The Favourite - The parenting taboo that dare not speak its name

Like most parents I swore blind before junior arrived that I would preserve his privacy with my life. I scoffed and scorned at those parents who documented every moment of their child’s life riding roughshod on their child’s autonomy over their personhood. Needless to say, two years down the track, I had to promise my wife I would pay a £1,000 fine if I put another picture of our child on Instagram. Sharenting doesn’t come close: this was true #nofilter voluntary intrusion on our child’s privacy.

Still - there’s the evidence of my love for him. Not for me the wistful photographs of pints and champagne flutes and fond reminiscing of when I was footloose and fancy-free. So much have the traditional taboos been broken down that these days one occasionally sees pieces in the papers from parents prepared to go public that having kids was the worst thing that they ever did and they wish them away every moment. Although, notably, these articles seem to be confined to when the children in question are not yet at school to be confronted with the documentary evidence that that they were a terrible mistake and constant source of regret.

There remains still one topic that even the boldest parent will not own to and that is favourites. We have favourite colours, favourite ice cream flavours, favourite football teams and we have our favourite child. I thought I should write this post now, when we have only one, and there can be no doubt that my one and only really is my one and only. (Although I have a slightly challenging theory that if your favourite child is not your firstborn then even when your first was your only child they were still not your favourite, but this is no place for philosophy).

Being the favourite is of course not an unalloyed blessing. Nothing in life is more galvanising than the realisation that you have to fight for attention. Also an awareness that you’re second best makes it much more likely that you will venture into the world with a clearer sense that nobody owes you anything. That being said if there are only two of you it must be hard not being the favourite. If inclinations were fairly calibrated it would obviously be equitable if one child was the favourite of one parent and the other of the other but, as we know, life’s not fair.

I’ve often thought in very large families, rarely found these days, that there must be a real sense of camaraderie in not being the favourite. After all if you’re one of eleven, as a Catholic priest friend of mine is, only one of you is going to be family captain. One thing that I think is important is to be reconciled to your status. Favourites are immutable and no endeavour is more bound to fail than a child’s attempt to usurp its sibling’s status.

Don’t whatever you do broach this as a topic with your parents, they will deny favouritism to their dying breath, all any good parent can do is seek to suppress those instincts lest the truth too uncomfortable rears its ugly head.