I sent my parents $550 every friday so they could “live comfortably.”

The notification chimed on my phone every Friday morning at exactly 9:00 a.m., as regular and unforgiving as a heartbeat. Transfer complete: $550.00 to Margaret and Robert Chen. For three years, I watched that money leave my account with a mixture of resignation, guilt, and the deep-seated belief that this was simply what good daughters did.

My name is Sarah Chen-Thompson, and at twenty-seven years old, I had already become an expert at sacrifice. Not the grand, heroic kind that gets written about in books, but the slow, grinding type that happens in $550 weekly increments. The kind that shows up in generic-brand cereal, secondhand clothes for my daughter, and the particular exhaustion that comes from working fifty-hour weeks while your husband works two jobs just to keep the lights on.

“We’re three hundred dollars short on rent,” Marcus said that Wednesday evening in early October, his voice careful as he studied our bank statement. We sat at our small kitchen table—a hand-me-down from his parents, wobbling on one uneven leg—in our modest two-bedroom apartment. The fluorescent light above us flickered intermittently, something our landlord kept promising to fix but never did.

Marcus ran his finger down the column of expenses, his brow furrowed in that way that made him look older than his twenty-nine years. “We had to put groceries on the credit card again. The car payment is due next week. And…” He paused, his finger stopping on the recurring transfer line. “$550. Same as always.”

My stomach clenched. We’d had this conversation before, though Marcus was always gentle about it, always careful not to make me feel attacked. He understood family obligation—his own parents had struggled when he was growing up, and he’d helped them when he could. But his help had been occasional, manageable. Mine was a weekly hemorrhage that never seemed to stop.Family games

“They need it,” I said, hearing the defensiveness in my own voice. “You know how tight things are for them.”

“I know,” Marcus said softly, reaching across the table to take my hand. His fingers were rough from his second job doing construction work on weekends, calluses that hadn’t been there when we first met. “But things are tight for us too, babe. We have Lily to think about.”

As if on cue, the sound of blocks tumbling in the living room was followed by our four-year-old daughter’s delighted giggle. I turned to see her through the doorway, sitting cross-legged on our threadbare carpet, building and rebuilding a tower with the concentration of a tiny architect. Her dark hair was pulled back in pigtails I’d done that morning, already coming loose. She was wearing pajamas we’d bought from the clearance rack at Target, one size too big so she could grow into them.

Everything we did was for her. Every sacrifice, every extra shift, every skipped meal so we could afford the good snacks for her lunchbox. She deserved everything—a stable home, new clothes that fit properly, birthday parties with more than the bare minimum, maybe even a college fund someday. But so did my parents. Didn’t they?

“I’ll pick up extra shifts,” I said, the same response I always gave. “Janet asked if anyone could cover the weekend rush at the restaurant. I’ll do it.”

Marcus’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue. He never did. He knew how deep this obligation ran in me, how thoroughly it had been woven into my understanding of what it meant to be a daughter. He also knew that pushing too hard would only make me dig in deeper, defensive and guilty in equal measure.

“Okay,” he said finally, squeezing my hand before letting go. “But Sarah, we can’t keep doing this forever. Something has to change.”

I nodded, but in my heart, I didn’t believe him. My parents had raised me. They’d fed me, clothed me, put a roof over my head for eighteen years. When they called saying they couldn’t make their mortgage payment, couldn’t afford their car insurance, couldn’t pay for my dad’s medication—what was I supposed to do? Say no? Walk away? What kind of daughter would that make me?

My relationship with my parents had always been complicated in ways I didn’t fully understand until adulthood. Growing up, I’d internalized a simple equation: love equaled performance. Good grades meant affection and praise. Accomplishments meant attention. Disappointment meant silence, or worse—the tight-lipped martyrdom my mother wore like armor, making it clear through every sigh and loaded pause that I had let her down, that I had caused her pain, and that I should feel appropriately guilty about it.

My mother, Margaret Chen, was a second-generation Chinese-American who had grown up poor and clawed her way into middle-class respectability through sheer determination and a nursing degree. She had clear ideas about success, about family duty, about the kind of life I should build for myself. Those ideas did not include getting pregnant at twenty-three while working retail, unmarried, and without a college degree.

When I told her about the pregnancy, she didn’t scream or cry. That might have been easier. Instead, she went very still, her face hardening into an expression I knew too well—disappointment so profound it was almost physical.

“How could you do this to us?” she’d said, her voice quiet and sharp as a blade. Not how could this happen or are you okay or what do you need. But how could I do this to them. As if my unplanned pregnancy was an act of aggression specifically designed to hurt my parents.Family games

My father, Robert, had stood behind her as always, arms crossed, saying nothing but nodding along with every word she spoke. Dad had always been the gentler parent, but his gentleness came at a price—he never contradicted my mother, never stood up for me when her criticisms cut deep, never acted as a buffer. His kindness was passive, well-meaning but ultimately useless when I needed actual protection.

They’d come around eventually, or so it seemed. They showed up at the hospital when Lily was born, held her with appropriate grandparent wonder, took photos, made cooing sounds. My mother had even cried, which I’d taken as a sign of acceptance. But looking back now, I wondered if those tears had been less about joy and more about the death of whatever image she’d held of my future—the successful, educated, properly married daughter she’d hoped to show off to her friends.

Six months after Lily’s birth, Marcus and I got married in a simple courthouse ceremony. We couldn’t afford anything more, and honestly, we didn’t want a big production. Just us, our baby, and a commitment to build a life together. I’d thought it was romantic in its simplicity.

My mother didn’t speak to me for a week afterward.

“How could you rob us of walking you down the aisle?” she’d said when she finally called, her voice thick with manufactured hurt. “How could you deprive us of that moment? Don’t we mean anything to you?”

I’d apologized. Of course I’d apologized. That’s what I always did. I apologized for getting pregnant, for getting married wrong, for failing to meet expectations I hadn’t even known existed until I’d already fallen short of them.

Still, they were my parents. They’d fed me, housed me, and paid for my childhood. Surely that meant something. Surely that created an obligation that couldn’t simply be dismissed because our relationship was difficult.

So when they started having “money troubles” two years after Lily was born—when my mother called crying about the mortgage, when my father mentioned his hours being cut at the hardware store, when they painted a picture of impending financial disaster—I didn’t hesitate.Family Law Resources