Redditors who are clearly NOT the favorite child, how did that affect you?

A lot. 4th kid out of 5. 2 boys and 3 girls. My parents made it very clear that they prefer the boys. My dad told me frequently how men are inherently smarter than women. He told me how glad he was he didn't have any more girls after me. They were open about how when they had me they were trying for me, got a girl, so tried again 3 years later and "got their boy." My dad felt like it was a waste of money to send a woman to college when she's "just going to be a mom." (Well, I can't have kids so now I just live a pointless existence, apparently.) My grandfather had left me a little money when he died. $5k that over years in an account turned to $8k. My dad finally said sure he'd pay for me to go to college. But he was actually using the money from my savings account until there was only $50 left that had to be in it to keep the account open. As you can imagine, I didn't last in college much longer. My mom got so angry that I got a ride home for Thanksgiving from a college friend instead of having her come get me that she started throwing things at me while I waited for the ride to come pick me up. Including the big size can of Ovaltine that was brand new. Almost hit me in the head, but I ducked. Growing up, my mother would frequently come raging into my room at 2 a.m. when I was sound asleep and flip the lights on while yelling at me, terrifying me awake, often to my things being thrown at me. Because my room wasn't clean enough and I didn't help out enough. She expected the daughters to do all of the housework and my two older sisters moved out as soon as they could so it was just me. When I needed to take driver's ed she got really angry that I wouldn't do it over the summer like she wanted. I was planning to wait until the school year started because my dad insisted I get a job for the summer and having a class in the middle of the day would be inconvenient for my work schedule. Telling her that made her so angry so slammed on her brakes and came to a full stop on the highway to yell at me. Then she drove home and put the car in park in the driveway, told me to get out, and literally pulled her leg up from the pedals to kick me out of the car so I fell onto the driveway and ordered me to shut the door, after which she drove away. I never finished college and now I am trying to figure out a job to do from home (health reasons). Neither of my sisters finished college either. Both of my brothers have higher degrees, one a Phd and one a law degree. Both make a lot of money, have idyllic families, beautiful houses. My older brother moved away and barely speaks to my parents anymore. My younger brother lives 10 minutes away from them and makes them part of his life. My two sisters never could afford to move very far away. My husband joined the army so we were able to move across the country from them and that was really good for me. My mom is a lot nicer to me long distance. Though the last time I called my dad he angrily answered with "What???" so I don't talk to him as much. I send them emails sometimes so they feel part of my life without actually being part of my life.

Also when I was 13 my dad started telling me I was fat and needed to start skipping lunch. I already was skipping breakfast. He started telling me how many calories were in the things I ate and how much fat and saying I should eat low fat foods instead (it was the 90s when fat was evil but adding a bunch of sugar to low fat stuff was fine...). He bought my wedding dress two sizes too small and said I'd better fit into it. I was anorexic a long time and now I have trouble managing my weight because I don't know what is "normal." As a child he would praise me if I ate everything on my plate and then as an adolescent he was telling me not to eat and was controlling about my weight. I was 115-120 pounds through high school but it needed to be 100. I became so self-conscious about my appearance. I started shaping my eyebrows and wearing makeup. My mom said it looked ugly and my eyebrows look terrible like that.

I wasn't smart, was supposed to be beautiful and ornamental and get married and have babies and look the same again after having babies. But I am smart. I was working on a degree in Geology at school after realizing I wasn't too stupid to do math and science. My husband is very supportive of me and we've been doing our best to get through life. He didn't grow up with much so we were kind of poor for a while before he joined the military. He just got out and went to trades school and is an electrician now. I'm really proud of him. During our time in the military I had a root canal that was botched and they punctured my sinus so bad that they caused nerve damage to my face. I have trigeminal neuralgia now and am in constant pain and dizzy most of the time. That has been hard to adjust to and my family has been fairly harsh about how not having a job makes me a loser. I'm working on it though and will find something I can do.

I just always wondered what life would be like if I'd had parents that acted like they loved me. They would forgive me when I apologized instead of saying they weren't ready and sending me back to my room for hours longer. That helped me prepare for life and didn't tell me how much I couldn't do all the time. I see other people whose parents help them in life and wonder what that is like. What if I had known I wasn't stupid?

/r/AskReddit Thread