Do you have any brothers or sisters? If you do, were you the favourite child of your parents? Or was one of your siblings more favoured?
According to an article I read this week, most people reading this who do have siblings believe that a different child was their parents’ favourite. In a survey on this topic, about four in five people said that their parents favoured one of their brothers or sisters. Because most of the respondents came from families of fewer than five children, this cannot be true.
So children seem to over-estimate the level of favouritism that their parents show to their other siblings. Perhaps we all like to see ourselves as having been treated unfairly.
But do parents really have favourite children? One study of UK parents indicated that 74 per cent of mothers and 70 per cent of fathers do show favouritism towards one child. However, only about 10 per cent of parents admit their favouritism when directly questioned.
The article claimed that parents often favoured the youngest child, perhaps because they had become more confident at parenting by the time the last child was born. Parents also preferred the children that they saw as being most like themselves.
The least favourite child in the family, or
the one who stands out, used to be called the “black sheep”. Now that it is becoming rarer for parents to
have multiple children, there are fewer favourites, and fewer black sheep. There are more little emperors now!
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