PLAYING FAVOURITES

Whether they admit it or not, parents tend to have a favourite child. (You know who you are. And if you don’t, your siblings definitely do!) Parental favouritism is nothing new – but admitting to it has become something of a taboo.

- LIESL ROBERTSON

'MY mom is very open about who her favourite is – to this day, she calls my brother “the golden boy”. Ever since I can remember, she has been telling my sisters and me that her dream was to have five strapping sons,’ says Sarah*. ‘After each daughter was born, she’d convince my dad that they had to keep trying for a boy, until she eventually got the son she’d always longed for. She did all his school projects for him, right up until matric. Meanwhile, my sisters and I were forgotten at the school gates more times than I can count. We joke about it now – but it took years of counselling to get to this point.’

Sarah is now a mother of four herself – she also has three daughters and a son. ‘When I first found out that I was having a boy, my heart sank. The only example of a mother-son relationship I’d ever had was that of my mother and my brother, and I didn’t want to mimic that. But it has actually been very healing in a sense; I’ve realised that I don’t have to carry on the tradition of having daughters who feel less than; I can love them all equally but in different ways.’

‘My mother definitely favours my oldest child,’ says Kate*. ‘When I told her I was pregnant with my daughter, her first response was to tell me she felt sorry for him, as he’d be getting less attention with a baby in the house. And when my daughter was sick, she was more worried about her being contagious than anything else; she told me it “wasn’t fair” towards him!’