Stories I Couldn’t Tell Before: I Had to Marry To Get a Car

There are disadvantages to being the oldest child. Although the theory is that oldest children get more of their parents’ attention, this isn’t always something kids relish. And sometimes being the first kid to raise certain issues means parents haven’t thought through their responses yet.

In my case, I remember my parents as graduate students who had few resources. My dad was a manager by the time my two youngest siblings came along. Throughout my childhood, I was the kid held responsible for maintaining order, even when I had little interest in doing so—a responsibility my younger siblings rarely faced. And, most relevant to this story, I paved the way for various adolescent and other growing pains between parent and child.

One of which was the child’s acquisition of a motor vehicle.

Now, I fully admit kids don’t have the right to expect their parents to buy them a car. It’s not grounds for child abuse if the kid has to walk or take public transportation. It’s probably even a good thing.

Nevertheless, by the time I graduated from college at age 20 and headed off to the San Francisco area for law school, I thought it would be really nice to have a car. I’d gone to college in a small, remote town, so a car had not been essential. Even so, there had been enough occasions when I’d had to cajole a ride from friends that I wanted the independence of having my own vehicle. So in the summer of 1976 after my college graduation, when my parents asked me what I wanted for a graduation present, I suggested a car.

“A car!” my mother exclaimed. My dad sat in stony silence. It soon became clear they were thinking more in terms of a stereo.

My feelings were hurt, because they obviously thought I was being avaricious. But I took the stereo, and said no more about a car.

About a year and a half later, In November 1977, I got married. To a guy who owned a 1974 Pinto station wagon. So then I had a car. That’s why I always say I had to get married to get a car.

But here’s the rest of the story:

By the summer of 1978, my parents and grandmother had bought my twenty-one-year-old brother a car. I can’t remember what they got him, but it was a new vehicle. When they informed me of this purchase, which they did rather sheepishly, I raised my eyebrows. The three of them all knew why.

“He’s in Los Angeles,” my dad said. “He’ll need a car.” Like I couldn’t have used a car in the Bay area two years earlier?

“Besides,” my grandmother said. “He’s a boy.” And that’s what I thought it was all about—gender discrimination.

Until several years later, when my parents bought my sister a car. Their excuse then was that she had announced plans to buy herself a ratty old used Yugo, and my father didn’t want her riding around in a vehicle likely to break down at any moment.

Then a few years after that, they bought my youngest brother a car. They didn’t even bother with excuses by that time. Of course, by then I was a practicing attorney and could afford to buy myself a car (which I had done).

Thus, the end result was that my parents bought all their children new vehicles, except for me. And that’s when I realized that my pedestrian status was simply the penalty for being the oldest. And for marrying young. Maybe they would have bought me a car for my law school graduation . . . except I’d already married one.

I did later discuss this peeve with my dad. He didn’t apologize, but he recognized the inequity. And that’s all I’ll ever get.

When did you think your parents treated you unfairly?