SINGAPORE: A 24-year-old woman took to social media to complain that her parents asked her to contribute S$300 towards their upcoming overseas trip in December, while her older brother is completely exempt.
In her post on the r/SGexams subreddit on Sunday (Oct 12), the woman, who’s currently studying at a local university, explained that this is not the first time her parents showed favouritism towards her brother.
She recalled that from her childhood up to polytechnic, she never managed to save a penny, as her parents would reclaim any leftover allowance at the end of each week.
During her polytechnic internship, they also took “S$100 from her earnings,” despite the money being the product of her own hard work.
After graduating from polytechnic, she began working full-time because her parents insisted she enter the workforce immediately rather than attend university. Even then, she said they took “10% of her salary.”
The woman added that when she eventually decided to go to university after several years of working, her parents never so much as lifted a finger to support her financially. She had to cover her own school fees, daily expenses, food, and essentials such as “shampoo and clothing.”
Throughout all this, she noted, her brother was never once expected to make similar contributions. To rub salt in the wound, her parents even paid his university fees and covered his daily expenses right up until his graduation.
Now, with the scales tipped again and her brother once more completely exempt, she finds the situation unfair.
“Is this reasonable?” she asked the online community. “Because I had this mindset that if we go overseas with parents when we are still schooling, we shouldn’t be asked to pay for an overseas trip with them.”
“Anything to do with $, always announce less.”
In the comments, many Singaporean Redditors criticised her parents for constantly favouring their older son while leaving their daughter to cope entirely on her own.
One wrote, “It’s sad that in this time and age, there are still people who favour a gender. If they are really struggling with bills, ya we can understand but to have differential treatment for different child…totally not comprehensible.”
Another commented, “It’s the typical Chinese parents that favours son > daughter. Please don’t divulge much of your salary, if they ask and it’s S$5k tell them S$3k, if it’s S$3k tell them S$2k..”
“This includes angpao, if they also snatch this kind of thing, you hide in toilet after some angpao received and take half out put in your wallet..Anything to do with $, always announce less, so your 10% given pay is not the real full amount.”
A third wrote, “Not reasonable! I’ve honestly never heard of parents who take the leftovers of their child’s allowance at the end of the week. How would you have had any savings or at least some financial security or freedom? This honestly leads me to believe that they don’t want you to experience financial security and freedom, so they’ll be able to trap you by their side.”
In other news, a local engineering graduate from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), who finished his degree last year and completed three internships—two at university and one at polytechnic—said he is still struggling to find a job despite months of searching.
The graduate, who spoke candidly about his situation on Reddit, explained that when he first began job hunting, he underestimated how “difficult the market would be” and limited his applications to positions directly related to his field of study.
