During a visit home from university one weekend, my relationship with my parents and siblings shifted for ever. The moment itself was innocuous enough, marked simply by my younger sister skipping out of the front door of the family home in Devon and announcing she was off for a driving lesson.
‘But how are you paying for it?’ I responded. ‘You’re still doing A-levels, you don’t even have a job!’
Haughtily, she replied that our parents had forked out for a course of lessons — knowing full well that when I’d turned 17, they’d said they couldn’t afford to pay for me to learn to drive.
It marked the start of three decades of financial favouritism, during which time Mum and Dad, who I love dearly, have continually offloaded significant chunks of cash to my sister, brother and their children. Meanwhile, my two children and I have received nothing.
Since that day, my parents have paid for cars, insurance, deposits on houses and even exotic holidays for my siblings, who are now in their late 40s and still live in our hometown, while I’m now 53 and have called London home since graduating.
This anonymous writer admits that financial favouritism has defined her relationship with her parents, now both 81, and her siblings (file image)
Whenever they’ve maxed out their credit cards, guess who’s paid off the balance? Utility bills a bit of a stretch? Just ask Mum and Dad.
When their own children came along — they have two each, now in their 20s, just as my children are — our parents funded prams, then school uniforms, driving lessons, first cars, university tuition fees, laptops and mobile phones. They even paid my brother’s legal fees when he went through a costly divorce.
The list is endless, to the tune of several hundred thousand pounds, all paid for out of our parents’ savings — and that’s just the things I know about.
Financial favouritism has defined my relationship with my parents, now both 81, and my siblings.
But it’s not the money I care about — although it definitely would have come in handy over the years. No, it’s the obvious questions it raises: do my parents love my siblings more than me? And if so, why?
The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that I’m being ‘punished’ somehow for being the one who moved away from the flock in order to carve out a successful career as an HR director in the City.
Until that day when my sister dropped her driving lesson bombshell, our parents had genuinely treated us the same.
Gifts, clothes and treats had always been distributed evenly. Until I, the eldest child, left home to go to university. Suddenly, and profoundly, a line was drawn under any semblance of fairness.
Perhaps the most painful example of the financial favouritism was when I got married in France. Mum and Dad didn’t come because they said they couldn’t afford to — they were very secretive about their money at the time — which broke my heart.
I offered to pay for both of them, but their response was that they would never attend a wedding abroad, even their own child’s, because it wasn’t traditional.
Seven years later, my sister also got married in France and — you’ve guessed it — my parents went to the wedding! When I challenged them about it and said how hurt I was, my father said nothing, and my mother just refused to discuss it.
I work hard at not betraying my feelings on the subject to my parents. Upsetting them and causing a rift that might not be healed by the time they die is a risk I’m not prepared to take. With my siblings, however, it’s a different matter.
It all came to a head five years ago, when my brother casually mentioned in a phone call that Mum and Dad had paid off his £5,000 credit card balance.
‘Enough! This has to stop!’ I told him. ‘Your expectations of Mum and Dad simply aren’t fair.’
The anonymous writer says her siblings are middle-aged with respectable careers and shouldn’t be going ‘cap in hand’ for handouts from their elderly parents
Unmoved, he replied: ‘It’s their money, they can do what they like with it. You’re miles away, you want for nothing.’
Granted my husband, who works in property, and I earn good money and we have a lovely lifestyle, but my siblings have respectable careers of their own in education and hospitality.
And they’re middle-aged for goodness’ sake. They shouldn’t be going, cap in hand, for handouts from their elderly parents.
My brother didn’t stop there, though, ranting that, while I live in a five-bedroom house with the mortgage paid off, his and my sister’s properties are far smaller.
He then added, cruelly, that as I live 200 miles away, he and my sister will be the ones looking after our parents should they become ill or infirm, so they ‘deserve’ the extra financial help now.
Incredulous, I immediately called my sister, only to receive a similar response. ‘You’re the one who chose to move away, you’ve got plenty of money!’ she said. We ended up not speaking for 18 months, and inevitably, the reason for our falling out filtered back to Mum and Dad.
They were a bit distant for a while, not calling me as often or being slightly cooler when we did speak, which was upsetting.
Most painful is that as a mother myself, I could never imagine treating my children differently in any way, be that with my love, time or money.
To me, it’s irrelevant whether one has a better job or greater income, you simply don’t do for one what you can’t — or won’t — do for the other.
However, when a close friend died in 2021, my grief was compounded by the sudden realisation that, despite everything, my family were too important not to be a part of my life.
I sent my parents, brother and sister the same text, saying: ‘We haven’t spoken for a while. I feel it’s time for us all to move forward now.’ Mum replied straight away, saying it was lovely to hear from me and to call any time. I did just that the same day.
We deftly stepped around the subject of money and my sister called to say how happy she was to hear that Mum and I had spoken.
Though willing to make up with me, she and my brother’s stance hadn’t changed a jot, however.
As far as they were concerned, it was my tough luck that I didn’t get the same handouts as them and I was just going to have to suck it up.
It was the same for my children, too. They’ve had to accept that their four cousins get financial help from their grandparents, while they never receive a penny.
Luckily, they just accept the situation as something that has happened purely because we live so far away.
The whole saga made me resolve to always treat my children exactly the same, to the point that I have always kept a spreadsheet detailing any financial help or presents each of them has had from their father and me.
For example, when they were at university, my son’s annual rent was £7,000 while my daughter’s was only £6,200. I gave her £800 cash to redress the balance in the money we’d provided to them for rent, but sat them both down and explained it first.
Throughout their lives I’ve always had identical budgets for gifts for them at Christmas and birthdays, while also encouraging them to be financially savvy and self-sufficient. Forever giving children cash doesn’t do them any favours in the long run.
When they reached 18, I charged them a nominal £50 a month each for board and lodgings to teach them about financial responsibility. During their university years, we encouraged them to take on bar work to help with living costs, just as I’d done to pay my own way through studying, which they both willingly did.
Now embarking on their working lives in law and surveying respectively, they have a terrific work ethic and money sense and have never asked me for money.
The same can’t be said for my nieces and nephews, who continue to dip into the bank of Grandma and Grandad.
Today, I’m in a better place and the relationships I have with my parents and siblings are improved, if not close, but only because I’ve decided not to allow the ongoing favouritism to consume me.
However, my brother is currently renovating a wreck of a house, funded mostly by my parents, and privately I still feel incredibly hurt. It’s clear I’m not regarded as an equal.
Still, I take comfort from the fact my own children will never be left questioning my love for them or feeling resentful of one another, knowing that we have invested in them equally in every sense of the word.
■ As told to Sadie Nicholas
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