We talk a lot about the concept of the golden child versus the scapegoat. The internet is full of blatant parental favoritism, but stealing one child’s entire future to fund another child’s terrible choices is a whole new level of toxic. One mother on Reddit is currently getting absolutely roasted for doing exactly that, and the details of her story will leave you completely speechless.
The Original Poster is a forty eight year old single mom with two daughters. The older daughter is twenty four years old and just gave birth to her fourth child. Let us do the math on that real quick. She has four kids before she is even old enough to legally rent a car without a surcharge. She used to be a dishwasher but had to quit due to severe back pain and a broken tailbone stemming from her previous pregnancies.
The older daughter tried to get a temp job doing data entry but was let go after a week because she could not learn the system. The OP actually blames the supervisor for being uptight and ruining her daughter’s reputation at the agency. Meanwhile, the twenty eight year old boyfriend works part time at Walmart. He claims he will look for a better job eventually, but right now he is just too busy with the holidays to secure basic employment for his massive family.
The OP works at a nursing home and struggles to get full time hours herself. Her ex husband ran up massive debt and fled the country. But despite this financial nightmare, the OP managed to save up a college fund for her seventeen year old younger daughter. The fund has enough money to cover a large chunk of community college, giving the teen a solid chance at building a stable, debt free future.
Naturally, the older daughter’s chaotic life finally caught up with her. The landlord discovered that the couple was secretly housing the boyfriend’s brother and his girlfriend in their tiny one bedroom apartment in exchange for rent money. That means there were four adults and four children crammed into a single bedroom. The landlord obviously evicted them for violating the lease.
To make matters even more ridiculous, the boyfriend actually got a job offer one state away. A rational person with an evicted family of six would pack their bags and take the out of state job immediately. But the older daughter and her boyfriend were depressed about leaving their “support network.” Translation: they did not want to leave the people who constantly clean up their messes.
They went crying to the OP and asked for financial help so they could stay in town. The OP looked at her grandchildren and decided her ultimate duty was to protect the most vulnerable members of the family. So she picked up the phone, accepted the massive financial withdrawal penalties, and liquidated her seventeen year old daughter’s entire college fund.
Let us process the sheer audacity of this decision. The OP is rewarding her adult daughter for having four kids she cannot afford and getting evicted for sneaking illegal tenants into a one bedroom apartment. To fund this bailout, she is robbing her youngest child of the one tool she actually needs to escape this cycle of generational poverty.
The OP casually informed her youngest daughter that the money was gone. The teenager reacted with chilling maturity. She went completely cold, looked right at her mother, and said she hoped the OP would remember this exact moment. That is not just a witty comeback. That is the sound of a relationship bridge being permanently burned to the ground.
The seventeen year old has not spoken to her mother since. Instead of throwing a tantrum, she spent her Thanksgiving networking with family friends to see if local hospitals were hiring college students for kitchen or reception work. She also made a heartbreaking social media post about realizing she can no longer study her passions and must strictly pursue a technical degree guaranteed to land her a high paying job.
The OP is undeniably the ahole. She has taught her oldest daughter that bad behavior has zero consequences and taught her youngest daughter that her future is entirely disposable. The boyfriend literally refused to job hunt because of holiday plans, and the OP subsidized his laziness with her teenager’s hard earned tuition money.
The youngest daughter is learning a brutal lesson about self reliance, but her incredible work ethic proves she is going to be massively successful. We just hope she remembers this exact moment when her mother and sister inevitably come asking her for money in ten years. What would you do if your parent stole your college fund to bail out a sibling? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!