THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
While every family has their own particular dynamic, researchers have discovered that, in most families, favouritism for a certain child can be a fact. Studies from an American and an Australian university have concluded that a parent, by and large, has a favourite child. The researchers placed parents’ actions into categories of “differential affection, differential conflict, differential resources — like how much time you spend with your children or things that you give to them — as well as differential autonomy or freedom — like how much leeway you give children,” says Alex Jensen, one of the US study’s authors, based in Utah.
Favouritism: Of course, it’s one thing to think it, it’s another matter altogether to say it out loud – not that many would.
As for my own three adult children, I claim the Fifth.
There is loving – and then there is liking. My Father once said to me: “Loving someone is one thing, but liking them and living with them is another matter altogether.” Did he love or like me more than my two younger siblings? I don’t know, nor would I want to, but I do know that, as we both got older, he and I got on much better than he and my brother did, principally, I think, because I was much more tolerant of his increasingly pronounced foibles — mainly because I had inherited such characteristics myself and had learnt to somewhat live with them.
He also told me his own mother “preferred the girls over the boys”. There were four of each. It was only years later I ascertained that my grandfather was a compulsive womaniser. It then made some sort of sense to me as to why my grandmother had had little time for the ‘men’ under her roof and that when she died a good two decades after her husband she was buried separately, having made it known to her daughters that, as he had lain with other women during his life, she would “not lie down for eternity with that man”.
It’s common sense that there are inherent dangers in preferring one child over the other, the ‘less-loved’ child growing up with that sense of being, well, less loved.
Whether we admit it or not, a large number of us display consistent favouritism toward one child over another. This can manifest in different ways: more time spent with one child, more affection given, more privileges, less discipline, and so on. Research by sociologist Jill Suitor, published in Psychology Today, shows that, despite it being frowned upon, we consider some cases of such favouritism to be fair, necessary even. For example, giving more attention to newborns than to older children. The same goes for children who are sick or challenged. Parents might spend more time with and feel closer to same-gender children — or, indeed, the opposite as in she’s her daddy’s girl, he’s his mother’s pride and joy.
In patriarchal cultures, parents simply favour boys over girls. The history of Ireland is written large with stories of the favoured, if prodigal, son who inherits the land, as portrayed in many Irish works of literature.
And many of us know of the parents who had one, two and three children of the same sex and then, joy of joys, along came a baby of the other. Now, there was cause for celebration.
One man of my good acquaintance had four children and each time the new baby arrived it was talk of great concern and consolation down the pub that “yet, it was another girl”.
Lovely girls, they grew up and did well and then the eldest married and became pregnant with her first. When the baby arrived into the world, word spread quickly through the village, though the sex of the baby escaped my attention.
The morning after I met him coming across the mill. Well, grandad, says I, and I ribbing him. I heard the news.
Oh, aye, he quipped.
What was it then — a boy or a child? A child, says he, looking beyond me to the clouds gathering on the hill.
And what are they calling your first grand-daughter? He scratched the back of his head and was obviously thinking long and hard. Jaysus, he said, I couldn’t tell you, I’ve forgotten. One of those fancy, foreign names.
And he was off home before I’d time to say: Well, me boyo — another girl.
