Which Parent Do You Love More?

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Showing favoritism toward one child in the family is a well-established no-no for parents. Whether they’re your own children or those of your partner in a blended family, you are told that as soon as there is more than one child in your family, you cannot show a preference. Parental favoritism lead children to become insecure and jealous during childhood, and the effects can carry over for decades.

Middle-aged adults who report that their parents preferred one sibling during childhood continue to experience tension between themselves and the favored child. Long-held jealousies don’t just fade away over time when they involve such powerful dynamics.

Research on parental favoritism goes beyond studies of human behavior, too, such as Mainwaring et al.’s (2011) investigation of zebra finches (showing that mothers prefer sons and fathers show no preference). However, in a study of the European roller, Avilés and co-authors (2011) found that parents allocated their resources not according to gender but to size, with smaller nestlings getting the most help in the feeding process.

Turning the table to preferences that children have toward parents, we find that this is an area in the family literature, potentially rife with all sorts of intriguing results, that simply doesn’t exist, either in humans or other species.

There could be many reasons for children to prefer one parent over the other: A daughter may feel a closer identification to her mother (based on gender alone), but on the other hand, she may feel more conflict, particularly as the daughter develops through the complex years from the teens to adulthood. We know that some mother-daughter pairs experience a developmental schism (Birditt et al. 2009) in which they lose the ability to connect emotionally. On the other hand, adult fathers tend to have more ambivalent feelings toward their children than do mothers, according to research by Cornell University’s Karl Pillemer and associates (2012).

There are many possible factors that could affect children’s preferences toward parents in addition to gender. Children may feel that one parent is more similar to them psychologically, is more empathetic to them, or is simply a better parent. We could also make the case, in contrast, that children prefer the parent who is opposite to them, just as in romantic relationships in which “opposites attract.”

From a psychodynamic perspective, of course, your preference for your mother or father becomes one of the great dramas of childhood. When you’re theoretically in the throes of the Oedipal conflict, you should be deeply in love with your opposite-sex parent but, as the conflict is resolved, you should begin to identify more and more with the other parent. This is a simplified rendition of the theory, but if we accept its basic premise, it does imply that adult daughters should always prefer their mothers, and sons their fathers. Anyone who doesn’t show this pattern, the theory would imply, hasn’t “worked through” the conflict, and is forever destined to be neurotic.

Behavioral theory, by contrast, would argue that children prefer the parent who provides them with more positive reinforcement. Perhaps like those European roller birds, you gravitate toward the parent who will ensure that you get the support (or, literally, the food) you need.

A 2013 study on Portuguese and native mother-daughter pairs carried out by the University of Luxembourg’s Isabelle Albert and colleagues suggests, instead, that by the time children grow to adulthood, they bond with the parent who they see as more likely them ideologically.

Albert and her team based their study on the Bengston and Roberts (1991) well-accepted Intergenerational Solidarity Model, which proposes that running through all family relationships among multiple generations are a set of basic underlying dimensions. First is the affection dimension, or the extent to which parents and children like and love each other. However, potentially just as important are the dimensions of values consensus, or how much they agree on a basic philosophy of life; functional, or how much they support each other; and normative, or how much they feel they should behave toward each other based on their parent-child social status.

Using this framework, if you feel that you prefer one parent to another, you can ask yourself whether it’s because you and this parent see the world in similar ways; whether you both like and love each other; whether this parent supports you more; or whether you just think that you “should.”

The findings of the Albert et al. study suggest that values consensus plays a major role in determining the feelings that a daughter has toward her mother—and how much she’s willing to support her. Conversely, mothers who felt close to their daughters did so regardless of whether they agreed with them on life philosophy. These findings support the notion of the intergenerational stake—that parents look less critically at their children than children do their parents.

Because there were no men in the study, the possible combinations of mother-son, father-son, and father-daughter obviously couldn’t be examined. However, we might wonder whether values trumps gender when a child, regardless of gender, thinks about their preferred parent. Particularly with changing gender roles, the stereotyped notion of the mother providing the affection and the father providing the discipline, for example, may be shifting.

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Preferring one parent over the other raises a number of complications in a family while children are growing up, but perhaps has more serious implications over time. Missing out on the relationship you have with an aging mother and father by virtue of expressing a preference for the other may close off one route to fulfillment and self-understanding as both you—and your parents—grow older.

References

• Albert, I., Ferring, D., & Michels, T. (2013). Intergenerational family relations in Luxembourg: Family values and intergenerational solidarity in Portuguese immigrant and Luxembourgish families. European Psychologist, 18(1), 59-69. doi:10.1027/1016-9040/a000125
• Avilés, J. M., Parejo, D., & Rodríguez, J. (2011). Parental favouritism strategies in the asynchronously hatching European Roller (Coracias garrulus). Behavioral Ecology And Sociobiology, 65(8), 1549-1557. doi:10.1007/s00265-011-1164-8
• Bengtson, V. L., & Roberts, R. E. (1991). Intergenerational solidarity in aging families: An example of formal theory construction. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53, 856–870.
• Birditt, K. S., Miller, L. M., Fingerman, K. L., & Lefkowitz, E. S. (2009). Tensions in the parent and adult child relationship: Links to solidarity and ambivalence. Psychology And Aging, 24(2), 287-295. doi:10.1037/a0015196
• Mainwaring, M. C., Lucy, D., & Hartley, I. R. (2011). Parentally biased favouritism in relation to offspring sex in zebra finches. Behavioral Ecology And Sociobiology, 65(12), 2261-2268. doi:10.1007/s00265-011-1235-x
• Pillemer, K., Munsch, C. L., Fuller‐Rowell, T., Riffin, C., & Suitor, J. J. (2012). Ambivalence toward adult children: Differences between mothers and fathers. Journal Of Marriage And Family, 74(5), 1101-1113.

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^{Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne 2015}