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Care and Feeding: Treating children unequally
Dear Care and Feeding,
We have four adult children (all in their 20s/early 30s) and are currently facing a great deal of family conflict around the unequal way we raised them. To be honest, we were pretty strict parents with our oldest daughter “Lily.” From the outset, we told her that at 18, she’d be moving out—living with us indefinitely was not an option—and she’d need to pay for college by herself. She got into an expensive Ivy League school that did not offer enough financial aid. She was heartbroken and ended up going to a lower-ranked, yet still excellent, college on a full merit scholarship. She followed through with our expectations and never asked us to move back in, even when she took a low-paying job right out of college. She made it through her 20s with a few bumps and bruises but is now engaged to a man with a high-paying job, and she has even earned her graduate degree! We’re very proud.
In contrast, our youngest child “Jen” was raised without many of these same expectations: We knew we could pay for her college, and having had the benefit of seeing our other children leave the nest successfully, we weren’t as insistent that she move out immediately. We paid full price for a private college for Jen (equally ranked to Lily’s) and she graduated with no debt. We also allowed her to live with us during her first year after college; she had secured a job, but wanted to save money for a down payment on a house. She ended up buying a home at 23 (Lily wasn’t able to until 29) and as a result is now significantly wealthier than Lily is.
Lily and Jen have always had some friction, but now their main conflict is the unequal expectations we had of them. It’s true we were much harder on Lily, and Jen had a “safety net” her older sister never benefited from. Lily has held on to a lot of resentment for this and has started to throw it in our faces during family arguments. In my opinion, we were doing the best we could, and it seems ungrateful of Lily to complain when her life is going so well right now. I think she’s harboring jealousy around Jen’s financial success and it’s making her feel insecure.
The jealousy is starting to color every interaction between Lily and us, and between Lily and Jen. Did we do something wrong? How should we handle this moving forward? Is it reasonable that Lily’s upset? Should we do something to “level the playing field,” so to speak? I’d appreciate any advice you can offer.
—Torn in Tulsa
Dear Torn,
Lily has all the makings for some deep resentment, but she is also at a point in her life where she has to learn to look at how fortunate she is and to appreciate all that she has, more than she resents the disparity in how she and her sister were raised. What you and your spouse can do to help that is to simply acknowledge the difference and apologize, if there’s anything that you sincerely regret or feel bad about—such as being stricter with Lily and making her feel unwelcome to stay in your home beyond the age of 18 just because you were worried she would be unable to learn to live independently. You needn’t apologize for having different means at different times, but Lily should hear you recognize how both the change in your financial status and your parenting ideologies affected her and her sister, and that you did the best you could for all of your children. Acknowledge her feelings and encourage her to express them respectfully. You don’t owe her a check, just understanding and empathy. Hopefully, she can extend the same to you sooner rather than later.
We have four adult children (all in their 20s/early 30s) and are currently facing a great deal of family conflict around the unequal way we raised them. To be honest, we were pretty strict parents with our oldest daughter “Lily.” From the outset, we told her that at 18, she’d be moving out—living with us indefinitely was not an option—and she’d need to pay for college by herself. She got into an expensive Ivy League school that did not offer enough financial aid. She was heartbroken and ended up going to a lower-ranked, yet still excellent, college on a full merit scholarship. She followed through with our expectations and never asked us to move back in, even when she took a low-paying job right out of college. She made it through her 20s with a few bumps and bruises but is now engaged to a man with a high-paying job, and she has even earned her graduate degree! We’re very proud.
In contrast, our youngest child “Jen” was raised without many of these same expectations: We knew we could pay for her college, and having had the benefit of seeing our other children leave the nest successfully, we weren’t as insistent that she move out immediately. We paid full price for a private college for Jen (equally ranked to Lily’s) and she graduated with no debt. We also allowed her to live with us during her first year after college; she had secured a job, but wanted to save money for a down payment on a house. She ended up buying a home at 23 (Lily wasn’t able to until 29) and as a result is now significantly wealthier than Lily is.
Lily and Jen have always had some friction, but now their main conflict is the unequal expectations we had of them. It’s true we were much harder on Lily, and Jen had a “safety net” her older sister never benefited from. Lily has held on to a lot of resentment for this and has started to throw it in our faces during family arguments. In my opinion, we were doing the best we could, and it seems ungrateful of Lily to complain when her life is going so well right now. I think she’s harboring jealousy around Jen’s financial success and it’s making her feel insecure.
The jealousy is starting to color every interaction between Lily and us, and between Lily and Jen. Did we do something wrong? How should we handle this moving forward? Is it reasonable that Lily’s upset? Should we do something to “level the playing field,” so to speak? I’d appreciate any advice you can offer.
—Torn in Tulsa
Dear Torn,
Lily has all the makings for some deep resentment, but she is also at a point in her life where she has to learn to look at how fortunate she is and to appreciate all that she has, more than she resents the disparity in how she and her sister were raised. What you and your spouse can do to help that is to simply acknowledge the difference and apologize, if there’s anything that you sincerely regret or feel bad about—such as being stricter with Lily and making her feel unwelcome to stay in your home beyond the age of 18 just because you were worried she would be unable to learn to live independently. You needn’t apologize for having different means at different times, but Lily should hear you recognize how both the change in your financial status and your parenting ideologies affected her and her sister, and that you did the best you could for all of your children. Acknowledge her feelings and encourage her to express them respectfully. You don’t owe her a check, just understanding and empathy. Hopefully, she can extend the same to you sooner rather than later.
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That whole "we're kicking you out at 18 to fend for yourself, no appeals" ultimatum is HORRIFYING. Like, a lot of parents can't pay for college (although LW seems to imply that they could have and chose not to, UGH), but good parents still want to be there for their kids in whatever ways they can! "If your life crashes and burns, you can always come home" is a low bar for family support and LW & Spouse put some real effort into crawling under it.
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I don't know if it's changed in the ensuing years but when I was going to college the formulas were really strict about parental contribution, to the extent that a friend couldn't go where he wanted because his estranged, non-custodial dad refused to sign the paperwork saying he wouldn't contribute.
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Yup, this is a major barrier to access for a LOT of people in that situation.
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do I have your permission to be really, really angry at your mother? (Also at colleges shitty financial assumptions, obviously, but that goes without saying.)
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Excellent life choice.
♥
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*hugs you*
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(my mother ended up giving my spouse a personal loan so he could finish college. The alumni association calls us every now and then and I point out that if alma mater wanted us to donate maybe they shouldn't've fucked over spouse when he was an impoverished child.)
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eg been forced to skip pap smears and missed cervical cancer til it became deadly
gotten pneumonia and not have money for antibiotics and maybe even died...
I wonder how the parents would have felt if THAT had happened...
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...is that I believed it, nodded, made all the same kinds of sacrifices Lily is described as making, and then expected my parents to be decent human beings to me in return. whereupon they lost their little minds at the thought that I would not allow them to control my life by dangling money in front of me.
I get real familiar fucking vibes off the LW, I tell you what. I don't have any real resentment for my baby sister, who is twelve years younger than me but has had her own rough ride--she also got sent to private Catholic school, and what I've heard of that sounds pretty fucking awful to me--but boy howdy do I have a lot of fury at my parents, and I'm definitely estranged from them right now. How dare you threaten me with independence and then complain when I act accordingly?!
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