Dear For Love & Money,
I am the oldest daughter of three siblings. I’m three years older than my brother and 12 years older than my sister. We have a great, tight-knit family, and my parents have always showered us with love.
However, my issue is that my parents have changed their parenting style, and my younger sister is having a very different experience from the one I had, even though my dad still works the same job as he did 12 years ago, and my mom still stays home.
I had to work and take out loans to attend college and cover my lifestyle needs after graduating from high school. However, I found out over the holidays that my sister, who graduates this spring, will attend college entirely on my parents’ dime. She has never had to work a job because they worry it will distract her from her grades.
I barely concealed my anger when I found out, but the more I think about it, the angrier I get. I don’t want to start anything with my parents, and I do like where I am in life, but my late teens and early 20s were really difficult for me, and I am still repaying student loans. I know if I don’t confront them about this now, I’m likely to blow up on them about it eventually. How do I talk to them about this?
Sincerely,
Playing Favorites
Dear Playing,
On a crisp April day in 2004, my mom picked me up from my homeschool co-op with a surprise in the back seat: a tiny baby girl, 15 years my junior. In the early days, I helped my mom care for my little sister, but within a few years, I transitioned to being more like a frequent houseguest after leaving for college. I wanted to bond with my sister during my visits home, but I often found myself distracted by my parents’ brand-new parenting style, in which screen limits ceased to exist and the “Oh come on, you aren’t sick!” of my childhood was replaced with “I don’t think she feels good” every time my sister misbehaved.
Comedian Nate Bergatze has a great bit on this phenomenon, describing his much younger sister apparently being “raised by her best friends” rather than by the tightly structured, rule-heavy parents who defined his own upbringing.
As I was writing this column, I texted my mother to ask her about the disparity. She explained, “As a young parent, you think your kids aren’t bothered or harmed by various external hardships. But as you get older, you see the impact, and so you become more protective of your younger child’s emotional health, and that might look like too much grace.”
My mom’s explanation seems to tally with your experience. Your struggles in your late teens and early 20s are likely the very reason your parents have tried to ease your sister’s entrée to adulthood. This may translate into something that looks like favoritism, but it actually reflects the time and energy they’ve spent reviewing your upbringing and what they wish they’d done differently for you.
There’s also a good chance your parents’ financial situation has improved in the last 12 years, saving steadily despite having the same jobs they’ve always had. Parenting philosophies tend to align with a family’s financial means. For instance, if I have money to spend on the new Nike sneakers that all the cool kids at school are wearing, I’ll build a whole case in my mind around my kid’s self-esteem to justify buying them. However, if I don’t have the money to do so, I suddenly have no interest in raising materialistic conformists. Perhaps your parents valued self-sufficiency when you were coming of age, due to their financial constraints at the time, but now value stability and provision, given they can afford it.
Understanding an explanation, however, doesn’t mean the changes your parents have made for your sister don’t hurt you, or that you need to spare your parents’ feelings about their impact on you. As you alluded to, talking about these things is the best way to keep ourselves from falling out over them.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to have a huge, emotional conversation about it, however. Instead, the dialogue should take the form that best suits your goals. If you want your parents’ financial support to pay off your remaining college debt, I suggest approaching the conversation seriously. Schedule the discussion in advance, and during the meeting, focus on your financial need and only mention your sister’s situation as the reason you felt you could ask. Don’t accuse your parents of favoritism or dwell on your hurt feelings.
You could say something like, “You mentioned paying for my sister’s tuition the other day, and I’m so glad you’re able to do that. I remember how stressful it was for me to work and take out loans during college. I understand that our family’s financial situation was different back then, and I don’t blame you for it. However, now that you’re in a more stable position, I was wondering if you could help cover some of my education costs as well, since I still have a lot of college debt.” This way, the comparison speaks for itself without putting your parents on the defensive.
However, if you’ve accepted the way things are, but would like to address the hurt you feel, I wouldn’t schedule a whole conversation for it. I would simply start talking about it as it comes up — even joking about it, Nate Bargatze-style. For instance, when I texted my mom to get a quote about parenting her youngest very differently than her older children, I didn’t offer a qualifier or soften my reasoning for why she might be an expert on the topic. She knows I feel this way because when my sister dyed her hair blue at 15, I reminded everyone that when I came home from college at 19 with a cartilage piercing, Mom made me take it out.
Your family will likely recognize the real sense of injustice behind your jokes and comments. Sure, it may annoy them, and it will absolutely annoy your sister, but there’s nothing wrong with gently telling your truth. Your parents have changed their parenting style without apology; this is your honest response.
I only gave my mom 10 minutes to respond with a quote because I was on a deadline, after all. She didn’t argue the past; she explained it. Because we all know how it was. We make allowances for one another’s humanity — my entitled demands for quotes, her evolving her parenting style, which I couldn’t reap the benefits of. To me, that’s the real proof of loving families like mine and yours; we can handle the truth because we know what we share is bigger than all of it. We keep these loving relationships strong by not holding resentment or anger inside, but instead addressing those feelings as honestly and constructively as we can.
Rooting for you,
For Love & Money
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