One might assume that, psychologically speaking, being mom’s favorite child is far better than being the viewed as the biggest disappointment, but new research from Purdue University sociologists suggests that favorite status comes with its own negative consequences.
“There is a cost for those who perceive they are the closest emotionally to their mothers,” lead author and Purdue sociology professor Jill Suitor said in a statement, “and these children report higher depressive symptoms, as do those who experience the greatest conflict with their mothers or who believe they are the children in whom their mothers are the most disappointed.”
Suitor and her colleagues, who reported their findings recently in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, studied data from the first two phases of the Within-Family Differences Study. They collected seven years worth of information from 725 adult children within 309 families where the mothers were between the ages of 65 and 75 when the study began.
‘Favorites’ feel a greater need to care for their aging mothers
They found that depressive symptoms were higher both when offspring perceived that they had the highest level of emotional closeness with the mothers, or when they felt as though they were involved in the most conflict with the female parent. They also found that depressive symptoms were worse when children felt mom was most disappointed in them.
“This cost comes from higher sibling tension experienced by adult children who are favored for emotional closeness, or the greater feelings of responsibility for the emotional care of their older mothers,” said Megan Gilligan, an assistant professor in human development and family studies at Iowa State University and a former graduate student at Purdue.
The study also looked at how these patterns differed by race. They discovered black offspring were especially bothered by motherly disappointment, Suitor said. Overall, the authors found that the link between maternal differentiation and psychological well-being was stronger in adult children of black families than it was in white families, according to the study.
Suitor and her colleagues now plan to investigate similar issues relating to the relationships between adult children and their fathers, as well as questions related to predicting favoritism in mother-adult child relationships.
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