April 2, 2025 • 11 mins
Is having a favourite child real, or is it just perception? In this episode of The Happy Families Podcast, Justin and Kylie Coulson dive into the research on parental favouritism, exploring why some children may seem more favoured than others. They discuss how personality traits, gender, and birth order play a role in parental preference and share practical strategies to ensure all children feel valued and loved.
KEY POINTS:
-
The concept of favouritism and how it manifests in families.
-
Research findings on parental preference for daughters over sons.
-
Why conscientious and agreeable children tend to receive more positive attention.
-
The impact of favouritism on self-esteem and sibling relationships.
-
Strategies to ensure children feel equally loved and valued.
PERSONAL STORIES SHARED:
-
Kylie’s experience with favouritism growing up and her sisters’ perceptions.
-
Justin reflecting on his own childhood as the eldest of six children.
-
Parenting experiences in the Coulson household, including navigating teenage years.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"See their hearts. When you understand a child, you naturally connect with them more."
KEY INSIGHTS FOR PARENTS:
-
Favouritism is often a result of understanding certain children more than others.
-
Different children require different levels of attention at various times.
-
Creating joyful, meaningful moments with each child fosters connection.
-
Parents should be mindful of their body language and interactions to ensure all children feel valued.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
-
Research study: Parents Favour Daughters: A Meta-Analysis of Gender and Other Predictors of Parental Differential Treatment (Published in Psychological Bulletin).
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
-
Reflect on your relationships with each child—who do you understand most and least?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
What makes a favorite child? Do you have a favorite child?
Are you were allowed to say that you have a
favorite child? What would happen if one of the children
found out that they were or were not the favorite child.
We're tackling the big issues in today's Doctor's Desk episode
of The Happy Family's podcast, We're So Glad You're joining
us Real parenting Solutions every day on Australia's most downloaded
parenting podcast, we are Justin and Kylie Coulson. Kylie, were
(00:29):
you the favorite child and your family?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I can't answer that will incriminate me.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
No, but really were you? Do you think you were?
You're one of three sisters. Well, you've got an older
half sister as well.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
My sisters would all say that I was.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Really do do you believe that? Did you feel that?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm going to push back really hard on this whole
favoritism thing because I don't think it's about favoritism. But
I think that I think that we have individual relationships
with people, whether it's our children or whether it's our
friends or acquaintances, doesn't mean that we favorite like I
just I push against it.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Ask me, were you the favorite? I have no idea
and I think that's how it should be. What I
would hope is that everyone I'm the oldest of six kids,
and I would just hope that all of my siblings
feel like they were the favorite child. I don't necessarily
feel that I am the favorite, but I certainly don't
feel like I'm not the favorite. Does that make sense.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, But you can talk to pretty much anyone and
at some point in their lives they felt like they
weren't the favorite.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Though I was sixteen of being really rude to my parents,
I was definitely not the favorite at that point.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So this is why I push against it, because when
I look at the dynamics in our home, at different times,
different children have needed more of us. And it's very
easy to look from the outside and say, oh, she's
your favorite because you're giving her all the time and attention.
But it's got nothing to do with that. It's got
everything to do with having a needs based approach, and
(01:59):
at this point in time, whether it be health or
emotions or just time, this child needs more.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Whenever really cool research lands on my desk, we talk
about it on the Happy Families podcast. There's a brand
new study just published in the last month or so.
In a Psychological Bulletin. Psychological Bulletin is a highly regarded
psychological journal, and this one is called Parents Favor Daughters
a meta Analysis of Gender and Other Predictors of Parental
(02:28):
differential treatment meta analysis. It's a study of all the studies.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So well, that means we've got six favorites.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Then we have six daughters, so therefore they're all the
favorite I know. The researchers had to look at thirty
peer review journal articles and dissertations and theses and fourteen
other databases. In all, they looked at nearly twenty thousand
unique participants in all these studies about favoritism, talking to
the kids, talking to the parents, the studies, trying to
(02:55):
work out how favoritism works. Here's the very short version
of a very big and very carefully conducted study in
a highly regarded journal. Results showed that when favoritism was
based on autonomy and control, that is, a parents able
to sort of just enjoy the kids without having to
be heavily involved in their lives, then parents tended to
(03:18):
favor older siblings, which makes sense.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Right, It's almost hands off parenting.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, when you've got an eight year old middle childhood
doing pretty well, and then you've got a three year
old who is tearing the house apart and you've got
to lift everything up up high and put it on
the high shelves. Well, maybe that's an eighteen month old,
but you kind of you love that eighteen month old.
But they're really needy, they're really whiny, they always want
to be picked up and carried. And you've got this
eight year old who's just nailing nailing life. It's like,
(03:44):
you get it, you're raizing. I mean, it's going to
get worse than a few years. And then you're like
the younger one because the But essentially, we really like
it when the kids can function autonomously, when we don't
have to be too controlling over their lives. I should
share this with my mom. I'm turning fifty this year.
You're still trying to tell me what to do. Maybe
I'm not the favorite after all. So here's where it
(04:05):
gets really interesting. The research showed that parents tend to
report favoring daughters. And I think that's because there's a
general rule. I mean, I'm writing this book, I'm finishing
my book about boys at the moment, and there's there's
a heaviness when people comment on social media about their
sons versus their daughters. Parents generally worry about their kids,
but when I talk to parents about their sons, there's
(04:28):
I don't know what the word is, Kylie, there's genuine concern.
There's but what if my son X, Y or Z
in a way that parents don't worry about their daughters.
It's it's tangible, it's it's palpable. Can you can feel
it in the discussions. So the research showed that our
parents are favoring their daughters more than their sons. And
here it is in terms of personality attributes. Conscientious kids
(04:53):
and agreeable kids definitely receiving more of the favored treatment.
And I think that's probably why you were the favorite,
because you were always a conscientious contributor to the home.
Conscientiousness is this character trait of doing the things that
you say you're going to do. It's just being around
(05:15):
and being present. Agreeableness it means that you're not creating
fights and contention. Now that makes sense that these are
the kids that parents like more than the slightly neurotic children,
the slightly extroverted and over the top kids.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
This is where I push back again because that's such
a shallow perception. Oh really, I honestly, I feel like
just because your child is challenging and just because there's
a lot of pushback, doesn't.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
It doesn't mean that they're not your favorite.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
No.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
No, I like my kids that I fight with the most.
Is that what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
No, that's not what I'm saying. But I'm not saying.
I'm also not saying that because my kids agreeable, they're
my favorite, they're easier to spend time with.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, more conscientious children had relatively less conflict with their parents,
so therefore they were perceived either by the parents or
the child as being the more preferred child as a
result of the reduced conflict. That's really what the researchers
are getting up there. That's what the findings are. So
the short version is this, kids that are conscientious, kids
that are agreeable, kids that are female who do often
(06:25):
tend to be conscientious and agreeable relative to males anyway,
And kids who are older tend to be more favored
than kids who are younger. After the break, we're going
to tell you how to not fall into the favoritism trap,
because research is pretty clear that if you are a
non favored child, that there are all kinds of social,
psychological and self esteem issues that can follow. All right, Kylie,
(06:54):
We've got a bunch of ideas for how we can
help parents to not esteem one child more highly than
the other. I have this activity that I do with educators.
I do an emotional intelligence workshop. It's probably my most
popular workshop. And around about sort of forty five to
fifty minutes in we're talking about the idea of self awareness,
and I ask a question, Think about the students that
(07:17):
you understand the least. Think about the students that you
understand the most. How do you respond to them differently?
What's your body language? How do you treat them differently?
Think about the things that you talk to them about
and how much you talk to them, all that kind
of stuff. What's the difference between the students that you
understand the most and the ones you understand the least.
Now here's the thing. I used to have the word
like the most and like the least, but a bunch
(07:39):
of teachers said, oh no, no, we like them all, We
really really truly like them all. And I'm like, yeah, whatever,
because some kids are really really tricky in a class
of thirty. But I change the word from like to understand,
and I feel like this is a critical contributor to
our conversation about favoritism. You're just much more likely to
get along better with the kids that you understand. And
(08:01):
studies show that when you understand someone, slash like them.
Your body language, your posture, you're like contact. You're totally you,
completely open, Your sentences are longer less clipped, you're less
direct and abrupt, less directive and corrective, and more.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Times than not, you're actually you actually look for opportunities
to connect.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
So I guess my first major point here is that
if you're concerned that you could be slipping into a
I prefer this child over that child trap, which does
have tremendously big impacts on their self esteem across across
time and throughout life. Start to wonder about look at
how you understand them differently, which one do you understand
(08:42):
better and which one less? And lean into the one
that you understand least. Find ways to understand them better.
I think it'll make a difference. The way I would
say it is see their hearts.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
What's your second suggestion?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Times and seasons? So we're currently raising our fifteen year
old daughter. Well, she turns fifteen in a couple of weeks,
but it feels like she's been fifteen throughout the last
three years now. And the reality is that there are
some times in life that are just harder than others.
So most people would generally agree that the toddle years
(09:16):
are tricky, And most people would generally agree that that
time frame from around fourteen through fifteen, maybe even sixteen, I.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Reckon I'd take toddlerhood over teenagehood.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Sure, But if you haven't had teams before and you're
dealing with your first toddler, I think it's really really hard. Right.
So the second thing that I want to emphasize is
just that you might understand them better at sometimes than others.
They might be more agreeable at sometimes than others. They
might be just more inclined to get along a little
more at sometimes over others. So Times and Seasons is
(09:52):
my second one, and I only have one more idea.
The idea is this, we need to find joy. We
need to find ways to experience joy. Pleasant conversation is fun, activities, laughter, delight,
time to look into one another's eyes, the opportunity to
really understand one another. We need to find joy in
our relationships, and that means time time together. And when
(10:16):
you spend that time, it's really hard for kids to
feel like they're not the favorite because you're spending time
with them.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
For a parent who's really struggling with a child, the idea.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Of it, I love how you said, a parent who's
really struggling with a chore. That's what it sounds like.
You're about to say, sorry, chaut child almost the same,
not quite.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
The concept of finding joy with that child feels burdensome.
The reality is it really is about finding opportunities to
connect because joy will come with connection. But if we
make joy the focus, we might feel like we're failing miserably. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I think that if you chase the happiness, if you're
really trying to make it happen, it doesn't tend to
happen that way. It feels here.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
But if you can just find a way to enjoy
time together or just be together, be together and do
things there are things that they want to do, they're
going to feel like they're the favorite because you're making
time in your day to spend that time with them.
So favoritism. It is a thing. It does have negative impacts.
We can overcome it if it's happening in our lives,
(11:22):
especially if we've got daughters who are definitely winning the
favoritism game. If you'd like more information about this particular
study will linked to it in the show notes. The
Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
If you'd like a lot more info about how your
family can be happier, we've got all the resources you
need at happy families dot com dot a
What makes a favorite child? Do you have a favorite child?
Are you were allowed to say that you have a
favorite child? What would happen if one of the children
found out that they were or were not the favorite child.
We're tackling the big issues in today's Doctor's Desk episode
of The Happy Family's podcast, We're So Glad You're joining
us Real parenting Solutions every day on Australia's most downloaded
parenting podcast, we are Justin and Kylie Coulson. Kylie, were
(00:29):
you the favorite child and your family?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I can't answer that will incriminate me.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
No, but really were you? Do you think you were?
You're one of three sisters. Well, you've got an older
half sister as well.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
My sisters would all say that I was.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Really do do you believe that? Did you feel that?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm going to push back really hard on this whole
favoritism thing because I don't think it's about favoritism. But
I think that I think that we have individual relationships
with people, whether it's our children or whether it's our
friends or acquaintances, doesn't mean that we favorite like I
just I push against it.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Ask me, were you the favorite? I have no idea
and I think that's how it should be. What I
would hope is that everyone I'm the oldest of six kids,
and I would just hope that all of my siblings
feel like they were the favorite child. I don't necessarily
feel that I am the favorite, but I certainly don't
feel like I'm not the favorite. Does that make sense.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, But you can talk to pretty much anyone and
at some point in their lives they felt like they
weren't the favorite.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Though I was sixteen of being really rude to my parents,
I was definitely not the favorite at that point.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So this is why I push against it, because when
I look at the dynamics in our home, at different times,
different children have needed more of us. And it's very
easy to look from the outside and say, oh, she's
your favorite because you're giving her all the time and attention.
But it's got nothing to do with that. It's got
everything to do with having a needs based approach, and
(01:59):
at this point in time, whether it be health or
emotions or just time, this child needs more.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Whenever really cool research lands on my desk, we talk
about it on the Happy Families podcast. There's a brand
new study just published in the last month or so.
In a Psychological Bulletin. Psychological Bulletin is a highly regarded
psychological journal, and this one is called Parents Favor Daughters
a meta Analysis of Gender and Other Predictors of Parental
(02:28):
differential treatment meta analysis. It's a study of all the studies.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So well, that means we've got six favorites.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Then we have six daughters, so therefore they're all the
favorite I know. The researchers had to look at thirty
peer review journal articles and dissertations and theses and fourteen
other databases. In all, they looked at nearly twenty thousand
unique participants in all these studies about favoritism, talking to
the kids, talking to the parents, the studies, trying to
(02:55):
work out how favoritism works. Here's the very short version
of a very big and very carefully conducted study in
a highly regarded journal. Results showed that when favoritism was
based on autonomy and control, that is, a parents able
to sort of just enjoy the kids without having to
be heavily involved in their lives, then parents tended to
(03:18):
favor older siblings, which makes sense.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Right, It's almost hands off parenting.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, when you've got an eight year old middle childhood
doing pretty well, and then you've got a three year
old who is tearing the house apart and you've got
to lift everything up up high and put it on
the high shelves. Well, maybe that's an eighteen month old,
but you kind of you love that eighteen month old.
But they're really needy, they're really whiny, they always want
to be picked up and carried. And you've got this
eight year old who's just nailing nailing life. It's like,
(03:44):
you get it, you're raizing. I mean, it's going to
get worse than a few years. And then you're like
the younger one because the But essentially, we really like
it when the kids can function autonomously, when we don't
have to be too controlling over their lives. I should
share this with my mom. I'm turning fifty this year.
You're still trying to tell me what to do. Maybe
I'm not the favorite after all. So here's where it
(04:05):
gets really interesting. The research showed that parents tend to
report favoring daughters. And I think that's because there's a
general rule. I mean, I'm writing this book, I'm finishing
my book about boys at the moment, and there's there's
a heaviness when people comment on social media about their
sons versus their daughters. Parents generally worry about their kids,
but when I talk to parents about their sons, there's
(04:28):
I don't know what the word is, Kylie, there's genuine concern.
There's but what if my son X, Y or Z
in a way that parents don't worry about their daughters.
It's it's tangible, it's it's palpable. Can you can feel
it in the discussions. So the research showed that our
parents are favoring their daughters more than their sons. And
here it is in terms of personality attributes. Conscientious kids
(04:53):
and agreeable kids definitely receiving more of the favored treatment.
And I think that's probably why you were the favorite,
because you were always a conscientious contributor to the home.
Conscientiousness is this character trait of doing the things that
you say you're going to do. It's just being around
(05:15):
and being present. Agreeableness it means that you're not creating
fights and contention. Now that makes sense that these are
the kids that parents like more than the slightly neurotic children,
the slightly extroverted and over the top kids.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
This is where I push back again because that's such
a shallow perception. Oh really, I honestly, I feel like
just because your child is challenging and just because there's
a lot of pushback, doesn't.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
It doesn't mean that they're not your favorite.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
No.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
No, I like my kids that I fight with the most.
Is that what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
No, that's not what I'm saying. But I'm not saying.
I'm also not saying that because my kids agreeable, they're
my favorite, they're easier to spend time with.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, more conscientious children had relatively less conflict with their parents,
so therefore they were perceived either by the parents or
the child as being the more preferred child as a
result of the reduced conflict. That's really what the researchers
are getting up there. That's what the findings are. So
the short version is this, kids that are conscientious, kids
that are agreeable, kids that are female who do often
(06:25):
tend to be conscientious and agreeable relative to males anyway,
And kids who are older tend to be more favored
than kids who are younger. After the break, we're going
to tell you how to not fall into the favoritism trap,
because research is pretty clear that if you are a
non favored child, that there are all kinds of social,
psychological and self esteem issues that can follow. All right, Kylie,
(06:54):
We've got a bunch of ideas for how we can
help parents to not esteem one child more highly than
the other. I have this activity that I do with educators.
I do an emotional intelligence workshop. It's probably my most
popular workshop. And around about sort of forty five to
fifty minutes in we're talking about the idea of self awareness,
and I ask a question, Think about the students that
(07:17):
you understand the least. Think about the students that you
understand the most. How do you respond to them differently?
What's your body language? How do you treat them differently?
Think about the things that you talk to them about
and how much you talk to them, all that kind
of stuff. What's the difference between the students that you
understand the most and the ones you understand the least.
Now here's the thing. I used to have the word
like the most and like the least, but a bunch
(07:39):
of teachers said, oh no, no, we like them all, We
really really truly like them all. And I'm like, yeah, whatever,
because some kids are really really tricky in a class
of thirty. But I change the word from like to understand,
and I feel like this is a critical contributor to
our conversation about favoritism. You're just much more likely to
get along better with the kids that you understand. And
(08:01):
studies show that when you understand someone, slash like them.
Your body language, your posture, you're like contact. You're totally you,
completely open, Your sentences are longer less clipped, you're less
direct and abrupt, less directive and corrective, and more.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Times than not, you're actually you actually look for opportunities
to connect.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
So I guess my first major point here is that
if you're concerned that you could be slipping into a
I prefer this child over that child trap, which does
have tremendously big impacts on their self esteem across across
time and throughout life. Start to wonder about look at
how you understand them differently, which one do you understand
(08:42):
better and which one less? And lean into the one
that you understand least. Find ways to understand them better.
I think it'll make a difference. The way I would
say it is see their hearts.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
What's your second suggestion?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Times and seasons? So we're currently raising our fifteen year
old daughter. Well, she turns fifteen in a couple of weeks,
but it feels like she's been fifteen throughout the last
three years now. And the reality is that there are
some times in life that are just harder than others.
So most people would generally agree that the toddle years
(09:16):
are tricky, And most people would generally agree that that
time frame from around fourteen through fifteen, maybe even sixteen, I.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Reckon I'd take toddlerhood over teenagehood.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Sure, But if you haven't had teams before and you're
dealing with your first toddler, I think it's really really hard. Right.
So the second thing that I want to emphasize is
just that you might understand them better at sometimes than others.
They might be more agreeable at sometimes than others. They
might be just more inclined to get along a little
more at sometimes over others. So Times and Seasons is
(09:52):
my second one, and I only have one more idea.
The idea is this, we need to find joy. We
need to find ways to experience joy. Pleasant conversation is fun, activities, laughter, delight,
time to look into one another's eyes, the opportunity to
really understand one another. We need to find joy in
our relationships, and that means time time together. And when
(10:16):
you spend that time, it's really hard for kids to
feel like they're not the favorite because you're spending time
with them.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
For a parent who's really struggling with a child, the idea.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Of it, I love how you said, a parent who's
really struggling with a chore. That's what it sounds like.
You're about to say, sorry, chaut child almost the same,
not quite.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
The concept of finding joy with that child feels burdensome.
The reality is it really is about finding opportunities to
connect because joy will come with connection. But if we
make joy the focus, we might feel like we're failing miserably. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I think that if you chase the happiness, if you're
really trying to make it happen, it doesn't tend to
happen that way. It feels here.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
But if you can just find a way to enjoy
time together or just be together, be together and do
things there are things that they want to do, they're
going to feel like they're the favorite because you're making
time in your day to spend that time with them.
So favoritism. It is a thing. It does have negative impacts.
We can overcome it if it's happening in our lives,
(11:22):
especially if we've got daughters who are definitely winning the
favoritism game. If you'd like more information about this particular
study will linked to it in the show notes. The
Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
If you'd like a lot more info about how your
family can be happier, we've got all the resources you
need at happy families dot com dot a
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