As You Suspected
Your Parents Absolutely
Do Have a Favorite Child
Do Have a Favorite Child
By Tanya Basu - March 31, 2016
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There’s always the family favorite. Your little sister got away with temper tantrums suspiciously often, or your older brother somehow snagged all the trophies while you slaved away in an attempt to shine. At least that’s what it kind of felt like, even though your parents repeatedly insisted they loved you and your siblings all equally.
That might be all hot air, according to research
from sociologist Katherine Conger, whose original intention of creating
a longitudinal study veered into the often testy relationship parents
share with their children. So she and her research team asked 384
sibling pairs (each was within four years of the other sibling) how they
felt their parents treated them, if they sensed some sort of
differential treatment, and whether they felt a blow or spike in their
self-esteem from the perceived difference in treatment. The team then
interviewed the siblings’ parents for their perspective.
Firstborns
tended to feel preferred, perhaps because for a while there, they were
(technically) only children.
Once the younger sibs came along, their
status as oldest child made them the first in the family to score in
sports, lead the way academically, and generally confound their parents
as to what to do. Eldest children led by example, and when younger kids
get to the age of their older siblings, parents had a better idea of
what to expect and tended to get a little tougher — at least, that’s
what the thinking is.
Younger
kids, therefore, felt a little shortchanged by parental attention,
reporting that they could sense the firstborn bias and that it affected
their self-esteem — much more so than older kids.
“I was a little surprised by that,” Conger told
Quartz. “Our working hypothesis was that older, earlier born children
would be more affected by perceptions of differential treatment due to
their status as older child — more power due to age and size, more time
with parents — in the family.”
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But
here’s the surprising kicker of the study:
Even if moms and dads didn’t
admit to kids that they liked one child over another, 70 percent of
fathers and 74 percent of mothers confessed to researchers that they
definitely showered one child with preferential treatment over others.
That
said, Conger noted that no matter if you were the oldest, youngest, or
somewhere in between, every child had a sneaking suspicion their parents
were favoring the others.
“Everyone feels their brother or sister is
getting a better deal,” Conger noted. Ah, sweet sibling rivalry.
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