It doesn’t matter whether you’re the golden child or the family screw up… parents will choose favorites based on their parenting style. If they live and breathe helicopter parenting, then they’ll favor the child who lacks independence and desperately needs direction. If they’re lenient parents who prioritize independence, then the natural-born leader will be winning their parents’ favoritism. Not all families work this way, obviously, but in the family situations that do work this way, this is usually the formula for disaster.

In this next story, a 30-year-old man explains that his aimless brother is about to be evicted from his apartment, and their parents aim to dip into their retirement savings to keep him afloat. The issue with that, though, is this guy’s brother has been in and out of trouble for as long as he can remember, yet he was always bailed out by his parents and has never learned from it. See how the story unfolds below.