My mom was the second of four children, three girls and a boy. She and her older sister always got overlooked on Christmas. Her parents would buy piles of toys and clothes for the two younger children. Mom and my aunt would receive one gift each, and it would typically be something like a ratty bathrobe. To this day my uncle and younger aunt are the favored children in the family.
This devasted mom as a child, so when my sibs and I were younger she went out of her way to make sure she treated us equally. She spent the same amount of money on each of us (give or take a few dollars) and bought the same number of presents for each child. Somehow she managed to do this while paying attention to our individual interests.
Mom still has issues with her parents’ unequal treatment – I know because I saw it this Christmas. I was thrilled with the digital camera my parents got me, and my brother is glued to his new iPod. However, mom kept apologizing to us for giving more gifts to our sister, who got about a dozen DVDs that she wanted, plus a portable DVD player and some clothes. We keep telling her that we’re not keeping score, but I can tell mom feels a little guilty about it.
I asked for a pogo stick for Christmas every year, and never got one. Once I finally outgrew the desire to own one, my brother got one for Christmas. We had to explain what it was to him as he’d never even heard of them (lives on another planet). Can’t tell you how annoyed I was about that at the time. Other than that, I’ve been spoilt rotten all my life. I feel kind of guilty highlighting the one Christmas present “injustice” that I ever “suffered”.
My SILs are in their teens. Last Christmas the younger one (14 at the time) got stacks of new clothes and other stuff, most of which was partly to help out with the things she needed for her school trip interstate. The older sister (16 at the time) got a pair of pyjamas and a DVD - “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. I saw her begging her mother to let her return it for another DVD as she’d never even liked the movie but it couldn’t be returned because it was one from a set of DVDs that her mother had been given. It didn’t even have a barcode, just a little note that said “Not for seperate retail”. AFAIK, she didn’t get anything else from her mother that year.
My SIL’s birthdays are June for the older girl, September for the younger. In June, the younger girl got her birthday present - so, three months early. It was an electric guitar and amp set because she didn’t want to learn to play on the acoustic guitar she’d been given. A couple of days later the older girl got $90 towards her phone bill on the day of her birthday. I think my MIL could have at least waited a couple of weeks before getting the guitar and amp - talk about rubbing the older girl’s face in the fact that she was getting a lousier present.
This Christmas both sisters got new phones, but the younger one got another interstate holiday and new clothing, etc to equip her for it again.
I’m in the reverse. My twin and I are the youngest in our family (our sister and brother are 8 and 6 years older than us, respectively). My sis and bro had to get jobs to buy their first car. My twin sis and I woke up on Christmas morning to find ours, and we got to keep our minimum wage money all to ourselves. Looking at family photos, it’s clear that the family was poorer back when my sister and brother were coming up relative to when my twin and I did. We younger siblings had better toys and better life experiences (piano lessons, trips to Europe, attended better schools, sleep-away camp, etc.) than they did. I know this had to have engendered feelings of jealousy and resentment.
My father justifies the disparity by saying my older siblings weren’t as deserving as my twin and I was, since their grades weren’t as good as ours was and they supposedly didn’t know how to take care of stuff. But that seems more like hindsight talking.
I was the oldest of four siblings in a similar situation (only 4 1/2 years between me and the youngest) . I wasn’t terribly jealous of the better experiences my youngest sister got because my parents were doing better financially. What does annoy me is my mother’s revisionist history- according to her, there was no trip to Disney World when I was a high school senior, so I couldn’t have missed it- and the fact that when the financial situation improved, the three oldest didn’t share in it. I understand perfectly well that my parents couldn’t afford to completely support three college students at the same time- but I will never understand why one didn’t even have to work for spending money while the other two had to work to pay for everything, including tuition.
PunditLisa, that’s a lecture that I wish I’d been given as a kid. On a couple of instances that I was really disappointed, I always felt horribly guilty because I knew that my parents had tried very, very hard and really meant well. Fortunately, it was only a rare isolated incident or two, but I’m not sure what was worse, the great disappointment or the great guilt that accompanied it.
My parents also tried very hard to be fair to my brother and me, but fortunately they didn’t take it too far - we still got gifts that were suited to us as individuals. Often, especially when we were young, many gifts, such as the monkeybars for the back yard, the Atari, or other electronic games, were given to both of us and we were expected to share.
Now, there’s a whole new set of challanges. My brother just had a daughter and my little girl is expected to show up in the middle of January. I already sat my parents down and told them not to kill themselves trying to be equitable as the girls are going to be different persons with different needs and that we would not be offended if their gifts reflected that reality. We’re pretty safe telling them that, though, as my parents are almost obsessivly scrupulous and would be horrified at the idea of showing any overt favoritism to one grandchild over the other.
father remarried when i was dirt poor in college. first christmas i got literally about 2 little presents (one was a 6-pak of michelob) whilst 3 srtep mom kids (2 in college and one working) got a haul of stuff worth 10 times more. i bought everyone presents.
happened the next year too.
i haven’t been ‘home’ for christmas for 20 years. i choose to spend christmas where i feel good and not short changed - even if that means alone on the other side of the world.
note: i do like my step mother and siblings. the bio kids received the lion’s share of everything. grandkids are treated pretty equally. go figure.
to the OP, in my case it was the feeling of blatant unfairness. no matter how you sliced it be it money, number of presents, appropriateness, need, age, etc
My husband is the youngest of 3 boys. The two older boys ar 22 months apart, and hubby is 13 years younger than middle brother. You’d think he’s be the spoiled one.
The middle brother had a medical problem at birth. He’s not delayed, he’s not physically challenged, welll, except for his extra 100 lbs.
Middle brother has never had to be responsible for himself. The parents bought the house he lives in, every car he’s ever driven. They paid for three different carreer paths for him. He’s 50 years old and they still give him ferry money everytime he visits them, which is quite frequently. He acts stupid and helpless, especially around them. He’s wavered on the edge of bankruptcy 3 times and they bailed him out to the tune of $50k each.
But each Christmas, each son gets $100. when I married Hubby, I, too, got $100 for Christmas, and I assume oldest DIL did too.
Two years ago, Hubby happened to pick up middle bro’s money card by mistake… Not $100 but $200. The reason? “He isn’t married.” This year he has a temporary, green-card wife. They EACH GOT $200! Reason? (well, she just won’t be around for long.)
I don’t care, for me, but it hurts my honey & I hate that.
I’d take the phone bill paying over a guitar, but I’m just weird like that.
In fact, a lot of my presents recently have taken that shape. My dad paid my car insurance for me for my graduation present and my last 2 birthday presents.
But more OT, my parents (technically parent and stepparent) usually give me and my (half-)brother and (half-)sister somewhat equal things. They get some gifts that are to be shared among us, like big ticket things… but that doesn’t always work out. Example: This year, we all got a PS2 (together.) I’m at home for 4 months out of the year, if that, and work 1-2 jobs when I am home. This didn’t work too well, but they tried.
My parents, mainly my mom, did a really great job keeping things fairly equal. But there’s a story about unequal gift giving that goes back about a hundred years on my mom’s side of the family.
Sometime way back when, in Nowhere, Kansas, a man married a young woman and they had a couple of kids. The young woman died and the man married another woman (the dear departed’s sister) and they had a few children themselves. Who got the fuzzy end of the lollipop? Yep, the kids from the first marriage were treated like crap 365 days a year, especially when it came to gift giving. Dickens himself couldn’t have come up with more nastiness than this woman did for her step-children. And we’re still hearing about it more than a century later. It may seem small, but it can make a deep cut.
Long time lurker first time poster (hell I forgot that I had registered my username in 2003)
to preface: My brother and I were born the same day 9 years apart, so the disparity would come out more obviously.
On his 18th Birthday he got given a car
On mine I got given 3 DVDs, admittedly he got a second hand Lada so I think I made out better than he did, although one of them was Big Mommas House :dubious: (no significant change in earnings, other than an increase just no licence).
On his 21st he got given a Motorcycle
On mine I got given a Dolby Surround System (admittedly I still didnt have either a Cycle or Car licence at this stage and as such a vehicle of some sort would’ve been pointless).
Other than those 2 gifts the presents have been pretty much of equal value, but neither of us whinge if the other gets something more expensive, because its usually something that we’ve asked for.
My parents are polar opposites on this topic. My mom believes in complete gift parity. When we were kids, she used to put her loose change in a jar, then take the full jar to the bank and divide it equally among our savings accounts. If the amount did not divide exactly equally 4 ways, she would add the 1,2, or 3 pennies it took to make it exactly equal. :eek:
My dad’s attitude was, “I’ll favor whatever kid I feel like, you ungrateful little bastards.”
Three of us came out OK, but the youngest is very messed up on “fairness” in money and gift-giving. In her eyes, all my parents’ gift-giving is unfair to her.
The car she was given is of greater value than the cars given to the rest of us, but she thinks she got the worst deal because her car gets the worst gas mileage, requiring her to shell out more for gas.
One year, we all got $200 for Christmas, to be spent on “a luxury.” Mary bought a mini-stereo with hers. For the next Christmas, we all got mini-stereos and Mary got a different gift of equal value. Mary believes this was unfair, because she had to buy her stereo with “her own money.”
My mom bought Mary shoes this year for Christmas. She doesn’t like them. I offered to pay her cash for them because I like them, and she could go spend the cash on a different pair. Mary then decided to keep the shoes, because it would be “unfair” if I got to have her present.
Mary hides food that my mom buys at the grocery store because she asked for it and it would be “unfair” if anyone else got to have any.
If I ever have kids, I am definitely raising them with the attitude you cite.
Q.N. Jones, wow, your sister sounds like quite a piece of work. I don’t know if your parents doing things differently would have helped her or not; she may just be the sort of person who always sees herself getting the short end of the stick. But the philosophies I adopted after reading that article have served me well.
I was going to say that generally we all got equal presents. I remember many a Christmas where my 3 brothers were opening gifts after I was done(we always took turns, I opened one, the brother to the left opened one, the next on eo fthe left opened one, etc.) But sometimes mine were more expensives, and I was always difficult to shop for. I would usually only ask for one or two things, whereas my brothers had pages worth of wants.
But looking back, I think I was favored, simply because I got the high-end expensive stuff. For example, I got a piano sized keyboard one year, even though my brother already owned TWO other keyboards. And the year our toaster broke and I made a fuss because I like toast, “I” got the new four slot-bagel width toaster. It was of course to be shared with everyone, but my name was on the tag.
I think my parents were also trying to make up for the fact that I was the only girl and that I was seriously depressed for most of my life.
Since Mary’s otherwise a really, really great person, I think it was my parents’ extreme and conflicting attitudes about gift fairness. That, and the fact that as the fourth of four girls, she says she felt like she often had to fight to get her fair share.
Oh, I see. Well, my parents were not very good parents (I know everyone thinks that as teenagers, but I’m 43, and in retrospect, they probably should not have had kids), but I’ll tell you somethin’, I learned a lot from them about how not to parent!
I don’t remember any unfairness in presents as a child; I’m sure there were a few times my parents had to explain to my brother or me that one of us got more gifts because the other one got a bigger gift (or something like that), but I don’t have any lingering resentment or anything, and I don’t think he does, either. My parents worked very closely with my maternal grandparents to spend a similar amount of money and get us a similar number of presents as well. My paternal grandparents… well, I have a girl-cousin 3 weeks younger than me, and we have a boy-cousin 3 months older than my brother, so she and I usually got the same thing in different colors and the boys got the same thing in different colors also. That was fine to a point, but we’re all really different; once we got to be teenagers, it really grated on me.
My parents were great, though – the rest of our family was so generous with us that my parents didn’t really need to add to the obscene number of packages beneath the tree. Most years, my brother and I each got one or two smallish gifts (a book or cassette) from “Santa” and one really great gift from Mom & Dad. That worked out well, because it was usually something we really, really wanted.
Now that we’re all adults, my grandparents get each grandchild a couple of gifts of varying value, and give us each a check for the remainder. It works out great, because we know they’re spending the same amount on all of us (I don’t know how they do the married vs. unmarried grandchildren) and we still get some gifts. It usually means checks for odd amounts, though – $57 or something. I know it makes them feel good, though, and they’re so generous with us. We’ve really been blessed, so I won’t complain.
