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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
How would you feel?
The board has been super slow so let's pick it up!
How would you feel if a sibling of yours or sibling of your spouse's was treated a lot better or worse than you (or your spouse)?
Like what if your parents or ILs often paid for stuff for you but not your sibling or sibling-in-law? What if your parent or IL was a trades person and did work for one sibling all for free and charged the next at the rate or above what any other trades person would charge? (regardless of who has more money and assuming all siblings are also adults)
Would you speak up? Would you just accept it and not tell the sibling? Would you go out of your way to pay for yourself?
Re: How would you feel?
Funny you ask this...this is DH's family.
He has an older sister and older brother. SIL is the obvious favourite. MIL quit her job to babysit SIL's kids for free. She always buys them stuff. She sees them everyday (she visits when she's not babysitting.) She does SIL's laundry and cooks her meals.
My kids had to go to daycare, and she visits here rarely. But, I will say this... I love my MIL but she does tons of stuff that gets on my nerves. I am glad she is otherwise occupied with SIL's kids, because that means there is less time to annoy me. And, my kids will be raised how I want, and not how MIL wants.
Before I had kids, it bothered me how the boys were treated so badly compared to SIL, but now I just don't care. I try to model myself oppositely, I don't want my kids to see an obvious favourite in the family. I want to treat them all equally.
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This is also the situation in DH's family except somehow DH is the favoured child. Why, I don't know. He's the oldest and his brother who is two years younger than him is quite successful as is his wife. We are kind of middle of the road I guess. DH is in appliance sales and I'm a teacher but I don't have a job yet for the fall so I'm on EI but we're doing fine. He also has two sisters.
FIL regularly pays for things for us. He recently bought us a garage door opener, he pays for DH's meals and paid recently when we were out for dinner with them (which is unusual for them as they always split the bill and everyone pays for themselves). Today we were out with parents in law, BIL, SIL and nephew for lunch and BIL and SIL excuse themselves well after the meal because our nephew was getting hungry and they hadn't brought his food (as we had gone straight from church). They went up and paid because the bill hadn't been brought and no mention was made of how the bill was being done. We were prepared to pay for ourselves but soon after they left the rest of us were getting ready to leave and FIL tells us that they'll pay for the bill. I just said casually. Oh BIL and SIL already paid to which he said "That's alright". As if he wouldn't have paid for them even if they hadn't left sooner.So we thanked them but even though they (BIL and SIL) don't know that we didn't pay I feel really bad.
BIL often feels really uncared for by FIL because he often just does stuff for us and won't do anything for him although he will ask and/or tries to build a good relationship with his dad. His dad will talk about DH like he's all that to BIL and be really competitive with BIL in strange and bizarre ways (like features in a vehicle). I don't know if this is based on FIL identifying with DH's "struggles" and he feels like BIL and SIL make so much money (which is because they work super hard and make good investments) that he doesn't need to "help" them. But we're not doing badly for ourselves.
He also wired SILs (new build) house for little if anything and charged BIL full price for the same service and then threatened to sue him when he didn't want to pay the extra 1000 for work that was in the estimate but he felt he should be paid more for. He also changed several lights in our house for free.
I don't think income has anything to do with how you should treat your children and it makes me really sad and upset and we're on the receiving end of the "good" treatment.
I always tease my mom that my youngest brother is her favourite, but when I really think about it I know that she treats us all really well and equal for the most part. I just think that he got away with much more than I did when I was his age, and when I was younger that really annoyed me.
Now I do feel that our spouses/significant others are treated differently by my mom, and that kind of bothers me. She makes it blatantly obvious that she loves my brother's girlfriend and wants them to be married, have kids, etc. She hasn't really been that way with my husband or my other brother's fiancee, and I know that they have noticed. In her defense though, my youngest brother's gf is really sweet and I want her to be my SIL too.
I never thought about what it would feel like to be the favoured one, like in your case, but I guess it could feel awkward to be put in that position.
roses, that's so weird. It actually sounds more like he doesn't like/value/? BIL and needs to prove it by helping your husband and SIL. And how crappy to take advantage of a child by not only insisting on more money then you quoted but threatening to sue. Pretty sure he wouldn't have done that to any other client. It sucks more that you're aware of it but there doesn't seem to be a way to put a stop to it since it's minor things that don't seem worth causing a fight by turning down.
My BIL does seem to get more but it's more because he is more likely to ask or volunteer details on his finances (our pride won't let us). So it's not that he's favored as much as we don't ask for as much.
My mom thought she had this problem because her mom was always "your SIL did this isn't it wonderful" or "SIL is so great" statements until she said something sarcastically to SIL and learned that on SIL's end she was getting the same about my mom. So it was more my grandma just wasn't praising the person to their face and figured they should know she's proud.
DH and I were *just* talking about this on the weekend! This def describes DH's family. I have strong opinions about this but, given that the situation involves DH's fam, I have bitten my tongue.
BIL is the ultimate mooch. He is 34 years old, takes NO responsibility for anything, relies 110% on his parents to support him financially (and his common-law and hjer 2 kids, their 1 child together, and the son he had here with a previous spouse). The worst part is that he is ungrateful. He *should* be humiliated and embarassed that he made a series of choices (all of which people warned him were bad) that has resulted in his relying on his parents to buy food and pay the bills. He's not. And THAT bugs me. He has zero ambition, no desire to improve his situation. He boo hoos about how bad his life is and then ignores all advice about how to make his situation better. I guess it's just easier to have mom and dad pay.
My issue is not that we don't get the same stuff that he does. My concern is is that DH's parents are so easily manipulated by him that they sacrifice more than they can to provide for him. They are retired now, and their income has dropped, but his expectations of them haven't. He lives in BC so they are *constantly* going back and forth, paying for his kid's flights, etc, paying their bills...it's getting out of hand. I also believe that he is setting a horrible example for the children he has. I believe strongly that he should be modelling for them the figure of a man as doing whatever is required to provide for hi family. Working hard, admitting and learning from mistakes and making sure that he can stand up proudly about being a provider (even if that's just a provider of basic food and shelter).
DH recently broached the subject with his dad. Told him that he was not speaking as a child worried about his inheritance, but speaking as a financial planner and someone concerned about some of the financial decisions that he is making in regard to BIL. He told his dad that he isn't helping him by dolling out cash. The best way to help him (which is what ILs claim they want to do) would be to provide him with a loan (or gift) to help him learn new tools to have more earning capacity. And that would be the end of the cash.
Much to DH's shock, FIL agreed that he had been thinking much the same thing lately. FIL said he felt guilty, lilke they had failed in some respect with BIL, that they felt obligated to "help" him. But that, given the change in their income, they just couldn't continue to do it.
Long winded, sorry.
I see alot of favortism in my extended family. Fortunately it doesn't really exist too much in our immeadiate families.
My cousins that I am very close with there is 3 adult female children that are the same age as my two sisters and I so we spent alot of time together. Growing up there mom and dad treated them equally. Now they all are married with 2 or 3 children each. Well the middle daughter got breast cancer a couple years ago that was treated and has not come back since. Now their mom extremely favours this daughter. Absolutely anything that she needs she gets. She is SAHM and her husband doesn't make much money but they have a bunch of kids and there is a financial short fall every month. Their mom pads their income by about 20 to 30 G's a year. This daughter can do no harm in her eyes. She raises her children perfectly and has no flaws well the other daughters get complained about all the time and if they need financial help they are demeaned by her insulting their career choices. Their mom is very critical of the way they raise their children as well. Its very hurtful to the other daughters and they are struggling alot with it. Its sad because their mom is tearing the family apart.
My mother growing up had some pretty bad favortism in her family. The oldest daughter was the favorite and the other two children often suffered physical and emotional abuse that the eldest escaped. Since my mom experienced this growing up she has always made sure to treat her three children very equally.