An aging parent requires care. One child sacrifices everything to help; the others send checks from afar and offer unsolicited advice. Resentment festers. The "good" child grows to hate the parent they are saving.
If you are writing your own family saga, here are the structural engines that reliably generate conflict and pathos.
Family drama requires a specific tone of dialogue. Family members speak a shorthand that outsiders don't understand, laden with subtext. The Incest Diary Download Pdf
In family drama, dialogue is a weapon. People do not say what they mean; they say what will hurt. Great family dialogue operates on two levels simultaneously.
Surface level (What is said): "I just want you to be happy." Subtext (What is meant): "Your current choices are an embarrassment to the standards I set." An aging parent requires care
Surface level: "You’re just like your father." Subtext: "You are destined to repeat the trauma I never healed from."
To write this well, give every character a private vocabulary of wounds. Does a mother always mention how "hard" the birth was? That is a guilt trip. Does a father use nicknames only when he is disappointed? That is a control tactic. The "good" child grows to hate the parent they are saving
Blood and commerce are mixed. Children who don't want the job are forced into it; children who desperately want it are denied. The business becomes a proxy for the parent’s love, and failure to lead is treated as filial betrayal.