Dear Mary: My parents give my sister lavish gifts and holidays while my brother and I get nothing. Should I challenge them about it?

"There’s an old saying that goes ‘a son is your son till he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all of your life’." Image: Getty

Mary O’Conor

Question: I am very concerned about our parents’ relationship with my sister and her family. There are three of us ‘children’ of parents who are now in their 60s — two brothers (of whom I am one) and one sister. We are all happily married and love our parents very much as they gave us a great upbringing. But something strange is happening which makes me and my brother upset.

My sister and her husband have great jobs, live in a big house and have plenty of money, yet our parents keep giving them lavish gifts. They pay for their children’s education, they helped them buy a weekend cottage down the country and they bring them on holidays with them to places like Disney World, the Caribbean and even Japan last year. My brother and I get nothing from them apart from the odd birthday card, and our kids get smallish presents at Christmas.