If you're not an only child, chances are you and your other siblings are somehow still trying to figure out who mom's favorite is. According to a new study, however, winning the "Mom's Favorite" title is not necessarily a good thing; it may have a great effect on the risk for depression.
The result of the new study, which was co-authored by Jill Suitor and her colleagues from Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, was published in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences. It included 725 adult children from families who were part of the Within-Family Differences Study, a long-term project whose goal is to have a better understanding of the relationship between parents and their adult children.
The researchers specifically analyzed the data on four measures on how parents look at their children: children's perception of emotional closeness with their mother, their understanding of conflict, their concept of pride from their mother, and their notion of disappointment. The team also evaluated depressive symptoms among the children.
The team discovered that the highest recorded cases of depressive symptoms came from children who believed they were emotionally closer to their mother than their siblings and those who admitted that they were the sibling their mother was most disappointed in. These experts think sibling rivalry may be the root cause for the increase in the rate of depression among those who admitted they were favored by their mother for emotional closeness, or it may be an effect of heightened feelings of responsibility for the emotional care of older mothers.
The team also determined their findings by race; they clarified that previous studies have showed higher levels of closeness between older mothers and adult children in African-American families, and around a quarter of the families in the study were African-American. According to Suitor, they found that African-American offspring were particularly upset when they, as compared to their siblings, were the children in whom mothers were most disappointed.
