Bad news middle children and babies of the family: A new study has found 75 per cent of parents have a favourite child and it’s probably not you.
Researchers from the University of California quizzed 384 families and found that 74 per cent of mothers and 70 per cent of fathers had a definite favourite among their children.
The parents were not asked to name their favourite child, but follow-up questioning of their children revealed eldest children were preferred almost across the board.
This bias towards first-borns affected the confidence of younger siblings, damaging their self-esteem.
The results stunned study leader Katherine Conger, who said the research had been aiming to prove the opposite – that younger children were often the favourites.
“I was a little surprised,” she said. “Our hypothesis was that older, earlier-born children would be more affected by perceptions of differential treatment due to their status as the older child in the family.”
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