Sibling rivalry: parents favour older children and daughters, study finds
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International research also reveals conscientious or agreeable children are likely to receive preferential treatment. As Philip Larkin once noted, your mum and dad have a lasting effect on you. Now, researchers have revealed which siblings in a family are more likely to be favoured: it is bad news for sons.
Researchers have found daughters, older children and those who are more conscientious or agreeable are likely to receive preferential treatment. The authors of the study say the findings have important implications, adding that previous work has suggested differential treatment of siblings can have negative consequences for children’s development, especially for those who are less favoured.
“Parents and clinicians should be aware of which children in a family tend to be favoured as a way of recognising potentially damaging family patterns,” they write. Writing in the journal Psychological Bulletin, Alexander Jensen and McKell Jorgensen-Wells from Brigham Young University in the US and Western University in Canada respectively, report how they analysed data from a host of sources – including 30 peer-reviewed journal articles – encompassing 19,469 different participants from the US, western Europe and Canada.
The pair considered the birth order of siblings, their self-reported gender, their temperaments and their personalities, and explored whether these were associated with various aspects of parental favouritism. In most cases, the sources used only the children’s reports of parental favouritism, although some included reports from the parents.
