Katharina Buczek
While this thirty-year-old woman has always known that her parents love both her and her twenty-seven-year-old sister– Olivia– equally, she has still carried the weight of an enormous double standard throughout her entire life.
She was always expected to rise to a higher level– to be the accountable, responsible, and hardworking child.
Olivia, on the other hand, was enabled and encouraged to have fun. And whenever she would make a mistake or act irresponsibly, her parents would bail Olivia out.
“For example, when Olivia performed poorly in school due to not making an effort, they would pay tutors to do her homework. But if I genuinely struggled in a subject, they would tell me to figure it out myself,” she recalled.
And the double standard even persisted into adulthood. After she entered college, her parents only financially supported her first two years of undergraduate school. Then, she was left covering the rest of her bachelor’s and master’s degree costs entirely by herself.
But, when it came to Olivia, her parents paid for it all without even batting an eye.
In fact, Olivia wanted to become a nurse, just like her mother and grandmother. Nonetheless, she eventually dropped out and flushed her parent’s investment down the toilet.
And even after that happened, Olivia was still somehow able to convince her parents to invest even more money into her future.
That time, though, they gave her enough funds to launch a candle and bath bomb business– which did not last long, either.
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