If you’re a parent, you know that your kids aren’t always treated exactly equally. You want to give them equal opportunities at big-scale things like going to college and extracurricular activities, but sometimes, whether you intend it or not, one kid will get more than the other. This could be for financial reasons or because kids want to do different things. When I was a kid, my sister went on long road trips with my dad to different MLB stadiums across the country. I didn’t go, not because they wanted to exclude me but because I would’ve had a genuinely terrible time. My parents made it up to me in other ways, like letting me go to a sleepaway theatre camp in Oklahoma because, shockingly, that was more my scene. 

The family in this story is dealing with a form of inequity. The son and father are going on a week-long boys trip, while the mom and daughter are staying at home. When the mom took the daughter to the mall for a shopping spree, the son came home upset that she got so many things and he got nothing.