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

[purlewe]

I think the one line I keep coming back to is this one:
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)

I think her parents don't get along with the husband. And that is sad. But it also sounds like LW has adopted the same values as the husband. And I think that this might be the heart of the issue.

There is nothing wrong with finding a partner and adopting the same values. But it might mean she has a different relationship to her parents than she wants. She needs to work that out.

[petrea_mitchell]

Yeah, I'm thinking it's exposure to Husband's values, plus maybe pre-existing feelings of not being as cool as Jane. Maybe LW realized that they couldn't compete with Jane on creativity and adopted an alternate value system that let them feel less inadequate.

[lavendertook]

You’ve got me thinking about why she chose this husband with other values. I don’t think people can “just” adopt core values to replace their own simply because they attach to someone with those values--it takes major world view shifts. And core values as different as she describes her parents and Jane’s to be from her own, involves a lot of internal changes. And maybe that is what is making the narrator feel fictional to me: LW is in transition and is working harder to adopt those values than she has been able to shed her old core values, so she’s writing from the standpoint of a -nonintegrated persona. This would explain hwo she can detail the acts of Jane that exemplify Jane’s values in a way she can’t detail her own. That makes a whole lot of sense.

And maybe she is trying to make this transition out of twu wove. And it’s not working as well as she would like it to be for her. But I think it’s more likely that she was already looking for someone with values contrary to her family. And maybe it’s out of competition with Jane, but I still have to put the weight of that on the dynamics her parents set up and point out that such competition and the unlovingness of putting your children in that position runs counter to how LW is presenting their values.

It is not uncommon for people to not live up to the values their world view generates on the interpersonal level. And that LW, black sheep and Scapegoat to Jane’s Golden Child identified their hypocrisy early on, but hasn’t figured out it’s her parent’s hypocrisy, not their values that she needs and wants to reject. And if she finds that out it will be bye-bye to husband. And if that hasn’t happened before they have kids, kids have a way of asking questions to make you interrogate what the hell it is you are going on about. It really would be better if she foud a therapist who would help her do that work now. I dont’ think she’s making a full transition to her husband’s shallow capitalist values, and at some point she’s going to sort out what she really believes because it may not be what she thinks she does and it certainly is not what she’s saying--that’s what’s not adding up here. Which reads identically to a fictional character with shallow capitalist values written by someone who despises those and hasn’t got a good handle on how that character thinks.

[purlewe]

The only reason I am still thinking this might be real is simply watching whole families tear themselves apart over politics. Half the family is one flavor of politics, the other half the other flavor. And they base their values upon that type of politics. Perhaps Jane, being gay, made her folks realize that they should re-evaluate their values and be more welcoming to gay folks, and LW decided to stay the course and not change hers (or again, side with her husband) and that is why such a divide seems at odds with her family of origin. It could also be the parents were never vocally gay affirming until they had a gay kid and when they opened their minds to it they realized that other parts of their lives actively harm gay people and so changed their core values. I know large families where 1 gay person made people choose sides.. and a small percent doubled down on the vitriol and hate while the rest of the family decided being loving and accepting of their gay relative made them grow and learn to be more open in other areas of their life they had blinders on before.

[melannen]

It's possible that dynamic could have shown up about something other than Jane's sexuality, too. For example maybe the parents pushed the kids very hard toward lucrative, secure careers (while not being very wealth-oriented in values) because they didn't want them to suffer poverty the way they had. And when Jane pushed back against that and showed the parents she could be happy while just getting by, the parents realized they had been wrong to push so hard for wealthy careers. And LW went the other way, bought in fully to money=good (and married into a wealthy family that agrees) and feels like the rug has been pulled.

[purlewe]

very true.

[lemonsharks]

would explain hwo she can detail the acts of Jane that exemplify Jane’s values in a way she can’t detail her own.

I think it's more likely that she has a job like marketing or lobbying for the oil, tobacco, or banking industry. And that she's self aware enough to know that mentioning things like how she exemplifies her new values is going to make her look even less sympathetic thank she already does.

[lemonsharks]

So...what happens if one of your children grow up into an adult you just do not like that much and another grows up into an adult you'd choose as a dear friend if you hadn't been their parent?

What is Parent supposed to so there, Pretend they both like both children the same when they really do not? Lie to their face?

Also, there's adopting husband's values ("eating meat is value neutral; it's okay to go down to the gun range and safely shoot some targets as a hobby") and then there's adopting husband's values ("People bring poverty on themselves; welfare queens are stealing all our tax dollars"), and a whole lot in-between.

At some point "values" stop being differences of opinion and start being bigotry cloaked in the fallacy of absolute tolerance. The truth is that some opinions and values, even deeply and sincerely held ones, aren't valid and aren't ok.

And the consequences for holding those values is that decent people like you less--or not at all--and mourn the person you used to be and could have become as if you'd died.