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

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

There are some problems with the story, unless it actually happened months ago, and even then, it’s weird.

First, the Ivy Leagues released their decisions April 1st. So it’s been a while. They do take kids off the waitlist, but I think those are all over by now. More importantly, even if they weren’t, every kid on the waitlist was almost certainly already admitted to some other school almost as prestigious, and therefore expensive. Even at full pay, Ivy League schools are not more than the 50 or more private schools that are slightly less competitive.

Finally, Ivy League schools have ridiculously good financial aid. At Harvard, If the household income is under $85k, you don’t pay a penny for tuition, room, board, or books and you get a substantial check each semester to cover transportation and personal expenses. And a bonus check of $2000 first semester to buy a coat and a laptop. Even at a household income of $140k a year, full tuition is waived at the Ivys.

So the only way this makes sense is if the family income greatly increased, like a parent got some sort of miracle promotion or a small business suddenly took off. If the family income abruptly tripled after the other kids graduated from college, that’s a pretty big detail to leave out.

In my family, there’s a lot more resentment about time and attention than money. My parents (especially my mom) have been a lot more involved with me and my sister (and our kids) than they were with my older brothers’ kids, and one, at least, resents it. Part of this really is just logistics: when my brothers were having kids, my parents were still working and saving feverishly for retirement. They also live in cities my parents never lived in (my parents did move a lot, so it’s a little confusing). Me and my sister had kids right as they retired, so they had more time.

However, it’s also true that me and my sister have gone to greater lengths to develop those relationships. When my son was a baby, I called mom all the time for advice, stories, etc. I don’t think my brothers were as involved with their kids when they were babies, and they certainly weren’t looping my mom in on the process. And part of it was just biology: my mom was a person I could talk to about all the stuff going on with my body through pregnancy and nursing. I turned to my mom for advice in a way they just didn’t. I also deliberately moved to the city they lived in when I graduated college: they actually moved away shortly after, but they came back here to retire. This means we do each other a lot of favors, just in the way of family that is close. We are friends.

My parents make at least two trips a year to see my brothers and their (now grown) kids. They literally have never visited here in 10 years. I call every day. They don’t call much at all, though my mom calls them. So I guess I sorta resent the resentment, because they are focused on me having a “better” relationship and don’t see that they had any responsibility for it.

22

We’re going through this exact same scenario with my mother and my eldest sister. My mother was always unduly harsh on her, and now that the Alzheimer’s is progressing Mom is blaming her lack of being able to take care of herself on my sister (despite said sister working her ass off to keep my parents in the most comfortable and free conditions they can live in with their various frailties). It is a source of much rancor in the family; I have had multiple arguments with Mom defending my sister but it never sinks in (mostly because she forgets). And Dad just passively lets her do it.

It doesn’t help that we used to have another, middle sibling who died of cancer two years ago, who was the favorite child (although even that’s not saying much) and who was good at smoothing out some of these tensions in the past.

So even though I’ve taken over “favored child” status with my parents, their treatment of my sister still really pisses me off.

23

I could go on and on. My parents believed the oldest son was special, as did their parents. I wasn’t the oldest son and neither was my uncle and we both understood how awful this practice was.

You can treat your children individually but you have to make a clear effort to make sure there is a balance and they have a sense of equitable treatment. If you don’t then shut up and don’t complain when they never call you.

24

There’s a certain amount of resentment about not being treated equally in my family - but the funny thing is it wasn’t always the same kid. It is however, never me. I can understand why my sister ( who is nearly five years younger than me) got certain things I didn’t in high school. Five years can make a big difference in whether a high school trip to Disney is affordable, and I understood that. What I didn’t understand was why , when both sisters and I were in college at the same time, my mother was going to pay youngest sister’s entire tuition and contribute nothing to me and middle sister. ( I was still there because working nearly full-time didn’t allow me to take enough credits to finish in 4 years). I didn’t understand why my mother would tell 15 year old me to make a hamburger for my 13 year old brother as a snack, when I had been starting dinner since I was 12 or 13. And I especially didn’t understand why my mother sold her house to middle sister dirt cheap* because “I don’t want her to take out a mortgage” even though that meant the other three of us ( who were paying mortgages) would inherit nothing. My mother now is annoyed because when she asks for help . she is often told to ask the sister who got the house. Youngest sister will probably never speak to the rest of us again after my mother’s death.

I don’t have a lot of resentment - because I ended up better off than the other three in a lot of ways and I kind of suspect that some of that is because I wasn’t the “beneficiary” of my mother’s unequal treatment.

* Like my sister paid $150K for a house that was probably worth $800K at the time. My mother apparently picked that price because that was the price when my grandfather had sold to her for 20 yrs earlier . Which was half of what the house was worth at the time and she had to pay that money to my uncles because that would be their inheritance.

25

It’s kind reversed in my family. The older three had more parental involvement with support for extra curriculars and assistance in signing up for college/. Then they checked out of parenting in a way and really didn’t have the same level of interest in the younger ones coming and going’s. The folks were always careful with money never splurged on favorites :thinking:but did their best by all of us. Though the older ones did sputter a bit when a built in swimming pool was installed when just me and youngest were still at home.

26

I have three sisters. I am the oldest, the second came 2-1/2 years later, the third came 2-1/2 years after the second. The fourth sister came almost 8 years after the third. I was almost 13 years old when my youngest sister was born. (I was totally embarrassed that my mom was pregnant!) Growing up we were all treated fairly, I don’t remember ever being resentful of any of my sisters. The third sister was a bit resentful because she was no longer “the baby”. By the time the youngest was a teenager, the rest of us were married and had jobs. Of course we noticed that the youngest was able to have name-brand clothing, where the rest of us grew up wearing clothing from the Sears catalog. Which was fine with us. We never complained at the time. My dad bought her a used car - we didn’t get cars. As adults, we realized that our parents had more disposable income at that point. They weren’t housing and clothing 4 kids anymore. It didn’t cross my mind to be resentful and same goes for my second sister. The third sister would mention things every once in a while, but I don’t think she dwelt on it for long. We’re all in our 50s and 60s now. We all get along and truly love each other.

27

StarvingButStrong, I’ll take your friend’s word for it that #4 got all new stuff. However, there’s a peculiar phenomenon with gap babies, in which they appear to have a lot of stuff, but only a percentage of it was bought new.

(Here she goes again!) As I’ve posted before, I was born when my sister and most of my cousins were teens or tweens. Both my sisters left home abruptly, and left most of their stuff. Then, as the cousins, and the neighbors’ kids and my parents’ friends’ kids, got older and moved out, the parents were left with surplus of books, toys, clothes and so forth. So they’d haul these boxes to our house, or press them on us when we visited. Since my parents were hoarders, there was no picking and choosing; they took it all. Which was actually pretty cool. I was not obligated to use every item, but when I wanted something new to read or wear or play with, I could go to the spare room and dig through the rubble. But more than one person chose to put a negative spin on this. Even if they could be convinced that it was easier to point out the items that were bought new, versus the ones that were dumped on me, at least one person kept hammering away that it didn’t matter how much it cost; I just shouldn’t have so much stuff. Because I was effectively an only child, to some people that meant in order to prevent my being spoiled, I had to be treated worse than a “normal” kid.

(Also, I could have done without Aunt C’s “joking” insistence that no, the pin-neat bedroom couldn’t be my room, that had to be the spare room, while the tornado-struck spare room must be my bedroom. Uh, no. And I don’t think it’s so hard to believe that a 7 y/o could keep her room neat of her own accord. My MOM messed up that spare room, NOT ME.)

And there’s another thing, something that no amount of money can make up for. Something that a lot of people didn’t get, like my oldest sister, until I was in my 20s and told her. Siblings and cousins who are close in age, and born when their parents were relatively young, have a built-in privilege. When they were kids, it was okay to be a kid. And it was okay to be a tween, before we called it that, and then a teenager. Because they weren’t the only one.

A family gathering for my sisters and older cousins meant doing their thing together, mostly unimpeded. Once in a while an adult would yell “Pipe down!” or something to that effect, and everyone would shut up for five minutes, and then the noise would start ramping up again. A family gathering for me usually meant hanging out by myself, until it was time to eat, and then getting sent from the table the first time I tried to join the conversation. It wasn’t my place, you see. Okay, but I never felt that I had a place, anywhere.

So I’m sorry for SBS’s friend. But #1, #2 and #3 have something that #4 will never have: each other.

28

This was my experience as an only child, as well. I suspect it’s typical, except for only children who live near enough to cousins to have that family dynamic with them.

29

And another thing.

Those vacations might not be among #4’s fondest memories. To her it might be “All old people, very little if anything to do that interested me, weird food, sitting by myself while the old people had long, boring conversations. Anything I did find to do that I liked, I usually got in trouble for it, and this went on for days and days. Meanwhile, my older siblings never stop sneak-bragging about all the fun they had going on camping trips, and sneering at me because I ‘got’ to go to Europe. Try ‘dragged’.”