Being the Golden Child in the family must be nice. 

Your parents adore you, you can never do any wrong, and in this case, you get  $30,000 wire transfer to fund a down payment on a house without any questions asked. This family’s apparent favoritism was enough to drive the youngest daughter, the obvious non-favorite, to threaten no contact with her parents, and I’m thinking they deserve it. 

If you’re a functioning, independent adult, asking for money from your parents always feels weird. As if you’re an 8-year-old begging for spare change from the center console in the family station wagon to buy yourself an ice cream from the truck outside, the underlying desperation behind a parent loan feels positively elementary. Well into our 30s,  parents still see their offspring as the little boys and girls that they raised. This couple’s Golden Child, a lowlife adult man with a lame job, a clunker car, and no aspirations in life, was always going to be their little boy. And in an attempt to make him more enticing to a suitor, they decided to give him $30,000 to buy a house. 

However, the parents forgot one critical detail. They had a daughter, too. She was the one who helped them file paperwork, pay the bills, clean the house, get groceries, and keep the family household put together. Did she get a $30k present? Certainly not. But she was determined to expose their favoritism at face value, challenging the way this family chooses to view their favoritism.