cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
Cimorene ([personal profile] cimorene) wrote in [community profile] agonyaunt 2023-11-01 01:18 pm (UTC)

Well, in my extended family, there's a lot of pitching in to help out, but it's usually not monetary between adult siblings. Things like my aunts and uncles would pay airfare to fly my parents to visit them after my dad was in an accident because my mom wasn't safe to drive it with narcolepsy, or one of my uncles would drive nine hours to pick them up and drive them there. One of my uncles has a disabled child and has always had lower income and the help they got was in the form of invitations out and free babysitting, hand-me-down furniture, etc, from siblings. I have an aunt who often couldn't afford the travel to family get-togethers and my parents would offer to drive to her house and pick her up on our way (a detour of a few hours out of an eleven-to-thirteen hour drive). These are American families, the one of Polish catholic midwestern farmer background, the other NYC Jewish.

My wife is a Swedish-speaking Finn and one of her sisters in law is a millionaire. When my mil turned 60 she told (not asked) her three children that she wanted to be taken to a posh Japanese spa in Stockholm with the entire family, six adults and six grandchildren, some of whom were toddlers at the time. The trip required two overnight trips on a ferry and three days in a bed and breakfast and the three siblings divided this cost evenly, even though as stated, one brother is married to a millionaire. The other brother's wife was in grad school at the time, and I was unemployed; we were already skimping on our food purchases when she got this bill. They didn't even offer to loan it to us temporarily. (The whole trip was a nightmare because of all the small children, the hideous weather, and the stupid overhyped spa, but that's another rant.) When my wife had a mental health crisis, millionaire sil (a therapist) gave her a reference to a private therapist with the right specialization, but nobody offered to help pay for the therapy so she stopped after social security wouldn't pay any more.

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