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Speaker 1: Now there is a little bit of chat in the

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Speaker 1: media about where the parents have a favorite child and

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Speaker 1: if your immediate reaction will is well, of course I don't.

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Speaker 1: Science actually disagrees with you. There are studies that show

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Speaker 1: parents do have favorites, and more often than not, it's

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Speaker 1: the daughter. Joe Robertson is a therapist and founder of

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Speaker 1: Tricky Chat's Parenting and with Us.

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Speaker 2: Hi Joe, Hello, are you an interesting one?

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Speaker 1: Do you have kids?

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Speaker 2: I have three?

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Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite?

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Speaker 2: I asked them. I said I'm going to be talking

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Speaker 2: about favorite children and I asked all three of them,

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Speaker 2: what do you think? And they said, no, it doesn't exist.

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Speaker 2: And then I said, who do you think would be

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Speaker 2: my favorite? The youngest child immediately puts up his hand

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Speaker 2: and they all agreed.

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Speaker 1: And science suggests that often is the case, isn't it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was interesting. I said why do you

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Speaker 2: think that? And then they said, you know, you give

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Speaker 2: him more things that you didn't give us at the

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Speaker 2: same age.

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Speaker 1: Parents.

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Speaker 2: Actually that's actually true. I think you know, there's a

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Speaker 2: perpetual this is my baby kind of experience. I think

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Speaker 2: that lots parents would understand, and they growing up in

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Speaker 2: an older household, so they are actually getting opportunities that

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Speaker 2: a first child, for example, might not.

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Speaker 1: Does it necessarily because because it's forced me also to

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Speaker 1: kind of do a little bit of a stock take

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Speaker 1: of my feelings, Does it necessarily mean that if you're

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Speaker 1: treating the little one, the youngest, the youngest one differently,

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Speaker 1: does it necessarily mean that they're your favorite? Or are

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Speaker 1: you just just responding to each one at their own

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Speaker 1: aged stage.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I absolutely don't think it means favorite. I

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Speaker 2: think that we could all look at our kids, particularly

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Speaker 2: if you've got you know, multiple three or more, and say,

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Speaker 2: you know, this is the thing I love a lot

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Speaker 2: about them, and this is the thing I.

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Speaker 1: Love a lot about that person.

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Speaker 2: And the relationship I have with this one is so

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Speaker 2: different to the relationship I have with the other. I

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Speaker 2: think we can see quite different values in them. It

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Speaker 2: doesn't mean we prefer one over the other.

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Speaker 1: How do the researchers, though, determine that we have favorites?

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Speaker 1: If we say we don't have favorites.

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Speaker 2: I think that they're really the core of the questions

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Speaker 2: that is about referential treatment, and I think that can

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Speaker 2: be interpreted in many ways. So, for example, what my

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Speaker 2: children might interpret is preferential treatment means that I'm giving

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Speaker 2: one child who has more needs more time, And that

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Speaker 2: might look on the surface, or even if I wasn't

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Speaker 2: thinking deeply about it, you might go, oh, that's favoritism. Ye,

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Speaker 2: but actually you know, I'm meeting a niche and the

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Speaker 2: other ones have needs, but they don't look the same.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I call beas on the study. By the way, hey,

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Speaker 1: I said earlier that I reckon. Part of it is

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Speaker 1: the reason that we think daughter is the favorite is

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Speaker 1: because daughters are easier to raise And then whole did

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Speaker 1: I get a slew of text telling me I'm we

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Speaker 1: am I wrong?

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Speaker 2: Well, actually, a lot of research shows that what we

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Speaker 2: ask of our girls is different to what we ask

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Speaker 2: of our sons. So I think it becomes a self

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Speaker 2: fulfilling prophecy. Like if you request more emotional and also

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Speaker 2: household labor from one of the kids, no matter which

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Speaker 2: gender they are, you're going to get that. So if

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Speaker 2: we know this based on data that we ask kids,

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Speaker 2: like sorry, we ask girls to help us out more

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Speaker 2: often than we ask our boys, and so of course

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Speaker 2: they're going to know more often deliver, and then build

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Speaker 2: a connection through that process. But I think we create that.

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Speaker 1: It's an US problem, all right, Joe. That's fascinating. Thanks mate,

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Speaker 1: Joe Robertson, therapist and founder of Tricky Chats Parenting.

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