Study Reveals that Parents' Unequal Treatment of Children May Not Be Harmful

Most parents try very hard to treat their children fairly and equally. But often children are different ages or have different personalities or needs, so it is not possible-or even practical-to treat them the same. One result of treating children differently is that parents are often discouraged to hear their children complain, "It's not fair!"

A recent study we conducted at the University of Illinois has revealed, however, that children generally do understand why their parents treat them differently, and they think it's okay, even if they don't enjoy it at the time. One child in this study claimed, " [my mom] punishes me more and stuff, but that's just because she loves me. It's not because she loves my sister more. If she didn't care, then she wouldn't punish me." When we asked whether he felt that way when he was being punished, the child laughed and said, "Not usually." The results of this study revealed that children generally do see their parents as doing a pretty good job of treating them equally, and that when differential treatment does occur, they usually think it's fair. We also found that when children understand that differential treatment occurs in the service of meeting one child's particular needs, they tend to have better sibling relationships.

In this study, trained researchers went to the homes of 61 families and talked to children between the ages of 11 and 13, and their siblings who were 1.5 to 4 years older or younger. We first interviewed children about the extent to which equal and differential treatment occurred in their families in the realms of parental control and affection. Then we asked children about why they thought their parents treated them differently from their siblings. For example, children were asked why they thought their parents were stricter with, more sensitive to, or favored one child over the other. Children also told us whether or not they felt that the differential treatment was fair. Finally, the children filled out questionnaires about the quality of their sibling relationship.

The results of this study revealed that children felt that differential treatment was unfair in only one-fourth of the instances they responded about. Further, although children were able to use relatively sophisticated rationales to understand why their parents treated them differently, they reported that differential treatment occurred in only one-third of the cases.

Children gave a variety of reasons to explain why they thought their parents treated them differently. These reasons generally fell into five main categories:

* Different Needs-"My mom praises my brother more because he has such low self-esteem he needs a lot of praise."

* Different Ages-"My dad punishes my brother more because he is older and should know better."

* Personal Attributes-"My mom listens to my sister more because she is a much more talkative person than I am."

* Shared Interests-"My mom spends more time with me because we both like tennis so much. My brother and dad do more things together like play catch."

* Sibling Drives Differential Treatment-"My brother doesn't want affection from my mom, he goes 'Ewww yuck' when she tries to hug him."

One of the most important findings of this study was that if children perceived that their parents treated them differently because of their siblings' different needs, the children tended to get along better with each other. This was the case even if children reported that a significant amount of differential treatment occurred in their home. This finding is important because most parenting handbooks advise parents to avoid treating their children differently in order to avoid sibling conflict and jealousy. The results of this study suggest, however, that an even more important consideration for parents is that they can communicate with their children about the reasons behind differential treatment. Children's sibling relationships may not be adversely affected by differential treatment if the children believe that these behaviors occur to benefit themselves or their siblings. As one child said, "Sometimes you should treat kids equally, but sometimes that can cause troubles because you should be treating them differently. It all depends on what the kids need."

For more information, refer to:

Kowal, Amanda, & Kramer, Laurie. (1997). Children's understanding of parental differential treatment. Child Development, 68(1), 113-126.