Despite what countless mums and dads have been telling kids for generations, a new 2025 study has revealed who in the family is destined to become the favourite child. Spoiler: it’s not little brothers — sorry!
The study, published in the American Psychological Association (APA) by Alexander C. Jensen and McKell A. Jorgensen-Wells, included sources ranging from 30 peer-reviewed articles that encompass more than 19,000 participants from the US, Canada, and Western Europe.
Jensen and Jorgensen-Wells examined how gender, birth order, temperament, and personality played a role in determining favouritism in the study and more often than not, the pair used a child’s reports of parental favouritism — although reports by parents were also recorded.
And the results? Well, it looks like older children and daughters are most likely to win a parent’s favour.
Parents were more likely to give greater autonomy to older children, which Jensen and Jorgensen-Wells recognised as preferential treatment, and the pair noted that many parents see daughters as ‘easier’ to raise compared to sons.
However, this study is not without its limitations and has been subsequently met with criticism.
As previously stated, the study primarily focused within the US, Canada, and Western Europe, meaning that its results are taken from a very specific Western lens and therefore is not a true representation of global beliefs.
“This has to change [from] culture to culture. There are plenty of cultures where boys are more coveted. How do they compare?” wrote one Reddit user.
Elsewhere, folks questioned just how accurate the study’s results actually were.
“‘Important implications’ seems a little overblown. Their findings help confirm previous findings: that favouritism can be harmful, that children’s own personalities and traits affect how their parents treat them, and that kids and parents don’t always have matching perceptions of favouritism” wrote another user.
In an interview with The Guardian, a professor of human development at Cornell University, Karl Pillemer, mentioned that “parents do differentiate among their children, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they like or love one more than the other”.
“The problems occur when nearly universal feelings of preference among children translate into treating them differently,” he said.
“We can’t help how we feel, but we can definitely help how we act towards our children,” he added.
Whether or not you’re convinced by this study’s results is up to you, but one thing is for certain: this is probably going to start a fight in the family group chat.
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