While parents admitted to having a favourite child, 74 percent of mums and 70 percent of dads confessed to have a preference, they didn't reveal which child. However, when the teens themselves were interviewed, the results showed that younger siblings often felt that their parents were biased towards the
Sometimes your love for your firstborn child feels so all-consuming that it's hard to imagine having enough to give your second child. But love is boundless, and even if you get off to a slow start with your second, you'll soon find your heart is big enough to love all your children, no matter how many you have.
The question isn't whether or not you have a favorite child, since it's pretty clear that many parents do. Typically, favoritism has little to do with loving one child more. It is more about how your personality resonates with one child's personality more than the other's. Essentially, it's a question of like.
Parents with two children who admit to having a favourite overwhelmingly (62%) prefer the youngest. Only 30% say they prefer the eldest.
The youngest was less of a handful than their more "tricky and demanding" siblings. The survey backs up the results of a study published by researchers at Brigham Young University's School of Family Life which also found the youngest child is the favourite for most families.
The period that a baby uses to select a primary attachment figure stretches from 2 to over 12 months, with most infants making up their minds in the period between 3 and 7 months.
“Parents tend to favour a child that is most like them, reminds them of themselves, or represents what they view as a success of parenting,” she says. “Younger children are most likely to have been raised by a parent who, over time and experience, is more confident and skilled in their child-raising.”
Summary: A research group has studied whether parents' gender preferences and investment in offspring are affected by their status, wealth, education or childhood environment. Instead, parental preferences were best predicted by their sex.
Harman interviewed 950 parents from a wide range of family set-ups, and concluded that the happiest families were those with four or more children. The main advantages cited by these parents were increased positive social interactions within the family and high levels of support among siblings.
Does that hold true for your family? The order you were born can have an impact on how successful you are in life, according to Sandra Black, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Golden child syndrome, or being a “golden child,” is a term typically used by family, and most often by parents, to refer to a child in the family that's regarded as exceptional in some way. The golden child is expected to be extraordinary at everything, not make mistakes, and essentially be “perfect.”
A recent study has found that it's not the youngest child that's liked the most. It's actually the eldest! While eldest children around the world have had to be the example for their younger siblings and parents being extra strict on them, it looks like there was a good reason.
Other research has showed that while parents are happier in the lead-up and first year after having their first child, there are diminishing returns: the boost of happiness for the second child is half that of the first, and by the third, there's no boost at all.
The firstborn effect
Firstborns tend to possess psychological characteristics related to leadership, including responsibility, creativity, obedience and dominance. They are also more likely to have higher academic abilities and levels of intelligence than their younger siblings.
And it turns out that for most people it happens when they're quite young, with 55 percent of people saying they first fell in love between the ages of 15 and 18! Twenty percent of us then fall in love between the ages of 19 and 21, so around the time you're at university or working your first real job.
A 2-Year Age Gap
Many obstetricians recommend waiting at least 18 months before conceiving again as best for the new baby's health.
He found that if you want to be happy, that is, enhance your well-being, you should stop after one child. Child number two or three doesn't make a parent happier. And, for mothers, he found, more children appear to make them less happy—although they are happier than childless women.
A Couple's First Two Kids Make Them Briefly Happier; the Third Not So Much. Parents often say that nothing compares to the joy of welcoming their new baby into the family. But all newborns are not equal in the happiness they bring mom and dad, according to a new study published in the journal Demography.
In particular, a sibling age difference of 2 years or more was associated with a higher chance of completing high school and attending college. Another study found that children who are more than 3.5 years apart tend to get higher grades than children born less than 2 years apart.
According to a survey conducted by British parenting website Bounty, two girls are considered the best combination for parents to have a happy and harmonious family life. In their study, they surveyed 2,116 parents who had children aged 16 and under.
Predivorce family dynamics: In most intact families, sons and daughters are closer to their mothers than to their fathers. This does not mean the children and their fathers love one another less.
Statistically speaking, daughters win the day, but sons win dad by a nose. These findings are somewhat surprising, given the prevailing theory that preference for sons or daughters is based less on the sex of the parents than on their socioeconomic status.
Obviously, each child and family is different but overall, parents think the hardest years are between 6-8 with 8 being the hardest age to parent.
First-born kids tend to be leaders, like CEOS and founders, and are more likely to achieve traditional success. Middle-born children often embody a mix of the traits of older and younger siblings, and they're very relationship-focused.
Studies have shown that children tend to form stronger bonds with their mothers, primarily due to the fact that mothers are typically the primary caretakers. However, this doesn't mean that fathers aren't equally important in their children's lives!