Paid Internships. Do You Subsidize?

Marian
Sat, 07 Dec 2013 11:17:55 +0000

Family with two children: Now it gets trickier. Your situation seems to be that Student H has the internship which pays well (and presumably Student H has fairly high expenses), while Student L does not. There are many different views of what would be “fair” here.



I’m all in favor of equalizing things between siblings whenever possible (I grew up in a family that was scrupulous about this), but when we faced this kind of situation, this issue didn’t seem to matter – to them or to me.

In general, whether or not summer opportunities are paying, how much they pay, and where they are located depend on the career field that the student is interested in. And that’s something that varies from kid to kid. I think kids understand this and don’t get bent out of shape if mom and dad are subsidizing the non-tech kid with the low-paying internship but not the tech kid with the high-paying internship (or the kid who is not earning money because he’s on campus working on his honors project, while the sibling who is not doing honors has a paying job).