Recently I have fallen out with my mum over this which has been an issue which has been simmering for some time. My mum has made it crystal clear she feels I am the one being unreasonable; but I feel unable to quite let it go and feel like I am at least partly justified to feel the way I do.
My husband and I have a toddler and another on the way. He also has two children from a previous marriage aged 11 and 13 that stay with us half the week. We both have decent jobs and own our own home although I wouldn’t say that we live an extravagant life style and I don’t spend much money on myself as just making sure our bills are paid and our children have everything they need seems to take up most of our income.
My sister also has three children. Her older two are 12 and 9 and her youngest is 8 months. She recently split with her husband and then (accidentally!?) managed to fall pregnant with his baby that he then failed to financially support her with. She has never worked since her oldest was born whereas I returned to work four days a week to quite a stressful occupation when my little one was nine months old.
My parents have always financially helped her out but since she split with her husband this has escalated or maybe I just perceive it more as I can’t help now we both have children compare more. Recently as my sister had to move out her married home they helped her get a rented home and are now topping up her rent every month. It was upon the understanding that my sister would look for work to top up the rent herself but this isn’t materialising and my sister has said to me that she isn’t particularly keen to get a job and to be honest I don’t feel she has much of an incentive to as she knows my parents will continue to foot the bill while she isn’t.
I wouldn’t particularly have an issue with this if it wasn’t for the fact that my sister affords to pay for things that I can’t, such as regularly getting her hair and nails done, buying herself and her kids lots of clothes. Also my mum charges me for looking after my children two days a week while I am at work and yet she’s always running around after my sister and looking after her kids for free and I feel like the money I’m paying her is sort of being redirected towards my sister.
However what brought it to a crunch was that for all my sisters children including her latest my mum bought them all a prank. To be fair she did this also for my son but it has fallen to bits now and will need replacing for the new baby. I assumed that she would also buy this baby a pram but when I brought this up my mum acted a bit affronted and said that she wouldn’t be able to afford to with her current circumstances and that me and my husband should be expected to buy our own given that we both earn decent amounts. I think this is unfair but I’m also upset that my mum keeps bringing up with me how she doesn’t feel that she can keep on paying my sisters rent and that she may have to go back to work to be able to do this. She keeps saying that she intends to go back to work almost as soon as I go on maternity leave and therefore I feel I can wave goodbye to any support (practical) I might get from her during this period. It upsets me a bit as she is all over my sister at present offering to look after her children even though the other two are at school all day, running her around everywhere as she can’t drive, and then I feel like she’s implying that I can just manage without even though at times I will have four children in the house on my own and two small children with me all day. It upsets me that my mum and I are suffering the implications; yet no word seems to have been passed that maybe he onus should be upon my sister to face up to her responsibilities or otherwise get a house that’s within her means.
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AIBU?
Am i being unreasonable in my perceived favouritism of my parents treatment of my sister over me?
39 replies
Carter7654 · 19/03/2019 21:54
OP posts:
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