Dear readers, what would your first gut feeling tell you: are you being fair to your children? You probably have a spontaneous emotion about this. But in the end, fairness is a tricky thing. And it’s also a matter of interpretation.
If membership of the football club costs £60 a year, but membership of the tennis club costs £600, is it fair to pay the football-playing child the money you’ve saved? Or is fairness for you more about every child being allowed to pursue a hobby, with the costs not being factored into the fairness equation?
As you can see, the issue is complex. And there are simply different approaches to dealing with it. For some, the financial aspects must be balanced in some way, for others it is the opportunities and the support.
Who in the family needs what?
But even then: maybe one child loves it when you stand on the sidelines – and the other can’t stand it because it makes them feel like they’re being watched. In that case, we wouldn’t do it for the sake of fairness and would still come đŸ˜‰
Ultimately, it is fair to treat each child individually. Can this be said to be a universal formula? Our eldest, for example, inherited her great-grandmother’s car, which she no longer wanted to drive after her 90th birthday.
So do we have to give the twins a car each when they turn 18? And two, because otherwise it would be unfair? That would be nice, but unfortunately it’s not possible. We can’t conjure up more grandmothers to get rid of the cars, but we can’t go into debt now because it would be fair for the children.
Sometimes situations arise in life that are due to the current circumstances or possibilities. And no, we don’t pay the boys compensation for helping our eldest with her flat share rent. In return, they can rest assured that they will also be supported within our means when they leave home. And if that’s not financially possible, then perhaps by helping with cleaning, cooking or tidying up so that they can pursue their part-time jobs. Or whatever. We can’t treat all siblings „equally“
Katharina recently mentioned on the phone that she treats her youngest child differently from the older ones in some respects – and isn’t that obvious? When she only had one child, she could act very differently than she does with three more in the house. Your energy reserves are simply challenged in different ways, so you choose your battles wisely and maybe let some things slide because you’re tired. Not ready for discussions. That’s only human!
Or let’s say you invested in shares or ETFs for your children when they were born. Now one child is doing extremely well, while the other is struggling. What would you say: is it fair that you had the good idea of laying a foundation for both of them, or is it unfair because it means the children will end up with different returns?
When I asked the boys yesterday morning if they felt we treated them fairly, they didn’t even know what we meant. Fairness isn’t a big issue in our everyday life; we never say things like, „Um, we’re paying for tutoring for you, but not for your brother, so he’s getting a compensation payment.“
But even among ourselves as parents, we don’t keep track of things or maintain Excel spreadsheets of expenses or household chores. Whoever is there does whatever needs to be done. Whoever has money in their account pays for the holiday or the car repairs. Or one person pays for the holiday home and the other pays for the hire car. We act more on instinct and less like a business. Here, the rule is: whatever is available can be used by everyone. Depending on what is possible and what is needed. Are you fair to the siblings?
Overall, we can see that it’s generally fairly balanced in terms of how it feels, but we couldn’t tell you which of our children has been the most expensive or cheapest so far, you know what I mean? (What I do make sure is that one child doesn’t get two presents for Christmas and the other gets 16. If that’s the case, I’d rather wrap a few bags of Haribo sweets in gift paper so that it at least looks halfway fair đŸ˜‰).
But what I can say is this: love! Love is distributed equally among all children. They can all rely on us and our unconditional support in the same way. And whoever needs a hug gets one. Anyone who wants to pursue a hobby should be able to do so (although playing football is fortunately quite inexpensive – imagine if they wanted to go gliding or become jockeys). But now I’m curious: how do you handle fairness?
