Do any of you have stories/resentment over parents not treating children equally?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I got together with a long-time friend today, and she was simmering mad the whole time.

She comes from a family of four children, the first three of which (she’s #2) were born just a year and a half to two years apart. They weren’t mistreated in any way, didn’t go hungry or anything, but it was clear money was tight. As in, the older three all got subsidized lunches at school, got much of their clothes from thrift shops, and so forth. “Vacations” consisted of occasionally tent camping for a weekebd at a small pond in the next state. The kids all had jobs from as soon as it was legal to work, had to contribute to the household expenses, and had to buy their own beater cars when the time came. (My friend and her younger brother had to pool their funds and share a car, leading to eternal arguments over who was using up too much gasoline or leaving the tank near empty.)

Anyway, all three of them went to college, with the parents stressing they had to pick an in-state public school, fight to get scholarships, work as close to full-time as possible and take out loans. IOW, absolutely zero financial help from the parents. It was tough, one struggled more than the others, but all three graduated on time. Both her brothers went on to law schools, and are doing fine. She is an actuary. (Which, btw, I have no idea what an actuary actually does, but it seems to be well-paid going by her lifestyle.)

Oh, what about the fourth child? She was a menopause surprise baby, about 17 years younger than #3, and might as well have been born dipped in 24k gold by the way her parents treated her. She had all brand new clothes, of course. She was given private dance lessons, and tutoring whenever she had a bad grade in school. The parents now had the habit of taking vacations that involved cruises and weeks long trips to Europe and such, so of course the princess went along. No jobs for her, of course, her time was taken up with the private lessons. On and on.

So she’s now reached college age, and this is what has riled up my friend. Her mother called her this morning to gush over her darling having been accepted to her chosen college. An Ivy, of course. Isn’t it wonderful!!!

So my friend asked. And no, sister didn’t win a scholarship of any type. And of course she can’t be expected to work – it might impact her grades! And no loans for her! Her oarents don’t want her to be burdened by education loans, so her parents are footing the whole bill, plus renting a condo for her to live in!

My friends said she had to cut the call short with some lie about an appointment or she would have exploded.

Her estimate is that her parents will have spent a minimum of a quarter million dollars more on raising the princess than they did on any of the others. Yeah, they probably were making more money later in life – but did they ever think of helping the older three with paying off the loans they’d take out instead of lavishing it all on princess? Of course not!

Yeah, yeah, more money doesn’t necessarily mean more love, but the huge difference on how one child was treated is just too much for her to swallow. She said the parents better pray that nothing ever goes wrong for them, that they never need to ask her or any of the older children tor financial help or help with daily life or whatever.

She says she’ll say, “Ask the princess” and hang up on them.

2

Parents should try to treat their children equally but there should be no surprise that hey have favorites.

My mom clearly disliked my sister (her daughter). It became abundantly apparent when my mom got Alzheimers and she was more blunt about how she thought of her daughter.

I felt bad for my sister but, at the same time, my mom wasn’t wrong. Still rough stuff for my sister to hear.

I was in the middle (of the favorites). My oldest brother was the clear favorite. I’m ok with that. He is a pretty great guy.

3

One of the many reasons I’m only having one kid.

In all seriousness, my mother was one big festering ball of resentment over imaginary ways her siblings got better treatment, forgetting all the support she had throughout college, imagining herself to have been more traumatized and more abused than the others. The bitterness and jealousy really consumed her, and destroyed all of her relationships with her siblings, her mother, and her father. As such I take claims of disparate treatment with a grain of salt.

The way the OP’s friend is describing things sounds pretty extreme, but I doubt it is straight forward as all that, and referring to her own sister as “the princess” is really petty and immature. Is it her sister’s fault she has these advantages? Why take it out on her?

4

I really don’t see the problem. Times are hard: all 5 of you economise.
Times are not hard: can be more generous, which appears to have happened too late for your friend, but if her parents are going on holidays do you want them not to take their minor daughter due to some nebulous sense of “fairness”? They can now afford a university that the older kids no longer need, should they say no because they couldn’t afford it 20 years ago?

5

In my family, some of us were abused less than others. That’s a favorite of sorts, right?

6

At least you didn’t have to pay for your own law school!

/s

7

@colinfred nailed it.

At 17 years later, that’s not even the same family. Kids born to poor people and kids born to sorta-rich people live differently. News at 11. Not.

The OP’s friend is welcome of course to nurture her rage into a boiling white-hot hatred of sib #4 and of parents. That won’t make her own life, or her own mind, any better. And if she wants to be crassly material, that also comes close to ensuring she’ll be carefully left a pittance when it’s time for the parents to write their wills.

For a less vindictive POV, has #2 (or #1 or #3) considered that maybe lavishing stuff on #4 is driven by the parents’ guilt at being unable to provide for #s 1-3? “We gave 100% of what we had at the time, but we just couldn’t be there enough for Abby, Betty, & Clara. But now we can be there for Denise in spades and so we will.”

8

My late father-in-law, D, was the oldest of four kids. His parents had four kids in total: D, and his brother K, and then, after a gap of about a decade, they had two more kids: a son, R, and a daughter, P. (It’s probably worth noting that D and K were born during the Great Depression; R and P were born after WWII ended.)

When D and K were kids, the family was struggling financially, and their parents couldn’t afford much; both D and K had to put themselves through college.

But, at about that point, the family’s finances got much better (the father got a much better job), and, at least in the eyes of the two older sons, they splurged a lot on the younger kids. The parents paid for college for the younger kids (R and P), and then continued to help them out, financially, when they were adults – by that time, D and K kids had successful careers, and didn’t need help.

The mom died around 1985; the dad died in 1990, just after my now-wife and I began dating. At that point, the two older kids were in their 50s, and the two younger ones were in their 40s; the daughter, P, had been living with their dad (rent-free), along with her husband and young son; the other younger child, R, was still getting financial support from his dad.

There were a lot of very heated arguments between the four kids in the weeks after dad died, about how things were being divided up. D and K felt that it was unfair that they were getting the same shares of the inheritence as their younger siblings, on whom their parents had clearly spent far more of their fortune over the past decades; R and P were distressed that they weren’t getting more, because it was clear (to them) that they “needed it more” than their wealthier older brothers.

That resentment never really went away, and the two pairs of kids drifted apart from each other over it.

9

Having grown up in a different time, the expectation was that my brother would go to college because he’d need a good job to support a family. And he also would need to go to the private high school to prepare him for said college. Meanwhile, my sister and I, both older than our bro, would have to go to the public high school. I was about 12 when I was told all this and I just accepted it.

When I was accepted into my first choice college, my folks did let me live at home without paying board because almost all of my earnings from my high school years went into savings for college. I rode my old 3-speed bike to the campus. But I still had to take out a small loan. All this happened in late 60s/early 70s.

As it happened, my brother ended up with a great career path, divorced, no kids. I dropped out of college after 2 semesters, joined the Navy, and finished college using my GI Bill. Oh, and my 2 youngest sisters went to a private high school.

I don’t know if it’s really resentment as much as the realization that my mother felt (still feels) like boys are the most important offspring. I don’t hold it against my brother, but then I don’t like feeling as if I’m second choice/second best.

But my grandkids love me!

10

Ditto.

11

My late aunt was the hapless Mom in a scenario akin to that.

Working class Mom marries working class Dad and soon they have two daughters born into uneducated working class circumstances. Then working-class hubby disappeared when they were preschoolers and times got real, real hard. Fast forward a few years and Mom marries a small businessman destined for considerable success. By now the first two are tweens. A couple years later first one, then a second daughter (so kids 3 & 4) are born while the original two are by then ~14 & 16. By now Dad is decently rich. And he much prefers his shiny new bio-kids to the others; there’s just little cultural connection between an urbane European with a PhD and two white but otherwise ghetto teenagers. Meanwhile, the older daughters, having been raised in utterly working class situations, have no use of college even if offered. Which it was pointedly not. Assuming they could even get into one. Which given the shitty education they got in shitty public schools in shitty zipcodes was far from assured.

Mom’s dead as of a few months ago, Dad’s Alzheimering out now and although the four kids can be civil when necessary, they are two pairs of utterly different people who are close to their littermate and detached from the other two. I predict some fireworks when Dad finally kicks it. Tellingly, although all 4 kids live within maybe 20 miles of the parents and each other in the same giant metroblob, Daughter #3 (AKA eldest of the second litter) was in charge of Mom’s decline and is now in charge of Dad’s.

The two pairs have had utterly different trajectories from birth despite sharing a house and parents for about 10 years. Now the old pair is in their mid 60s and the young pair is in their low 50s. Assortative mating being what it is, the old pair are still living hand to mouth working class with no steady man in their life ever while the young pair, although never pursuing high paying work for pay’s sake, have married well educated successful professional men, stayed married, and have raised families of little happy capitalists. Ranging now from about age 15 to 25.

I have good relationships with them all, but I definitely code switch depending on which crew I’m visiting.

I find it hard to find a villain in this; Dad #2 did not cover himself in glory, but neither was he evil. He loved his step-kids and took care of them as they wished to be taken care of when in a phase of their life where forcing stuff down their throat would have been an even worse decision.


Families can be complicated if there’s a split in time, in finances, in class, in education, in region, etc. Personnel turnover midway through really doesn’t help either.

12

I have no more reason to doubt the story than I have to believe it: it all sounds so predictably true.

But I wanted to add that “spoiling a child” is not what spoils a child. It’s that often what you are seeing is a child being paid off to by uninterested parents. It’s the lack of interest that spoils the child, not the “stuff” they are getting instead.

I offer as a fictional example Dill, from TKAMB,

Dill’s voice went on steadily in the darkness: “The thing is, what I’m tryin’ to say is-they do get on a lot better without me, I can’t help them any. They ain’t mean. They buy me everything I want, but it’s now- you’ve-got-it-go-play-with-it. You’ve got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it.” Dill tried to deepen his voice. “You’re not a boy. Boys get out and play baseball with other boys, they don’t hang around the house worryin’ their folks.”

And as another example, my own younger sister: 5 years younger than the next, parents just decided to have a last child, treated far more leniently and tolerantly than us, given far more stuff and far more freedom and granted far more responsibility, while we’d already left home and our parents were out doing their own thing – they were kinda over the whole "parent’ thing by that stage and willing to let her do whatever she wanted and get whatever she wanted.

And yes, it made us a bit jealous, but it also made her a bit needy and demanding.

13

I have a brother. He’s probably somewhere on the autism/Asperger’s spectrum; has never held any job more notable than a paper route. He lived with our mom until she died. She went to her grave, and beyond, swearing she didn’t play favorites.

When her dad, my grandfather, died, he left me something in his will. High five-figures. My mom told me that he hadn’t left my brother anything, and she explained the reason. When he was in failing health, they had both visited him. Grandpa was apparently rather critical of my brother not working. Bro, wanting to leave, made up a story about needing to go home for a job interview. Gandpa found out, and I guess he wasn’t happy about being lied to. I gather my brother was bitter about being left out.

Fast forward ten years. When mom passed away, I was executor of her estate. Everything was divided in half, except the house, which went to my brother. He certainly needed it more than I did. The thing was, the will explicitly said it was to make up for my brother being excluded from her dad’s will, and that she wasn’t playing favorites. I’m sure the house was more than twice what I’d inherited from him. Mom had life insurance through her work, too. My brother was the primary beneficiary, so he got it all, and I was secondary. Whether that’s what mom intended, I’ll never know.

But you know what? Fuck the money. Lots of people lose a parent and all they’re left with is the bill for the funeral. My half of mom’s estate hasn’t led to a life of luxury, but has removed a lot of financial stress from my life. My brother certainly needed the house and money more than I did.

What I do reflect on is this. When my brother was mad at being left out of Grandpa’s will, my mom took that seriously, asked me not to mention it around him, and took steps to compensate him. When she did the same thing to me in her own will, she said that if I was mad then my feelings were wrong. Looking back, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. It never mattered how much my brother, or anyone else, bullied me. “Oh, you’re old enough to settle these things yourself.” “Oh, what do you want me to do about it?” “Oh, he’s just doing that becuase he knows it bothers you.” I can’t remember her ever taking my side, or acknowledging that I had feelings and could be hurt.

I was adult enough to be her health care proxy when she was sick. I was adult enough to be the executor of her estate. I wish she’d thought I was adult enough to talk about these things, and really listen to me and take me seriously, when she was alive.

14

I’m older than my sister by about three years. Generally, we were treated equally.

Except when it came to the use of our family car, when we both had licenses. She got to use it whenever she wanted. She was, after all, one of the Popular People™ at high school, and needed the use of our car to keep up with her Popular People™ friends.

I got to use our car rarely, mainly because my parents assumed that I’d fill it up with my drunken, drugged-out friends, and we’d be using it to go to a beer blast or a drug party. Unlike Sis, I ran with the kinds of people your mother warned you about. Except my friends were neither drunken nor drugged-out, despite their looks, their language, and such. Never mind, enough of them had cars that they could pick me up, or I could take transit. I knew the transit system well enough. Better than Sis, for sure.

But that was about it for inequality.

15

Aaargggh! That’s a tough one.

You bro certainly had / has a life made difficult by his handicap. As such his needs (not wants) were quite different from your own. That makes any sort of equity very hard to define, much less deliver.

Any sibling of a high-needs child suffers a bunch from the parents juggling the very different, and yes unequal, demands of the normy(ies) and the needy, regardless of the specific disease or condition. Some parents try hard to do right. Some don’t bother. But nearly everyone falls well short of squaring that nigh-impossible circle.

I’m sorry you had to deal with all that shite.

16

Then maybe they could try to compensate for that by trying to help them out now, as previously mentioned? Because they are choosing to setup the youngest to have far more advantages than the oldest - even later in life when they had the opportunity to spread at least some of those advantages (particularly money, since education is over and done for the oldest) more evenly, they chose to direct it all to one child.

They certainly didn’t need to take the grown kids on all the vacations (though inviting them once would be nice), but helping them pay off their loans, so they don’t have the big debt advantage or helping them on the house downpayment or retirement account because they were already settled with (and paid off) the expenses they had to pay that the youngest didn’t would, to me, be far more appropriate a way to assuage their supposed guilt and would certainly be far, far, fairer. Wouldn’t be surprised if they decide to help the youngest on her downpayment (all the older ones have houses by now, after all). If they don’t run out of money, then they might leave a larger share to the youngest (she’s earlier in her careers and earning less) and if they do run out, they may expect all children to contribute equally to them, even though they didn’t do the same to the children, or even if they didn’t do the same to the children even in their adult years.

17

Yeah. The whole, “rising sea raises all boats” thing. No reason to give youngest kid a gold-plated existence while older kids are laboring under college loans.

OTOH, we decided early on that treating our 3 kids “fairly” did not mean “identically.” When I was a kid, our parents made a big effort to make things equal down to the penny, dividing al treats equally, etc. We didn’t want to go thru that effort and, besides, our 3 kids had very different needs/wants. So what if Susie’s dance class cost $100, and we only spent $50 on D&D books for Tommy. In fact, NOT trying to be identical made comparisons by the kids more difficult.

There was still the odd instance of the oldest kid thinking the youngest got her first phone at a younger age. Too bad.

18

Oh yeah - to the OP. My FIL disinherited my wife and one of her sisters in his will. Of course, when he died, his 2d wife screwed over the 3d sister as well.

Sucks that my wife spent the last 30+ years of that asshole’s life trying to figure out SOME father/daughter relationship, when all the time, she didn’t know he had disinherited her.

19

I’m on team, “they have more money now”.

Also, Ivy League schools have money for need-based financial aid. It’s a shame the older kids weren’t encouraged to try for that, as it’s often cheaper than in-state State college tuition for poor kids. My husband went to Harvard for minimal cost, and they are more generous now than they were then.

20

The timing is a little unclear, but it sounds like the older three are doing well and no longer in need of financial support:

I just retired from working as an actuary. Yeah, it’s a reasonably well-paid gig, and you don’t need to pay for graduate school to get into it.