Maybe your sister was the cute one, or the most well-behaved. Or maybe your brother, the oldest, was annoyingly brilliant, scoring straight A’s without a sweat.
Whatever the circumstances, it’s easy for siblings in a family to feel like someone is Mom’s favorite. And right or wrong, that perception can affect feelings and behavior that follow them into adult life.
Mother’s Day is this weekend, and a USA Today story explores two new books and some new research devoted to the topic. And it’s interesting to note that the child seen as being the favorite can suffer along with her or his siblings.
"Families don't tend to talk about these issues. They don't explain it and kids are left to their own imagination," says clinical psychologist Laurie Kramer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. " 'I'm not as good as my brother. She likes my sister better.' "
"Ask any family and they'll tell you who was the favorite one," says Jacqueline Plumez, a psychologist in Larchmont, N.Y, told writer Sharon Jayson. "People are very shaped by their family situations and how they were treated. You can be 80 years old and still hurt by it and the parent is long, long dead.”
And those impressions can begin when children are still in infancy. From Psychology Today:
“At the forefront of this work is Judy Dunn, whose pioneering sibling studies are being conducted in her native England and in the United States. Through her observational studies of siblings at home instead of in the lab, Dunn's work presents a radically revised view of children's abilities and their social understanding. Dunn now knows that from the startlingly young age of 1 year, siblings respond to disputes between their siblings by supporting or punishing one of the antagonists. These same young siblings are profoundly affected by their mother's interaction with the other siblings.
"The message is," Dunn said, "that children are far more socially sophisticated than we ever imagined. That little 15-month-old or 17-month-old is watching like a hawk what goes on between her mother and older sibling. And the greater the difference in the maternal affection and attention, the more hostility and conflict between the siblings."
“Parents' relationships with each of their children are very closely involved in sibling rivalry. As Dunn's work reveals, from 1 year on children are acutely sensitive of how they're being treated in relation to their siblings. When a parent shows more love, gives more attention, or is unable or unwilling to monitor the goings-on between children, it is often the siblings and their connections that suffer. Even though the social awareness and development of children is far more sophisticated than imagined, children don't possess the ability to understand who or what may have turned them against one another. Most rivalrous adult siblings aren't able to see the total picture, either.”
Few of us didn’t hear the words, “I love you all equally” when we were growing up. Even if we suspected that the sister who was the sports star or the brother who was the artist was secretly the favored child, mom and dad rarely let on.
But in a New York Times blog about elder care and how it often falls to the daughters, Paula Span writes the following:
“The notion that parents cherish all their children equally — or at least say they do — is so entrenched in our culture that colleagues warned Karl Pillemer, a gerontologist at Cornell University embarking on the first of many studies of family favoritism, that his research would prove futile. No mother, they insisted, would admit to caring more for one son or daughter than another.
“So much for that. His team’s interviewers, talking to mothers ages 65 to 75 in the Boston area about their adult offspring, found that most were perfectly willing to name favorites. “Most mothers have very distinct preferences,” Dr. Pillemer said. “There’s one to whom they feel most emotionally close, one with whom they have the most conflict. Parental favoritism is a fundamental part of the family landscape throughout life.”
Back to USA Today:
Experts say it's not realistic to say everyone should be treated equally, because no two people are the same and they relate differently to others.
"It does not mean the parent loves or likes one child more. It has to do with who each of them is separately," says Kramer.
Plumez, who interviewed adoptive parents and parents of biological children for an adoption book in 1982, found that "what matters most is whether your temperaments are simpatico."
"In some cases, parents would say they felt closer to their adopted kid or their biological kid," she says. "Two people who want to be in control are always going to be butting heads. Two people who are shy and withdrawn might get along well, unless the shy parent doesn't like that aspect of themselves and they try to push the naturally introverted child to be more extroverted."
What about you? Were you the favorite? Or do you think a sibling was the favorite, and why? Does it affect you or your relationship with that sibling today?
The USA Today story:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-05-04-favorites04_CV_N.htm
The Psychology Today story on sibling rivalry:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199301/adult-sibling-rivalry
The New York Times story:
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/mom-always-liked-you-best/