Well, maybe it's not a question of liking them best. But according to this article, we definitely spend more quality time -- reading, talking, playing -- with our firstborn children. Like, 3,000 overall extra hours when those children are between the ages of 4 to 13. And the more kids we have, the less of that valuable time each successive offspring gets. These findings are based on a study recently published in the Journal of Human Resources.
The gut reaction to a piece like this is to feel a. guilty and b. compelled to somehow compensate for the time middle/youngest child has lost by playing Connect Four with him for nine consecutive hours. But that's not necessarily the right response.
Most parents would never, ever say they prefer one kid over the other.
Most of us take pride in the notion that we treat all of our children
equally, a founding principle upon which all of our families' Constitutions are based. The truth is, though, this is all just simple math. Once you have more kids, the less time you can spend with each one.
As the article points out, there is also a learning curve effect. With the first baby, parents are desperate to do everything right and may spend more time ensuring that they do. By the second or third kid, Mom and Dad have probably realized that they can't do it all and are willing, often by necessity, to give the new family members a bit more breathing room. Every friend with more than one son or
daughter invariably tells me the same thing: That he or she loosened up
more with the second or third one and didn't focus so attentively (sometimes, neurotically) on the younger children.
So I don't see this study as evidence of a bad trend, just a numerical confirmation of something that many parents may already suspect, even if it violates their equal-opportunity-for-all ethos.
Photo: Brigham and Women's Hospital
