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Original poster

£40 on one child Vs £10 on four children

201 replies

Courtney555 · 20/11/2019 11:27

I'm interested on people's opinions on buying Christmas gifts for children.

If, we could skip the "I don't give to receive, spirit of Christmas" and the "well I make the most amazing gifts for 50p a go" stuff and just go with the direct example, and your reasons behind your answer, that would be fab...

So. If family A has one child, and family B has four children, does:

Family A buy £10 gifts for each of the four children in Family B, and Family B reciprocate the £40, but as there is only one DC, it gets a much nicer £40 present?

Family A buy £10 gifts for each of the children in Family B and Family B reciprocate with £10 for the child in Family A. So Family A receive £30 less of gifts.

I see it both ways. What if Family A chose only to have one DC as that's all they could afford, but have to spend £40 on Family B (on the basis that a gift much under £10 per child, is barely worth the bother). But then why should Child A have a far superior gift than the 4 Child B's, shouldn't they all be treated fairly in that respect?

If we could also avoid the silly "well if Family A are that put out, they just need to have 3 more DC! Ahhh ha ha ha ha" that'd be grand Grin

OP posts:
Trewser · 20/11/2019 11:48

Family A buy £10 gifts for each of the four children in Family B, and Family B reciprocate the £40, but as there is only one DC, it gets a much nicer £40 present?

This is what i do with my dsis.

Dandelion1993 · 20/11/2019 11:49

I don't really budget. I ask them what they actually want.

Jojoanna · 20/11/2019 11:49

I probably wouldn’t bother

Gizlotsmum · 20/11/2019 11:50

Even spend on each child.

MollyWeasleysWizardsSleeve · 20/11/2019 11:52

I never even thought about this.
Kids don't give a crap about the value of a gift.
Buy what you can afford.

GaraMedouar · 20/11/2019 11:52

£10 for each child.

dementedpixie · 20/11/2019 11:53

We give £10 to each of my SILs ,6 kids and are lucky to receive anything back for my 2 kids. Maybe a £10 each sometimes. I dont mind too much as we used to give more expensive gifts but cut down to £10 each instead

WhenISnappedAndFarted · 20/11/2019 11:54

Growing up there was four of us and my uncle only had one child. What they used to do was buy something like a board game or a DVD set with a box of chocolates and my parents would buy their child a personal gift.

notso · 20/11/2019 11:56

I'd hate to think gift giving in the family had become about getting out what you put in. I'd rather people just said they didn't want to bother anymore.
I spend similar amounts on each child regardless of how many siblings, I presume there'll be a similar point in each child adult life when the gifts stop so it'll end being reasonably equal anyway.

PinkPonyPalace · 20/11/2019 11:59

Goodness. We wouldn’t sit down and calculate the worth of presents to each other snd calculate our spend on what we ‘expect to receive’.
Spend what you can afford. Have no expectations on what you get back.
Not everything’s a transaction, and it certainly shouldn’t be seen that way among family and friends.
There’s definitely an imbalance in the number of children in both our family and among our friendship group, ranging from no children, to 5, but nobody would be so petty as to work our what each family has spent on giving vs what they’ve received.

user1480880826 · 20/11/2019 12:00

The children didn’t choose whether or not they got siblings so why should they suffer/profit due to it?

£10 gifts for everyone (or whatever you can afford). If you can’t afford gifts for a family who has 4 kids then just say so. No one would make you buy presents for their kids.

tempester28 · 20/11/2019 12:01

No you just have to accept that not everything can be fair. Every child gets a £10 gift. The family with 1 child might have more in the future but this is the situation now.

TheCanyon · 20/11/2019 12:02

I have 4 dc and my dbs both have 1. They buy small gifts for mine and i buy their dc a big gift. Not fair to expect them to fork out £100+ on my dc

Stripyhoglets1 · 20/11/2019 12:03

I'd ask them tbh. Or tell them "please don't feel you have to spend the same on our 3 as we do on xxx, now that we have 3 children" then it's their decision if they do.

Chickychoccyegg · 20/11/2019 12:04

i agree, £10 per child, its irrelevant how many kids are in each family, all the dc should be treated the same.

Trewser · 20/11/2019 12:04

Goodness. We wouldn’t sit down and calculate the worth of presents to each other snd calculate our spend on what we ‘expect to receive’.
Spend what you can afford. Have no expectations on what you get back. Not everything’s a transaction, and it certainly shouldn’t be seen that way among family and friends

My dsis is a single parent on the waiting list for social housing. She was keen to buy my 4 xmas gifts. She has spent approx 40 quid all in. I have bought my niece a 100 gift voucher for a clothes shop. We discussed her spending as little as she could. I can afford it. Money is very important to people who don't have any!

DontGoIntoTheLongGrass · 20/11/2019 12:09

The way I do it with all the little cousins is the same value each regardless of how many siblings they each have.

I spend £50 each at Xmas on my neices and nephews. Dh db has 3 kids, my db has 1. They all receive the same value from us each child. I could not spend £50 on my nephew with no siblings and then spend a third of that each on the others just because they are 1 of 3. I wonder if they would notice and grow to resent being siblings...

We have a single child. I don't expect my SIL with 3 to triple the budget for her 😂

Pukkatea · 20/11/2019 12:09

I'm generally OK with spending a bit more on my siblings with kids than I get in return, because at the end of the day they have to pay for their kids all year round and I don't, so I can't really complain I'm getting a raw deal financially.

unexpectedthird · 20/11/2019 12:10

We are in this situation, we have agreed a £10 limit with SIL.

She has (several) more kids than us but we'd not expect her to make up the difference and we don't begrudge it. My kids get gifts they like, so do hers.

Elbeagle · 20/11/2019 12:10

Just buy them something you think they would like, that you can afford.
But then again, I don’t even spend the same on each of my own children. They have no idea of value, so I just buy them things they’ll like. Cost is irrelevant.

HeyNotInMyName · 20/11/2019 12:11

PROVISO: I am not talking about blended families here
To be honest neither of those.
I dont think the value of the gifts should be done according to how much the other are giving.
Many other things will need to be taken into account, incl how much each family can afford that christmas.
At the very least, each child should receive a present of a similar value each. So if family A gives £10, it shoud £10 for each of the children in family B
And family B gives whatever they like to the child in family A.
I also dont think there should be any comparaison between the families on how expensive the gift for each child is.

For blended families with children coming from family A and family B and the arents are living together
Each child from each family should receive the same amount of money imo.

Original poster
Courtney555 · 20/11/2019 12:13

No one is splitting transactional hairs here.

It's about consistent noticeable difference. £40 of gifts Vs £10..... £75 of gifts Vs £25... year after year.

When I have 3DC, do I say, now £25 per child is ridiculous, because you'll each be spending £75 on my kids, so let's cut it to £10 and that means it's a much more manageable £30 on my three. But then all mine and their children are now getting £10 presents, which is quite a difference in quality, so they all lose out on a decent present because of my brood.

I'm trying to put myself in their shoes. This year, it's £25 on my DS and £25 back to each of their single DC. Next year, they can't be spending £75 on DS, Twin1 and Twin2 combined, so all children in the family presents get reduced to £10 per child...so now they all get something of much less quality because of me, and my 3 still cost them a fiver more in total than last year.

OP posts:
ruralcat · 20/11/2019 12:13

I think it would be nice for all the children to have presents of roughly equal value however if I knew the other family were struggling I wouldn't expect it. This will be our first Christmas with 3, youngest is a newborn so I'm not really expecting anything for her this year.

category12 · 20/11/2019 12:16

Token presents only - like selection boxes, art supplies etc.

Or shareable presents - like a good board-game.

Or agree not to buy presents for the kids and do a family hamper / box of biscuits according to budget.

CryHavoc · 20/11/2019 12:16

I think you're overthinking a bit. I've got an only, we're friends with a family with three girls. Mine is friends with all three. All gifts are around the £10/15 range, and it never crosses my mind to be annoyed that as a family they're spending less on us. I want the kids to have a nice present, and I'd be embarrassed if my friend thought she had to spend more on my daughter to balance things out.

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