£40 on one child Vs £10 on four children

[Courtney555]

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

If it's older kids, say 6+ they love receiving money too, they don't see it as lazy at all. Most people buy gifts because they like to choose, wrap up, see the smiley faces - but my 7 year old loves it when he gets a card with a fiver in! if he got £10 or £20 he'd be over the moon! he feels all grown up and starts thinking about what he can spend his own money on, or save towards (even a day out at the clip n climb or cinema) & I think that's awesome. He got JUST as excited getting a shiny £1 from the tooth fairy last week, keeps reminding me he's got £1 to spend at the shops

If it was causing you that much distress I'd say £10 per kid in a card (or giftcard - still as well received).

My siblings have more children than I do. We all spend a similar amount of money on one another's children. My children don't get more 'per head' spent on them because there are fewer of them. It's never even occurred to me that they should!

I don’t buy for nieces and nephews anymore but when I did I brought more for my DN as she was an only child than my DB brought for my 3 DC. In the OP’s example I’d spend approx £25 on her and my DC would receive a £10 present. Sometimes I’d spent approx £15 on her and then buy her parents a more expensive present or give them a bottle of champagne. It all worked out well.
Now we’ve ditched all the present swapping and spend the money on having a lovely day with relatives.

Financially fine I'd say £10 per other families kid no matter how many kids. Little bit unfair if they're all opening together and lone child of Family B gets £40 in a card, whilst the other kids are pulling out £10s.

When my sister had her second child, I split the money I would normally spend on child one between her two children, so the total amount I spent stayed the same.

FWIW my sister said she thought this was the fairest way - I only have one child and that is not going to change so me paying out double the amount just because she decided to have another child seemed unfair in her eyes.

In reality I don't care at all - I spend what I can afford on them and I expect she does the same. I don't see it as a transaction the way some people do.

I'd spend £20 on each child.

We have this problem, our DC is an only. BIL has 5, so I have had Christmas's where I spent £20 each on the 5 of them (£100) they spent maybe &25 on our DC.

Now I don't have an issue with what they spent on our DC... BUT that year when we were on a budget, I spent more on BIL's kids than we spent on our own DC, which felt very wrong.

Per child here anything else isn’t fair on the individual children in my opinion.

A gift to share for both families.

We have more DC than my DSister.

We buy each buy a big box of chocolates/ sweets for the families to share.

This is so odd.

I would never set an amount for what others spend on my kids!!! They spend what they want to or what they can afford to.

Just let them crack on with whatever they want to spend!!! Also, by the sound of it the twins are / will be babies so won't give a crap about how much money their gift cost for several years.

I do the same. Some years it's more some years it's less. If, one year, I see something perfect that's over my general budget, I buy it. If another year I get a bargain but perfect gift in the sale, I buy it then pocket the difference.

for me each child gets the same - its the children not a family that is getting the presents - so If I was c sibling with no kids all get £10 if I was B parent. As child gets 10 quid if I was A parent, each of the 4 get £10 life is not always equal but I strive to be fair to the recipients

In my day families each bought each other a tin of biccies and no problem

overworked why?

If it felt wrong, you should have just explained you couldn't afford it this year, or got them a smaller gift.

overworked

Surely your Christmas budget is set by you and no one else? If you can't afford to pay £20 per child you should have lowered the budget.

Here its 30 each child. Currently I have 2 and my brother has 1. They are planning on more however so will equal out eventually

We spend £15 each on my DN (X3) who live with my DM and DH's niece gets £30-40, but we have 2 DC that his sister buys for so its only fair as she only has 1 DC!

I actually have 14 nieces/nephews they get a nice selection box each, 1 DS stopped talking to me over it but the others were happy with the arrangement as it was costing us all a lot of money to buy stuff we could get our own DC and save money.

We have five children between us and my brother has two. I buy presents for mine and say they're from Uncle and Aunt Blah and they do the same for their children from me. I have no idea what they spend, or even what they get them 😁

I spend more on the present for my friend with 1 DC as I think she has to spend more on my DC, so I like to spend the same amount back on her.

But other friends won’t know that I spend less per DC on their families, this is just a personal thing I do for my 1-DC friend because I want to.

The gifts don't need to be the same monetary value, they just need to be tailored to the individual children. Most children won't know the difference in pricing anyway.

I set an amount per child and spend about the same on all the children in my life.
It isn't an issue at the moment as it's max two kids but if I had a friend or family member with a large family then I might need to change the budget.

I'd probably reduce it for everyone rather than give some kids a better gift because they happen to be an only child.

We have a bit of a convoluted way with my husband’s family but it works well.

There are 4 couples with 11 kids between them (families have between 2 and 4 kids)
Each child gets a £50 gift from the 3 other families
Means that the children get one decent present of the same value
We split it so we’re all putting the same money into the pot - so everyone pays £137.50 and that covers all the kids. Previously I’d have spent £15 on crap for each of the other 9 so it works out OK.

May not be perfect but works well and all the kids get one decent present than 3 smaller ones

Why are you worried? Just carry on doing what you normally do and let the others figure out for themselves what they want to do about your 3. My mother used to spend five times as much on my sister's one child as my 5 got from her. I couldn't have cared less but the children noticed and didn't understand why their granny did this.

@CareOfPunts I like that idea. Lots of families do secret Santa type things and it's a good idea.

Keep buying presents as you are and let them decide what to gift your 3DC. Maybe they feel fine giving the same amount to all 3. Maybe they will spend slightly less or get a family gift for all of them. My DP's sister is expecting twins. I'm not going to suddenly expect her to spend double on my DD just because I have to buy presents for two children now! I'm happy to give them each a gift without their parents having to match that exact value for my DD. We are all family I find that exact tit for tat present buying completely bizarre.

Most children won't know the difference in pricing anyway.

Of course. And it's not really about the children being aware, and it sort of goes without saying that 1yr old twins don't even know what's going on. I think it's pretty clear this is about what the parents feel on the situation and how fair it is/isn't.

We try to blur the lines a bit. So at Xmas, for larger families we tend to give a family gift plus a token gift for each individual. E.g. family cinema ticket, restaurant voucher, dvds plus treat food or family pass to an event plus small toy & sweets for children, bottle of wine or toiletries for adults (sometimes a joint thing for both the adults).

Then people get individual gifts on birthdays throughout the year.

You’re very thoughtful @Courtney555 to be thinking this through given you’re having a larger family. We’re childless (not through choice) and over the years for family/friends/colleagues we’ve put a lot of thought and spent a fortune on baby shower gifts/children’s birthday presents. I do actually enjoy doing it.

But only two people have ever responded by getting us gifts for significant life events that could be thought of as showing a similar level of interest in our lives- one friend got me a huge bouquet of flowers when I moved jobs and another bought us a lovely new home present. I really appreciated that they did that, really told me a lot about who they are as people.