Aside from right and wrong, can you love one child more than another? Is it natural? Is it a defense mechanism? Is it another way to describe parental favoritism?
Tough questions indeed for anyone who has more than one child. Or anyone who has come from a family with other siblings (I am in both categories).
First, here is what our friends on Facebook think about this:
Karen Mays: "No, you can like or dislike some of their quirks...but the love is equal...they probably got the bad things from the other spouse!!"
Alba Mancebo: "I love each of my children the same but there definitely is a different love for each."
Robert Stephen Wallace: "One cannot measure the amount of love but can love each child as an individual."
Joe Favoroso: "For short periods of time, parents tend to favor one child over another. When they get to a certain age, it's more or less which child aggravates you the less that you tend to favor!"
Kate Tietje, a parent blogger who writes for Babble.com, published a controversial column last month. She admits that she loves her son (20 months old) more than her daughter (three years old).
Tietje states her reasons: a better pregnancy with her son after a painful pregnancy with her daughter, her daughter being more independent while her son being more loving and reliant on mom, and just a relative ease in "gravitating" towards her son.
Don't get Tietje wrong: she says she still loves her daughter very much. Just not as much as her son. Tietje is currently pregnant with her third child.
As you can imagine, Tietje has received a great deal of criticism, including by Sarah Oriel on Salon.com:
"I understand the need to share things that you don't know how to otherwise. But we have a responsibility. The piece could have been written anonymously, could have said what she felt she needed to say without naming her children, or even specifying which child she was referring to."
What do you think?
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