My Parents Wanted Me And My Siblings To All Look Identical.

The Third Parent and the Long Road to Scotland

My parents expected me to cancel my honeymoon to babysit my younger siblings for free. The text from my mother appeared on my phone screen at 6:23 a.m. while I was standing in the customs line at Heathrow airport, and the first three words made my knees actually buckle.

“Emergency family meeting.”

I watched my wife Lily’s face as she read over my shoulder. I watched her expression shift from sleepy contentment to concern to something harder—anger maybe, or recognition.

We’d been married exactly 19 hours. We’d spent the last 8 months planning this trip to Scotland—the Highlands, the distilleries, the castle hotels we’d saved $11,300 to afford.

And my mother’s next message, arriving before I could even process the first, read, “Your sister Mackenzie broke her leg. Someone needs to watch the kids. You need to come home today.”

Not, “Can you come home?” Not, “Is there any way need?” Like I was an employee she could summon at will.

I’d been the oldest of five for my entire 27 years, but I’d been acting as a third parent since I was 9 years old. That’s when my mother went back to school for her master’s degree in educational administration, which meant evening classes four nights a week and weekend study sessions that consumed entire Saturdays.

My father managed a sporting goods store, working retail hours that included most weekends and every holiday season. Someone needed to watch my younger siblings: McKenzie, age six at the time; then the twins, Jordan and Riley, at four; and baby Aninsley, who was barely two.

That someone became me. I learned to make macaroni and cheese before I learned to do long division. I changed diapers while my friends were playing Little League.

I read bedtime stories and checked for monsters under beds while kids my age were having sleepovers and going to movies. By the time I was 12, my responsibilities had evolved from basic child care to essentially running the household.

I did grocery shopping with a list my mother left on the counter and cash she’d leave in an envelope marked food money. I cooked dinner most nights—nothing fancy, just spaghetti, tacos, chicken nuggets, the kind of meals a kid could manage.

I helped with homework, mediated sibling fights, administered Band-Aids and children’s Tylenol. I remembered which kid was allergic to strawberries and which one needed their sandwich cut into triangles or they’d refuse to eat it.

My parents praised me constantly for being so mature, so responsible, so dependable. Teachers at school called me an old soul. Neighbors said I was wise beyond my years.

No one ever asked why a 12-year-old was doing the work of two adults or why my parents seemed perfectly comfortable outsourcing their parental duties to their child. The pattern continued through middle school and high school with barely a pause.

I couldn’t join the basketball team because practice ran until 5:30 p.m. and someone needed to get the kids off the school bus at 3:15. I missed homecoming because Aninsley had a dance recital that same night and my parents both had commitments they couldn’t break.

My mother had a conference in Phoenix. My father had inventory weekend at the store.

I attended exactly zero high school parties because leaving the kids alone overnight wasn’t an option. And my parents’ idea of family time was me babysitting while they went to dinner and a movie.

I got accepted to Berkeley with a partial scholarship, my dream school. And my mother said it was wonderful but impractical.

“We need you here,” she’d said, stirring her coffee at the kitchen table like she was commenting on the weather.

“The kids need you. Berkeley is so far away.” So I went to state, lived at home, commuted 40 minutes each way, worked part-time at a campus bookstore to save money, and came home every afternoon to make sure the kids had snacks and started their homework.

My mother had finished her master’s by then and was working as a vice principal at the middle school, but her hours somehow never aligned with what the kids needed. My father was still at the store, still working weekends, still unavailable.

I graduated at 22 with a degree in civil engineering and immediately got hired at a mid-sized firm that designed municipal water systems. Good job, decent salary, actual career prospects.

I moved into an apartment exactly 6 miles from my parents’ house. 6 miles—that’s as far as I could psychologically justify going because someone needed to be available for the kids.

That’s when I met Lily. She was a pediatric occupational therapist at the children’s hospital, sharp and funny and incredibly perceptive in ways that made me uncomfortable at first.

We’d been dating for 3 weeks when she asked casually over Thai food, “So how often do your parents actually parent their own kids?”

The question landed like a punch. I’d been telling her about canceling our dinner plans the night before because my mother needed me to watch the kids while she attended a retirement party.

“They parent them,” I’d said defensively.

“They’re just busy. It’s easier for me to help out.” Lily had given me this long searching look.

“You didn’t help out last night. You parented. There’s a difference.” I didn’t have an answer for that.

Lily didn’t push at first, but she watched. Watched me cancel plans constantly because my mother would call with some variation of emergency that usually translated to inconvenience.

Watched me spend my weekends shuttling kids to soccer games and birthday parties while my parents attended their own social engagements. Watched my phone blow up with texts from my mother at all hours.

“Riley needs poster board for a project due tomorrow. Can you pick up Aninsley from gymnastics? I’m running late. Jordan forgot his trumpet at home. Can you bring it to school?” Always framed as questions but functioned as commands because if I said no, I was abandoning my siblings.

And I loved my siblings genuinely, fiercely. They felt like my kids in ways that probably weren’t healthy but were definitely real.

When I proposed to Lily after dating for 2 years, she said yes immediately and then said very seriously, “We need to talk about boundaries before we get married because I will not spend our marriage coming second to your parents’ convenience.” We spent months in premarital counseling with Dr. Patricia Langford, a licensed marriage and family therapist with 9 years specializing in enmeshment and family systems.