Did your parents have a favourite child?

I am the youngest of four, two sisters and a brother. I have to admit that I was my mum’s favourite. I was the most like her in looks and personality. Sadly my father dies when I was a toddler, this affected my siblings (especially my elder sister) more than me as I have no memory of him. My Nana came to live with us and she always favoured my brother.
I was the only one who stayed in the area and lived with Mum until I married at 25. I remember my sisters moaning that Mum was more lenient with me than she had been with them. I agreed but on one occasion (I was going away with my then boyfriend) reminded my sister that I was 24, she had wanted to do the same when she was 16. Mum told me she had never worried about me but had had many sleepless nights with the others.

I was the only child of my parents. I married and had a boy first then a girl. My parents had no favourites but my husbands parents and his older unmarried sister definitely favoured our son - the first born - and it was blatantly obvious to us and our daughter. She always felt she was treated differently to her brother. Now my husband’s parents have passed but his older sister still basically dotes on our son, but can’t understand why our daughter will never have a normal relationship with her aunt. Sad really.

I’m the eldest of four, 2 boys and two girls. The younger two siblings were born 7 years and 15 years after me and my 2 year younger brother. They are the favoured pair. My sister especially who both parents adored and could not do enough for. She went to Cambridge and read History (my favourite subject) I was told I could only go to university if I did a useful subject that led to a job like medicine, vet, dentist etc and I was not scientifically academic.

All 4 of us were packed off to boarding school, I was not at a very kind one but was told to get in with it. My sister was allowed to choose her school.

It unfortunately led to my elder brother and me cutting ourselves off from the younger sister who couldn’t (and still doesn’t understand ) we try now but there is no connection.

My father died 5 years ago, I don’t miss him. My mother aged 89 is still around and I do go and help out weekly but out of duty. My sister, to be fair, does a great deal of the nurturing side of looking after her, but she has no children.
Now my mother tells me she loves me and is so lucky to have me. It would have been lovely to hear when I was younger and so needed my mother.

I am the eldest of three and was a 'mistake'. My mother was 17 when she became pregnant with me and married my father. I have always felt I was a nuisance. I can remember being palmed off onto my grandparents a lot of the time. My parents went on to have two boys, 6 and 8 years younger than me. The youngest is the favourite and the middle comes a very close second but only because he lives overseas now and they rarely see him. Funnily enough he couldn't get far enough away. It is actually really upsetting to remember the disparity in how we were all treated. Silly things like my brothers always getting a lift to their private school, me walking and getting the bus to my state school. My mother always going to their parents evenings but not mine. The boys being taken on expensive holidays, me being left with grandparents. Christmas presents. Affection. My youngest brother ended up getting expelled from school and has had more false starts at a career than I've had hot dinners, always propped up by my parents. Even now, he is mid 50s, with a partner and daughter, and lives in a house provided for him by my parents. He ingratiates himself with my parents at every turn and they think he is wonderful.

There are three of us and we all thought someone else was the favourite!

I think I do more for my middle child because I find her harder to like, and I feel guilty. It has never occurred to me that the other two might think she’s my favourite .

It was definitely my sister, she is 10 years younger than me (there are only two of us) so was always the baby, in need of more attention.

My sister who was three years younger than me was the favourite.
I don’t remember her giving me a kiss or cuddle when I was little but my sister was always sitting on her lap.
On one occasion during the war when I was going back after leave she did give me a peck on the cheek and I was very surprised.
When I was homeless with a small baby she refused to give me shelter even though she lived in a large house. However when my sister returned from USA having left her husband my mother took her and child in.

yes My younger brother (10 years younger) was always favourite, so much so that 3 yrs ago mum was setting up poa and I asked why I wasn't included, to be told "I don't want you I want him!!!" she said he did more for her, I was taking food everyday, taking her shopping helping with washing. Never right for her. Have walked away she is now in a care home don't go see her(cannot atm anyway)

My mother told me, when I was 19 - “of course I wanted to leave your father years ago then you came along - I was happy with my two boys” (my older two brothers).

Oh yes...my older brother ....when I was a bit older I found a drawer full of his baby clothes, all wrapped in tissue, a lock of his baby hair etc......I got hand me downs (even though he was a boy ! of romper suits, little cord trousers ...even his worn out knitted dog ..(I loved the dog anyway ...he was knitted from heavy oiled navy blue wool, had, by the time I inherited him, one eye and half an ear ....also the pram blanket, a bit moth eaten, and a toy rabbit, with little fur left ! My dad was my hero ...and saved me many times from my mum....I was sitting on a low concrete wall at the end of our garden once, minding my own business and talking to the cat and tortoise (like you do when you are 5 ) (well, I still do now I am 73 !) ...when a large carving knife flew through the air and cut me on the temple. To this day I still have the scar....there was no reason for that and my neighbour rushed out with a plaster and said I should go to hospital as it needed a stitch ...my mum said no she will be ok ....she must have fallen over !!!!!!!!!!!! long story short, when she died, and I was 23, my dad actually said 'She never wanted you, you know'....I could have guessed that ! I went on to have a good relationship with my brother, who often also saved me from her ..............strange, isn't it ! I had only one daughter, so there was no one else !

Yes, I was my Dad's favourite. I have a sister and 2 brothers and they were all ok with it and would use the fact to our advantage. I would be the one who would ask...can we have the TV on, go out to play etc.
Ask any of them today and they'll admit it.
A very happy family.

Reading all the post has made me sad for everyone but glad in a small way that perhaps it wasn’t us that were useless, and not good enough but our mother’s very very sad

Like many my mothers favourite was my little brother once he was born it was like me and my sister did not exist and this is still how it is today she in her 80's and us 50's she has no interest in me or my sister or any of our children, her grandchildren only my brother although i feel sorry for him he has never managed to untie the apron strings his loss both us sisters have gone on to have loving and happy familes.

It wasn’t me either.
I was unwanted when I was born because my mother had
her beautiful daughter and wanted a son for my dad.
She refused to see me in the hospital until the matron
slapped her face and gave her a real telling off.

I was nearly what today is called a cot death as I had stopped breathing how my dad knew I don’t know but he ran upstairs and picked me out of my cot and got me breathing again
my mother told him to just let me be.

I of course would say to her why do you favour my sister she always denied it but my school friends would ask me why is your mother so horrible to you and so loving to your sister.

When I was having my first child she hoped it would be a boy but she was a she but by the time I had my son she said to me before he was born that I would never love the baby as much as I loved my daughter The first child is the best child.

I then got pregnant with my third a girl my mother said I was to give my baby to my sister as she hadn’t been able to have any children and it was unfair that I was having them every few minutes Her words my husband’s reply is unprintable.
To top it all when my parents got old and ill it was me who helped and looked after them as my mother said no good asking your sister she can’t do anything even after that my sister was still her favourite.
All I can say is I was very lucky with my dad and my husband and of cause my wonderful children who have given me 7 grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
They all think they are the favourite as we have never made any more of one than the others.

Yes, I was the unfavourite middle child which is hurtful. In the end though, I was the only one who supported her in old age. My mother died years ago but it still hurts.

Yes, my mother made it very clear that she preferred me to my younger sister. This was difficult for us both. Daddy never showed any preference, but if he attempted to stop my mother's blatant favouratism he certainly wasn't successful when we were children.

He did, however, make sure that both my mother's and his will left the property divided equally between us.

My mum definitely favours my brother!!

She always has.

I remember growing up with her telling everyone that he was bought from Harrods and I came from Woolworths.

I was constantly put down, mocked and told I was too fat, my hair was wrong, I looked stupid in an outfit etc.,
She does it to this day, so I don’t have much to do with her.

She also does the same with my children.

She is almost obsessed with my eldest, and constantly tells I am the cause of my daughters mental health problems.
She ‘likes’ my two younger children, but if she hasn’t heard from my eldest in a day, she drives to her flat to ‘make sure she’s ok’!!

My daughter feels stressed and stifled with my Mums behaviour, yet isn’t strong enough to stand up to her.

She wouldn’t care if she didn’t hear from the other two from one week to the next.

So I feel your pain. I’m having counselling because this has affected my life in such a way that I just can’t deal with it any longer.

My mum didn't really want us ,2 boys and 2 girls. I was in the middle along with a twin brother. My father hardly acknowledged us. When my mother got cancer of the womb she blamed having kids. That hurt.

Yes my mum adored her son and sort of shrugged about us two girls. She was man mad really. My dad loved me though and spoilt me. I adore my son and daughter equally and would happily die / kill for them. And the grandchild now too.

The youngest of 3 here, a DB and DS seven and ten years older. Brother came in top favourite followed by my sister.

Whilst in the infants at school there was a huge snow fall, children had to wait in the hall to be collected early. I just sat and accepted that my mum didn't care and I would be the last child to leave.
Those feelings never left me. I'm all she has left now as my brother and sister died aged 59 and 58.
I suck it in now and do my duty as she is frail.

I think I’ll get shot down for this, but here goes.
I had 3 children, I found the first child so hard. I had no experience of babies, I was an only child. And lived on a new estate with no friends around. Also felt traumatised by the birth. I had flash backs about it. So I don’t think I bonded with my son.
3 years later had my 2nd son, all I can say is the birth was better and as soon as I had him, I just loved him instantly. Both babies looked the same, so it wasn’t that one was better looking.
I tried not to make it obvious, but he was the light of my life when he was little. I can’t explain why.
I went on to have a daughter. She would say, I preferred the boys. But I was thrill to have a daughter.
I’m now estranged from my first son, so maybe what goes round comes round.

I always felt the less-loved, at least by my father. Mum was more even-handed about her affections. I had nearly five years of being only child. Then I started school. In the small hours of the very day I started school, Mum gave birth to twins. Only one baby having been expected, this was a bit of an event! My father and I were never close, while the twins were more his style, being interested in football to an extent I never was. We all got to grammar school, but they excelled while I had been ordinary fare. One was Head Boy, the other captained the First 11 Soccer Team. They went to good Unis - in an era when not everyone did - Durham and Cambridge, while I had joined a nationalised industry, the railway. It was only when I got onto the prestigious Management Training Scheme a few years later that I think Dad realised I had a career, not a job. The last time I saw Dad was a meal in London for my birthday in 1982. Wife Deb and I sat looking at each other while the three of them talked about football. Dad died sitting on the sofa later that evening. Sadly one of the twins died a few years back, having officiated at my second wedding - Deb had died a few years before. OH and I see his surviving brother every couple of years at best. It's enough.

I am the eldest of four. Although my parents did not knowingly have a favourite ,
my sister got all the attention because she was born with a heart condition and needed to be frequently attended to. This did upset the balance of the family although my mother tried her best. My sister I think by default became my fathers favourite.
It did upset the family balance and yes I did feel it especially as I was deaf and no one seemed to be aware.
But nevertheless I think it made me a much more self sufficient person and I bear no grudges. Life is what you make of it.
Good luck to everybody.

There seem to be several mentions on this thread about boys being favoured over girls. It was the other way round with me. I was favoured over my brother partly because I was a girl. I think both my parents, but particularly my mother, just preferred girls. I was the younger child and my mother frequently told me, when I was an adult, how she hadn’t been able to believe her luck when I was born.

I wanted girls, too, but got boys. I adapted to the situation!

definitely, it was my sister, my father realised in the last few days of his life what she was really like (my mother had died 3 years previously) she had not been near him since my mother died, I used to go & stay for 10 days at a time with him although I had a husband & 4 children to look after, I loved my dad though, when he realised the things that had been going on, I never told him even though I knew, she had been stealing off them for years, he wanted to change his will, I said no, let it be, it was a 50/50 split between the 2 of us. As soon as she got everything from the will she cut me off completely, hasn't spoken to me to this day even though I have tried, my husband died 9 years ago & 3 people let her know, she never even got in touch, now I don't want her to, she used to turn to myself & my hubby whenever she needed anything, she is 16 years younger than me, he would slip her some money every time we saw her, just making sure she was ok, very true what they say, you can choose your friends but not your family. I feel more sorry for her than anything seeing her this way.