Care & Feeding: I'm Rich, But My Parents Prefer My Poor Sister

[minoanmiss]

This is going to sound petty and on the childish side, but here goes. I cannot stand the way my parents are with me and my sister. By every measure, I am more successful than my sister “Jane.” I earn a six-figure salary, as does my husband, we own our home, and we are planning to have a baby in the coming year or so. Jane works for a charity which, while laudable, pays next to nothing and affords her hardly any free time. Her layabout wife “works from home” selling “art” online (little cartoon drawings) and earns even less. They rent a tiny apartment and, frankly, don’t seem to be going anywhere in life.

Yet when our parents talk about me and Jane, it is crystal clear who is their favorite. They rave about her at every opportunity and invite her and her wife on holidays with them every year (pre-COVID). For example, if a friend asks my mom how everyone has been, my mom will say one sentence about me (“Sally got a promotion”) followed by a lengthy gushing about Jane (“Oh, Jane saved a woman’s life this week at the shelter! She got me a bunch of beautiful flowers as a surprise in between her shifts at the refuge and volunteering at the animal hospital, then she saved a kitten from a tree and STILL made time to visit her dad in hospital!!”). I’m exaggerating, but just barely.

She and my dad are never actively unpleasant to me, just NOTABLY less enthused about me than my sister. The recent example that has me furious was Christmas, when my husband and I bought my parents a smart TV and an iPad. These gifts were met with thanks and my dad posting about how lucky he felt on social media, which was very gratifying at the time. Then the next day when they celebrated Christmas with Jane and her wife (who of course were volunteering on Christmas Day proper), I see my dad RAVING on Facebook about the gifts they have got him and my mom: a bit of art that Jane’s wife made for them (so, a very cheap gift) and a natty photo album that Jane put together from some old photos she dug up of our parents’ wedding. (They didn’t have a photographer and always regretted it, so Jane apparently canvassed their friends who had attended and got pictures to compile the album, which while obviously an effort, also cost her nothing beyond the cheap-looking scrapbook itself.) It has been a month, and our mom still goes on about what an incredible gift it is, and has hung the homemade art in pride of place in the living room. When I ask if she likes the gifts I got her, she just replies with, “Yeah, they’re great.”

I am so done. Their favoritism is obvious, and I can hardly stand talking to them when I know that Saint Jane is going to come up. Jane and her wife are also planning on having a child in the near future (in spite of clearly not being able to afford this). I am already sick at the thought of how differently our parents are going to treat our children. Can you give me any advice on 1) raising my frustration with my parents in general, and 2) articulating that we will fall out for good if and when they treat my kids differently to Jane’s? My husband’s stance is to address such things when they come up and just ignore the favoritism from my parents (who he doesn’t gel with anyway), but my anger at them is keeping me up at night. Please help.

—Not the Favorite


Dear Not the Favorite,

Unfortunately, no, I can’t give you advice on the two points you’ve raised above. Essentially you’re asking me to tell you how to issue your parents an ultimatum about their as-yet-hypothetical grandkids. You’re saying that you’ll “fall out for good” if they don’t treat all of their grandchildren the same (by your standards of “sameness”). That’s not a healthy conversation for you to have with them before you or Jane even have children.

I also don’t think you want to frame the discussion you hope to have with your parents as an airing of frustrations, though you’ve made a solid case for why you’re feeling frustrated. It’s possible that your parents do, in fact, prefer Jane and her partner’s company to yours. They may enjoy hearing about her work more and may prefer sentimental, handmade gifts to high-end, store-bought ones. Those are preferences, and your parents are entitled to preferences.

As their adult child, you’re entitled to a kind, caring, and engaged relationship with them, and it sounds like you have that. It may not look the way you want it to, but at this point, what would be healthiest would be to work on what’s within your control. What you can control is how you manage your expectations. It may not feel fair that you and your sister aren’t treated exactly the same, but if your parents appreciate your gifts, are welcoming when they see you, and have raised you in a loving, supportive home, then practicing gratitude might help to mitigate your anger.

You’ve mentioned that your anger is keeping you up at night. It sounds like, in trying to find ways to express this insomnia-inducing fury to your parents, you also want them to lose sleep over it. They will not. Find your own peace around this; there is no set number of tasks your parents can perform to provide it for you, at this point.

—Stacia

Comments

[castiron]

1. I know people whose interior reaction to a smart TV or iPad would be "well, that was generous, but this isn't really something I wanted/needed", or would indeed be actively uncomfortable with receiving such a pricey gift, even from their kid. (Heck, that would be my reaction to a smart TV -- very very kind of the person to be so generous, but I don't really watch TV; if they wanted to spend that much money on me there are things much, much, much higher on my "want but can't yet justify the cost/haven't saved the money" list, and if they applied any thought and knowledge of me, they'd know that.)

2. There is nothing in this letter to indicate that Jane is mooching off the parents for daily life expenses. Jane is helping people in need, and her wife is running a business selling her own art. What about this is "not going anywhere in life"?

3. It's possible that the parents are inviting Jane on the vacations because they know Jane can't afford them on her own while LW can (LW doesn't say whether Jane & wife are paying their own way), or because parents don't like the vacations that LW prefers but do like the kind that Jane prefers, so invite Jane because Jane would enjoy it more.

4. LW needs to read that first phrase they wrote and ask themselves "gee, why does this sound this way?"

[jadelennox]

I know people whose interior reaction to a smart TV or iPad would be "well, that was generous, but this isn't really something I wanted/needed", or would indeed be actively uncomfortable with receiving such a pricey gift, even from their kid.

It me.

I actively avid spending holidays with people who can't be dissuaded from pricey gifts. They make me unhappy to receive.

[melannen]

Also a smart TV and an iPad isn't really all that generous? Like, they'd probably strain Jane's budget, but if the parents can afford a couple big vacations a year, they're probably something they could have bought for themselves if they'd wanted, and if SiL is charging what she should for her art, it's probably the price of maybe three or four commissions, not counting framing. (And almost definitely less than the cost of the time for making the album at LW's hourly!)

An iPad is what you get if you want an Apple portable computer without shelling out for the price of a MacBook. And a smart tv is just a "TV" these days - I took my mom TV shopping for Christmas a couple years back and the only non-smart option was high-end screens mostly intended as gaming monitors, and low-end smart TVs are actually relatively cheap because they're subsidized by filling them with hardcoded ads for streaming. "A smart TV and an iPad" is quintessential "I wanted it to sound more generous and expensive than it was."

PLUS, those are both things that only really become useful if you've got expensive ongoing subscriptions. LW did not mention they also paid for a couple years' iPad data or covered all the streaming services. We did end up getting Mom a smart TV, but also told her not to connect it directly to the internet unless she had a specific reason to. (And if you aren't already in the Apple ecosystem, an iPad is *less* useful than a cheaper Android tablet or laptop.) So they're kind of like giving someone a purebred puppy they didn't ask for.

It's basically "we got them something they didn't need or want and probably can't use that wasn't really very expensive for us, since we're rich, but it was supposed to seem generous" and then they're mad they're not being effusive about it.

[lemonsharks]

Depends on the iPad and the tv. I bought my iPad with my "$600 is an insult" stimulus check, and I've lived places where that was my entire rent. I know people who have $200 smart tvs and people who have $6200 smart tvs.

I think it's a fair guess that the technology gifts fell under "vaguely wanted when our current thing breaks but wouldn't buy a really fancy one ourselves" for the parents, whereas the album fell under "yearned for for decades but didn't even think it was possible."

[melannen]

True, if it was high-end on both of those, it could be a lot more. But somehow I feel like if LW had bought a $6200 tv rather than a $200 tv they would have specified it was a $6200 TV, or 'a huge TV with all the bells and whistles' and not just said 'a smart TV'. They seem the type.

I don't think a purchased gift is necessarily inferior to a made-with-love one, but it needs to be *purchased* with love, and this one doesn't even seem like it's necessarily more costly than the handmade ones. (You could easily blow $200 on prints and supplies for a scrapbook not even counting the time! And professionally framed original art is going to be at least that much if you don't undervalue the artist.)

[purlewe]

As a person who still has a cathode ray tv (that survived a 90s earthquake even tho it landed on its screen) and is bigger than the flat screens I can afford. I wonder if the "smart tv" means they felt the need to upgrade the parents tv bc it bothered them. People want to know how I watch streaming video. Truth is I don't. They cannot grasp this. Nor do they like that I own dvds and borrow them from the library. But what if I want to watch Brand New Thing Now at my parents house? Not having the smart TV bothered them in some level. My nieces and nephs cannot understand my tv when they visit. We end up not watching tv... Which is weird for them.

[melannen]

I will admit I did buy my mom a flatscreen for Christmas against her will because I was embarrassed, but in my defense her old cathode tube had got to the point of showing false-colored bars over the picture at the top and bottom of the screen, so it was time. (Also she is richer than me, just bad at buying herself things). And I took her shopping with me, so we could get the one she hated least, and talked to the sibling about it first.

(It was also getting harder to watch DVDs, because so many of them assume you have a widescreen display now, and the letterboxing, if they even bother, is bad. Not that she watches DVDs either.)

Good news if you have visitors though! You can totally stream to a CRT, you just need the right cables and converters to hook it to a laptop as an aux monitor, and they exist. It's even hip and vintage to do that so you can probably find the cables.

(Which is what we do if we want to stream to mom's new flatscreen anyway, because connecting it directly to the internet itself is just SO MANY ADS FOR STREAMING SERVICES, so we keep it disconnected and dumb. I have a pre-smart-TV flatscreen from a thrift shop myself for the same reason.)

[purlewe]

The wife and I have decided that until this one dies (or has those weird color shifts/lines like you describe) that we are sticking with what we have. We don't have a laptop (well we both have work ones, but they are property of work and I doubt we would feel compelled to use them for streaming) and we don't own any subs to streaming media. If the nieces and nephs wanted all that I suspect my sisters could bring a laptop and we would buy the cables for connection. But they don't come often/stay long enough that a day or two without tv isn't going to kill the kids. Heck if they wanted I am sure they could bring an Ipad and use our wifi connection and do the same thing.. personal tv for the younger set while the adults hang out and catch up. But you bring up very good points bc one day this old tv will show her last show and we will be up a creak with 200+ dvds. hehe. Likely we will just move to a tv that has 50 inch screen (that is what we have now with the cathode. it is HUGE and it is about 300+ lbs) that we can hook up to a dvd player. Bc we don't really plan on ever paying for streaming media. This does not mean we haven't used a smart TV like you describe. We dogsit for friends and use their Acorn and Britbox when we stay. But about a week a year of streaming tv is enough for us.

[melannen]

I don't pay for streaming media either but there is so much free on youtube and other places online that if I just want background noise I will never run out. (And we have a PBS membership that gives us free streaming to a huge archive of PBS and BBC shows. And the local public library has a couple of free streaming services too.)

But any new TV will let you hook up to a cheap external DVD player really easy too, yeah, and DVDs are resurging as more people realize streaming does not guarantee they can watch their show, so I think you'll be fine.

---sorry, I will evangelize at a moment's notice that 'streaming' doesn't mean 'paid subscription service', I should stop. :D