I see plenty wrong with the stereotype. I've been on my own since 17, too. I'm 28 now. In that time I've worked at nearly every job you can imagine, with no parents to beg money from or go back home to live with. I know what grinding poverty feels like, and how it's all the worse when you actually have a full time job. Doesn't mean I wasn't financially independent. There's lots of us in the same boat.
I eventually ground out night classes while working and job-hopped my way into industrial automation and a halfway comfortable life, so I understand the appeal of passing judgement from a high and mighty place - but don't. It's a particularly pernicious intellectual weakness.
