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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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I'm the youngest, and I know my oldest sister has worked really hard to avoid resenting how much easier my parents were on me, in some ways. She hasn't thrown in it my face since we were both in our twenties and I don't think she blames me, but it's real. As we've gotten older, it's balanced out because I think we're both more aware of the ways we both got dicked by birth order in different ways. (I absorbed a huge weight of expectations for everything the other two didn't do, and prioritized School and Job and Feminist success messages; she rebelled against more strictness and blew off school accordingly. She had the right to use a car; I was the kid who went to private school after the other two got really fucked up by public. Honestly I got the better deal and I know it.)
Frustratingly I don't think there's much advice for LW that's useful, except by being open and honest with both daughters that they realize their rules were applied unevenly and had uneven effect. Lily and Jen need to work this out themselves. Although from my own experience, I'd ask the LW to interrogate the way they talk to their kids. Do they praise Lily's husband for being such a good provider? Do they say things about Jen's career that make it sound like they value it over Lily's? Do they comment about the way their kids did in school, or -- leaving their kids out of it -- make bitchy comments when reading the news about people who carry too much debt? I know my mum acknowledges we got unequal treatment, and she still does all of those things, and it does not help.
Also LW should make sure they aren't being scrupulously even handed now about helping the kids. If Lily needs something, LW needs to make sure they don't think, "we can only give Lily the exact same thing we give the others."
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yeah, I mean, life is messy, right? There's literally no way to be completely fair to your different-aged kids. You make money or you lose money or your circumstances change. (Eldest Sister left home before Middle Sis was diagnosed, and so she wasn't around during Mum's nervous breakdown and doesn't share any of the ways that made me crazy. It's no one's fault! Time passes, life happens.)
I know I always read against the text of "This Be the Verse" because I don't think the final couplet follows as a necessary conclusion from the rest of the poem, but, you know. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do.
Also thank you for asking the framing question that made me think about it this way. 💚
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