No one ever said parenting was easy.

Even when your children are adults, parents may still be relied on to help out, whether for childcare or housing, financially or just emotionally, as their grown-up kids continue to learn to navigate the world.

And for most parents, it is a joy to play this role in their child’s life.

For the parents in this story though, things are a little different.

Read on to find out how their grown-up daughters ended up battling for their support.

AITA for having different expectations for my daughters?

I have two daughters, Maya (27) and Eva (23).

Maya got associates degrees in child development, music education, and psychology, and takes classes part time in special education and school administration to get extra certifications.

Eva completed nursing school a few months ago.

They both live at home to save money.

Let’s see how day-to-day life is for this family.

Maya works a minimum of fifty hours a week.

She’s a nanny to a single mom that works as a nurse, so one week she works from 6am to 9pm three days a week, then the next week she does the same hours four days a week.

She also teaches ballet and music classes at a couple of local schools. When she works back to back shifts at her nanny job she tends to sleep there so she doesn’t have to leave the house by 5:30am.

Eva is burnt out from nursing school so she only works 20 hours a week at a clinic. She works from 9am to 1pm, then goes home. She’s considering quitting all together and going back to school for cosmetology.

Yikes! And all Maya’s work is leading to some friction in the family.

Since Maya works so much, if she starts a load of laundry before work, my wife and I have no problem transferring it to the dryer and folding it for her. Since Eva only works part time, she’s expected to be responsible for her own laundry.

Another difference in expectations is with pet care. Maya is not expected to walk or feed the dogs (a chihuahua mix and what my kids call “the mutt of all mutts”) and cat. Eva is expected to do so three days a week (Eva is also the one that asked for one of the dogs and the cat).

We also tend to do more favors for Maya (dropping off a meal at her work, picking up things for her, or making her a simple meal).

This is especially on the days that she comes home from a fifteen hour shift, and the day she comes back from back to back shifts.

Let’s see where the drama truly started.

Today we reminded Eva to take her clothes out of the dryer before she goes out (she has a habit of starting the washing machine and dryer before going out with friends for hours overnight),

She said that we do Maya’s laundry, so we shouldn’t have a problem doing hers too.

I told her it’s very different doing it for her sister, who works fifteen hours a day, and doing it for her when she’s just going out with friends.

Read on to find out how Eva responded to this.

Now she’s mad about favoritism because Maya doesn’t take care of the pets or pay her car insurance (she uses her car for work, so her boss covers her insurance).

My wife always had a habit of giving in to her, so now she’s saying we should be harder on Maya because if Eva can handle these responsibilities, so can she.

I still think it’s understandable to help the daughter that is working fifteen hours a day, along with a 20-30 minute commute, but not feel that the one that works twenty hours a week needs the same level of help.

AITA?

It’s totally understandable that Maya needs some help from her parents, it sounds like she’s totally overloaded – which makes you wonder why she needs to work so much, alongside her studies, in the first place.

But if Eva is suffering with burnout, to the extent that she’s considering studying for a different career altogether, she might be in need of a little help from her parents too.

If she’s struggling, her parents actions towards Maya are bound to look like favoritism.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.

This person thought that regardless of their work situations, these parents should be treating their daughters equally.

While others thought the parents were severely neglecting their kids’ mental health.

Meanwhile, this Redditor called out their favoritism.

Sure it might be nice to help Maya out with a meal or assistance with her laundry, but the least these parents could do is treat their other daughter, who is suffering from burnout, equally.

Then they need to take a good look at why exactly Maya feels the need to work so hard – whether it has anything to do with trying to gain the approval of her parents.

If they’re not careful, these parents are going to have two severely burned out daughters on their hands.

They need to do better.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.