It’s an idea that has been perpetuated by people for so many years now. Kids are always suspicious of it but parents are always going to deny it.
There is always going to be the “favorite” child among a batch of siblings. Whenever the kids would question parents though, they would always be so quick to deny it. They would say something like, “Why would you ask such a question? Of course, we don’t have a favorite child.”
But that is likely to be a lie. However, you can’t blame your parents for lying to you. Sometimes, even they can end up believing in their own lies.
They sometimes talk themselves into believing that they see all their kids equally even when all the evidence points to the contrary. A lot of parents might not even realize that they have favorites among their children.
Based on a study that was spearheaded by experts from Rutgers University, it has been discovered that dads have a tendency to have a bias towards their sons and mothers are likely to favor their own daughters.
These findings might be controversial but there is substantial evidence to actually support this claim. The study was called “Sexual Conflict and the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis: Females prefer daughters and males prefer sons.”
This was a study that was initially carried out to test the original Trivers-Willard hypothesis. This was a theory that claimed that wealthier parents tended to invest in sons while less fortunate parents tended to invest in their daughters.
There were more than 750 participants who underwent the initial tests to determine whether their wealth and financial status would influence their decisions to adopt or donate to a charity that supports girls and boys.
Before the tests were carried out, the researches expected that wealthier parents would probably support male children and the poorer parents would probably support female children.
However, these were not the results at all. Instead, the studies revealed that parents just tended to choose the children they happen to share the same gender with.
Women typically preferred daughters and the statistics show that girls favor their female offspring ever so slightly higher than men’s preferential treatment towards their sons.
However, the overall bias was quite enough to support the conclusion that parents really do prefer to favor kids who they share genders with.
Given that those are the findings of the study, what does that say about sons of mothers and daughters of fathers? Well, it all really depends on the perspective and stance that you choose to take on the situation.
On the one hand, people may typically favor the children of their own gender in a hypothetical sense. However, that doesn’t mean that those feelings are always going to translate into real life as well.
And on the other hand, it might also mean that kids will find themselves feeling overlooked or underappreciated by their parents they don’t share the same genders with.
To add on to that, the study also points out that due to the increasing rates of single parents in the world (the majority of them being mothers), the next generation of parents could potentially be affected on a very deep emotional basis by the gender biases that their parents may have.
What’s more, the study points out, because of the increasing rates of single parents (most often mothers) raising children, the next generation of adults could be affected by their parents’ gender bias.
“These results may also have implications for rising income inequality and intergenerational social mobility,” the findings of the study confirmed.
“A recent study using the tax records of 40 million Americans between 1996 and 2012 showed that the single best predictor of lower intergenerational social mobility was having a single or divorced parent.
Because most of these single parents are females, and females prefer daughters, we might expect even lower reduced intergenerational mobility for the sons of these single mothers.”
However, despite the data and information gathered by the study, it’s likely that parents are still going to deny the claims that they have favorites out of their kids.
Mothers are always going to say that they love their sons just as much as their daughters. And fathers will also insist that they love their little girls just as much as their little boys.
Whatever the case, regardless of whether you believe this study or not, it’s always important that you conduct yourself as a fair and loving parent who has as minimal biases as possible You don’t want your child to be feeling undervalued and underappreciated when compared to a sibling.
