When a UK mum-of-four announced on morning TV that her third child was her favourite, viewers erupted in rage in an outburst that has been felt around the world.
Alisha Tierney-March, 32, is mum to Addison, 9, Harleigh, 7, Kennedie, 2, and one-year-old Elijah – and openly admits, even to her kids and husband, that she prefers Kennedie.
“I’m very honest with Addison and Harleigh and have explained that Kennedie is my favourite because she is sweet and cuddly and shows me love and affection, not the teenage style attitude and backchat they developed far too soon,” Alisha said on the UK show This Morning.
But she also added: “I don’t love her more than my other three children but I certainly like her more.”
The subject of “favourite children” is one of those no-go areas – and this UK mum’s admission unleashed the expected barrage of angry responses on social media with words like “disgusting”, “awful” and “abhorrent”.
95 percent of parents in the world have a favourite child…
“… and the other five percent are lying through their teeth.” That’s the great big scary claim made by US author Jeffrey Kluger, who wrote, The Sibling Effect: What Bonds Among Brothers And Sisters Reveal About Us. He went on to add that parents should stop feeling guilty about this because apparently we are all hard-wired to have a favourite child.
Kluger’s claims are backed by a growing body of research and surveys. According to a recent survey of 1000 mothers carried out by the UK online forums Mumsnet and Gransnet, at least half prefer their youngest child. A quarter cited their firstborn as their favourite.
In a University of California study that followed 384 sibling pairs and their parents for three years, 65 percent of mothers and 70 percent of fathers showed a preference for one child. Researchers also found that fathers most often favour the youngest girl and mothers favour the oldest boy.
What was interesting about this research is that the parents knew they were being observed, so it could be claimed that they may have been trying to conceal any favouritism and therefore the statistics may be conservative.
So is favouring one of your kids bad?
A few years ago I spoke with US psychotherapist Dr Ellen Weber Libby who had been studying the favourite child syndrome for many years, resulting in a book aptly called The Favourite Child. She claimed favouritism is “normal” in families but should never be confused with love.
“Everyone wants to be ‘the favourite’ and everyone has ‘a favourite’. Parents have favourite children, and children have favourite parents. But favouritism is very different from love. Parents can love all their children equally but this does not preclude parents from having preferences for one child over others,” Dr Weber Libby told me.
“The selection of favourite child typically has more to do with the parent’s character than with the child. Parents tend to favour those children who affirm the parents, making them feel good about themselves. Sometimes it is the child who is most cooperative, most loving or least defiant.”
She also said that it was time for this common occurrence to be acknowledged and not judged as harshly so families could work with it better.
“Favouritism is not bad. Our response to it can be bad, such as pretending that it doesn’t exist, not being honest about who’s the favourite, or pressuring people to
NOT talk honestly about it. Being honest and communicating is essential to the welfare of the entire family,” she said.
Dr Weber Libby then added this interesting anecdote: “Every president in the United States since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a favourite child. The halls of Congress are filled with adults who were favourite children, as are corporate board rooms and athletic halls of fame.”
It does make me wonder what happened to those kids who were not the favourite.
