with home purchases.

According the passage, people are regarded as "strapped" if they are ______.

A．jobless in the recession

B．in financial difficulties

C．dependent on their parents

D．troubled by credit card debt