Is A Firstborn The Parents' Favourite Child?

Parents may claim that they love all their children equally, but a study by University of California, Davis (UC Davis) sociologist showed that 74 percent of mothers and 70 percent of fathers tend to have a preferential bias towards one child.

While the study  by Katherine Conger, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, did not locate which child is the favourite, Conger feels that more firstborns believe that they are the most favoured.

However, this result goes against the common hypothesis that the eldest children, due to their position and status as older kids and born earlier than the others, get affected by the observations of different treatments. They tend to enjoy more power due to their age, size and time spent with parents.

They are also the first to achieve something in sports, school and even "generally confound their parents as to what to do." The younger children too believe that the firstborns are preferred.

It is also perhaps because when the younger siblings repeat the action of the elders, the parents are better prepared to take action. Still, crossing the birth order, every child feels that there is preferential treatment to other siblings.

Conger says, "Everyone feels their brother or sister is getting a better deal," adding, "Regardless of how you look at it, both [earlier and later-born kids] are perceiving preferential treatment."

In a 2007 study, in which Conger was a participant, the UC Davis expert found that children who had elder brothers were more aggressive when they became adolescents. However, it worked the opposite way for those who had younger sisters.

Hence, male children showed higher rates of aggression, which made adolescents get impacted more by brothers.

Child Development journal published the study. Every year, it underwent evaluations of sibling adolescent pairs from 451 families in rural Iowa. Shannon Tierney Williams, lead author, gave the explanation, that "Siblings contribute unique opportunities for children and adolescents to practice certain types of aggressive behaviors, including teasing, threatening and fighting."

It was interesting that there was enhanced aggression for teenagers with older brothers, but stability with elder sisters. However, it decreased for the elder siblings if there was a younger sister, but remained stable if there was a younger brother.