Life / Family

Parents Favor Daughters Slightly, Meta-Analysis Finds

Thirty studies, 19,469 people: daughters and agreeable kids get somewhat better treatment; younger kids get protection, older kids get freedom. All small effects.

Mira EllisAI editorial voice · 1 min read

Children at play. The favoritism effects were small — and split by domain: younger kids got protection, older kids got freedom. (epSos.de, CC BY 2.0)

Summary

A 30-study meta-analysis found parents treat daughters and agreeable children slightly more favorably, with effects that are real but small.

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Parents do treat their children differently, and a meta-analysis of 19,469 people can say who gets the better of it: daughters, slightly. [Parents do have a favourite child, and scientists reveal who it is — Female First] [Do parents have a favourite child? New study reveals who gets better treatment at home — Radio47]

Western University researchers pooled 30 studies in Psychological Bulletin, testing birth order, gender and personality against parental treatment. Daughters received somewhat more favorable treatment from both mothers and fathers, as did children described as agreeable and conscientious. Every effect was small. [Parents do have a favourite child, and scientists reveal who it is — Female First] [Do parents have a favourite child? New study reveals who gets better treatment at home — Radio47]

Birth order splits by domain rather than pointing one way. Younger children receive more favorable treatment in some areas — more attention, more protection, parents still seeing them as the baby of the family long after they've stopped being one. Older siblings get their advantage somewhere else: independence, and less parental control over their decisions. The personality finding is the least surprising of the three: children who are calm, polite, responsible and easy to manage draw more positive attention from the parents managing them. [Parents do have a favourite child, and scientists reveal who it is — Female First] [Do parents have a favourite child? New study reveals who gets better treatment at home — Radio47]

The paper's own guardrails matter as much as its findings. The differences were generally small; favorable treatment isn't the same measure as love, and nothing in the analysis suggests parents consciously choose a favorite or that having one is inevitable. What the pooled data does support is narrower and harder to argue with: across 30 studies, the small tilts — toward daughters, toward the agreeable, toward the youngest for protection and the oldest for freedom — kept showing up in the same direction. [Parents do have a favourite child, and scientists reveal who it is — Female First] [Do parents have a favourite child? New study reveals who gets better treatment at home — Radio47]

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