to think grandparents do not have to ttoreat their step grandchildren exactly the same way as their blood grandchildren? Part 2

By all means disagree 🤷🏻‍♀️

I have no idea, any more than you do, as to the finer details of their financial set up, or whether OP’s DD is spending more than she otherwise would. They may very well be living, for the most part, a lifestyle he can afford to contribute his 50% towards when it comes to their shared child (excluding horse riding and school of course), whilst also covering whatever costs are associated with his eldest children.

I still disagree. However much you try to deny it, he is married to the OP’s DD, so the money he earns is family money and he is now family. A significant proportion of that family money is diverted to his other children, as it will also be when he dies. As a consequence, more of the OP’s money is required now to fill the void, because family money is going to the stepchildren.

Clearly equality is not the aim. Nor is equity. The aim is to ensure that the grandchildren stay in their private school and the sil take more responsibility for his children’s problems, rather than expecting his mil to open her purse to help him solve them, which is fair enough. Meanwhile, he appears to deal with the schism between his old and new families by being a wet blanket who leaves all decisions about his children and their consequences to other people to deal with, even when he can see the harm that is doing them.

Sure, their father can’t contribute the same amount as he would if he only had the younger two children, but that does not mean the family wealth of the maternal family is being spent on anyone other than those they intend for it to benefit. It isn’t money being spent on the stepchildren.

Who knows? He may not have been able to afford to, or be willing to, contribute regardless.

If equality is the aim, are the mother of the six children, and her parents/aunts/uncles/siblings, and the father of her two younger children and his parents etc etc spending equally on all six?

Do the OP’s step-grandchildren see more or less of their biological grandparents? Presumably OP has met the son-in-law’s parents, are they too taking the view that OP should greatly increase her financial support for their grandchildren?

The fact is, the family is less well off because the dh has six children to support. It is quite frankly ridiculous to argue otherwise, especially when the OP is moaning so much about there being so many of them. I’m sure if it weren’t for the four inconvenient step-children, the OP wouldn’t actually need to be funding quite so much of her grandchildren’s lifestyles from her own money.

Now I wonder how careful the biological grandparents, great-aunts and uncles of the OP’s four step-grandkids’ other step-siblings, with whom they live, are to spend equally on their own two grandchildren, and their four step-grands, and hey, surely they should think of their daughter-in-law’s ex-husband’s two children with his second wife…

If my DD marries her boyfriend, and his son becomes my step-grandson, he will still get as much as he’s been getting from his own bio grandparents, my DGS will still get what he’s been getting from me (which isn’t much, I spend £30, not £300 or £3000).

That it does.

The hyperbole is off the charts in this thread. Who knew there was no middle ground between Little Lord Fauntleroy and the Little Matchgirl?

It’s not a case of ‘of course family wealth is diluted’ at all. Finances don’t have to be merged, and there are ways to protect family assets.

Op’s family wealth is not being diluted because it’s not being spent on her daughter’s stepchildren. For all we know her daughter keeps her finances completely separate to those of her husband as well, given that he has a financial responsibility she does not share.

I’m not sure how the SIL is a monster because he and his wife have agreed between them that she and her mother will cover the costs of private school. He’s treating his children equally in fact, by not paying for private school for any of them.

No, the problem for some posters is nothing to do with the OP as grandparent maintaining a status quo not of her creation, it’s to do with the way the OP’s dd and sil have rubbed the inequalities in the step-children’s faces, and the way the OP defends that. And yes, of course the family wealth is diluted by a marriage to a man who already has four other children to support - either that makes the family less well off than it would otherwise be, or he’s a monster who won’t pay towards his own children.

Lol, OP’s hasn’t been diluted either, which is precisely the problem for some posters.

Yes, they are indeed the responsibility of their biological parents.

Very against gift buying for SC.

Poor plebeian children, those of us suggesting someone buys them a small gift should be ashamed of ourselves. They deserve dust, and to spend their Christmas in the shed.

🤣There is self-evidently nothing whatsoever in this situation to feel jealous about. I’m not the person whose family wealth has been diluted by inconvenient clingons, as they appear to be viewed. Ooohh, there are just so many of them. How can anyone possibly be expected to include them in anything nice? They are their biological parents’ responsibility and nobody else’s, don’t you know?

I believe I’m agreeing with you.

You’re obsessed.

Yes. All children should have gifts, unless you’re the Grinch. If for some reason your family don’t want to do that, please do the right thing and hand them out separately.

Indeed - so why on earth should they be paid for?

Agreed.

It’s worse then “have” and “have not.” Here it seems to be “have,” and “get off our stuff!”

Who fall under the category of ‘anyone else’s children’.

Believing that you are owed a share of something that isn’t yours, that you have no claim to as either their dependent or debtor, is at the very least entitled behaviour, and likely a
mindset that will result in those that have it being quite disappointed and dissatisfied with life.

It doesn’t need to be ‘about need’, given there’s more to quality of life than merely the bare necessities (unless you’re a fan of Stoicism, I suppose).

But these aren't step kids. You said yourself the family might meet them only once. Not a great comparison, imo.

Like her step children????!