If you’re the oldest, your parents learned parenting on you. Some of their mistakes were just them being new too.

First children get the rough draft. The rules were stricter, the worry was louder, and a fair amount of what felt like unfairness was two adults guessing, with no previous version of you to compare against. By the time your younger siblings arrived, your parents had data. They were not being kinder to them, just less new.

If something from your childhood still stings, you are allowed to name it. You can also hold both facts at once: it was hard, and they were learning. Ask one of them what that stretch was actually like.