I used to tell parents in my workshops their job as a parent is to become unemployed.

Wow - did I ever lie.

Parenting is not a job you ever leave.

You can’t get fired; you can’t quit. And you certainly never get furloughed.

No matter how hard you try, once you bring a child into the world, your world is never quite the same.

So now I tell people that as a parent, over time your job description changes.

As a matter of fact, depending on the ages of your children, you might be fulfilling two or more job descriptions at the same time.

Consider your child as an infant.

The parent’s job is complete management of that child - physically, emotionally, cognitively - you are the child’s life.

You set the routine.

Then, as the child grows, the parent starts to sit back a tiny bit, allowing the child space to roam and explore.

The parents’ job is to make the environment safe for exploration and discovery.

A parent moves from being the child’s world to being the facilitator of learning.

Then comes pre-school, where a parent separates even more and allows others to get in on the child’s world and provide opportunities for growth and learning.

Parents often act as advocates, helping children develop skills needed to get their needs met.

Parents are still the main influence, setting morals and teaching values, determining boundaries, making the rules.

This continues through much of elementary school with parents allowing their children more input and appropriate choices.

By adolescence, parents find themselves as great negotiators, finding the happy place between their child’s desires and their own expectations.

Parents add to their duties the role of “nurturer of dreams and aspirations.”

No longer do you stick safety plugs in the electric outlets but you work to guard your child’s safety by making rules about things such as operating a car, making a curfew and avoiding drugs and alcohol.

The job does not get easier and perhaps even a little harder.

I truly thought, though, that after the teen years, after high school graduation, the job of parenting came to an end.

Like something magical happened at 18 to every human being that made him or her perfectly self-sufficient to go out and make it on their own.

When my oldest child turned 18, I realized I was not getting a pink slip from the parenthood CEO, but rather another job description.

This one described the role of the parent of a post-adolescent as one of advisor/consultant.

It even said something about bearer of experience and wisdom. And this job has no retirement age.

By the time this column goes to press, my youngest child will have celebrated his 21st birthday.

This summer, most of his friends will also cross the threshold into the legal age for many things including the consumption of alcohol.

As much as I would love to revert to the role of parent of a toddler and crawl on my hands and knees to pick out all the dangerous things that could harm my child, the job description for a parent of a young adult says otherwise.

Over the past few weeks we have had many conversations about safe socializing when booze is involved.

We talked about things such as driving, having a designated driver and how much is too much (I shared charts that show this).

I talked with the group of young men I fondly call “The Boys of Summer” about looking out for each other and never leaving one of their pack behind.

And I told them if worse came to worse, Uber-Mom is only a phone call away.

And by the way, this falls under “Other duties as assigned.”

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Editor’s note: Denise Continenza is the family and consumer sciences educator with Penn State Extension, Lehigh and Northampton counties.