London - You might assume that being the apple of your mother’s eye could only be a good thing.
But adults who believe they are their mother’s favourite child are at an increased risk of depression, according to a study.
Researchers think that being subjected to siblings’ jealousy and feeling obliged to take care of their ageing parent both take a toll on the preferred child.
“There is a cost for those who perceive they are the closest emotionally to their mothers, and these children report higher depressive symptoms,” said Professor Jill Suitor, who led the study.
Researcher Megan Gilligan added: ‘This cost comes from higher sibling tension experienced by adult children who are favoured for emotional closeness, or the greater feelings of responsibility for the emotional care of their older mothers.’
The US academics used data collected from 725 adult children with an average age of 49, analysing levels of emotional closeness, conflict, pride and disappointment. Their mothers were aged 65-75 at the start of the seven-year study.
As well as the favourite, those who believed they were the child in whom their mother was most disappointed, or with whom they had the most conflict, reported more symptoms of depression. The researchers, from Purdue University in Indiana and Iowa State University, added that previous studies had found those who perceived themselves to be closer to their mothers were more distant from siblings.
“Further, tension with siblings has been found to be especially high when adult children are both favoured and provide care to their mothers – a context that is particularly common when mothers are in their late 70s and 80s, as is the case in the present study,” the authors wrote in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.
“Such tension with family members, including siblings, has been found to increase distress.
“In addition to the higher sibling tension experienced by adult children favoured for emotional closeness, another ‘cost’ of such favouritism may be greater feelings of responsibility, either for the “emotional care” or for the actual future instrumental care of their mothers.”
They added: “We find it particularly intriguing that siblings continue to engage in such a high degree of social comparison even well into their middle years. The findings shed new light on the role of inter-generational relations in adult children’s wellbeing in mid-life.”
Though few mothers or fathers would admit] they have a favourite son or daughter, studies have suggested they often do. One such piece of research, carried out at the University of California in 2005, found that 65 percent of mothers and 70 percent of fathers demonstrated a preference for one of their children over the others.
A previous study carried out by Professor Suitor and Dr Gilligan found that mothers tended to favour an adult child whom they perceived to be similar to them in terms of values and beliefs.
And surprisingly, whether a child was married, divorced or achieved independence mattered much less than sharing personal values, they said.
Arabella Russell, a Relate counsellor based in Dorking, Surrey, said family tensions can often spill over into our romantic relationships by influencing how we behave around our partners. “One can often see a lot of sibling rivalry played out in the counselling room,” she said.
“A lot of the work we do is about how our family affects us.
“How we learn to love and be loved by people, how accepted we feel, how easy we find it to relate to others and expect them to relate to us, can often be traced back to our upbringing.”
Daily Mail