I quit therapy over this
Being the most spoiled doesn’t make you the golden child
I ended things with my most recent therapist in December after I realized that regardless of what I wanted to talk about, he brought everything back to the fact that I clearly hadn’t “gotten over the loss of [my] mother” and a deep obsession with who was the favorite child in my family growing up. Ironically, my mother was always sad to not be brought into various therapeutic settings when I was younger because as she said on repeat “it’s always the mother’s fault!” And I always had to break it to her that, sadly, she did a great job.
As much as I appreciate a psychologist with a Freud-Adler fixation (since that’s about where my knowledge of psych started and stopped so it keeps us on equal footing), I found none of that helpful. I was there to talk about career transitions and the favorite child question seemed wholly irrelevant.
It could have been my fault; perhaps I wasn’t giving enough raw material for him to work with. My parents each held individual relationships with each of us and while we all have very different relationships with them, I don’t think there was favoritism. At my mother’s 70th birthday party, she noted in her toast that she and each of her sisters all believed they were their mother’s favorite — while her own children (the three of us) all said we were the least favorite. That probably sums up the actual dynamic: one of heavy teasing, which I never took well. Even at my wedding, my family stood together to sing a childhood song meant to lightly but lovingly mock me. If gentle teasing was meant to thicken the skin, it didn’t work. On my long list of faults I include: being wildly sensitive, a poor loser, and being particularly sensitive about losing.
My therapist would interject here and say “what would your brothers say if I asked them?” I’m confident they’d say the same while pointing out I was absolutely the most spoiled by several miles. Fair.
Last week I talked about my love of Reddit’s AITA and should note that “golden children” is a whole other beloved topic there and one with which I was unfamiliar prior to hanging out on that subreddit. I definitely had the chance to observe it in friends where it was clear parents favored someone (often a younger brother, interestingly), but it really wasn’t our family’s pathology.
The golden child framework does provide some clarity though. We have (former Prince) Andrew as exhibit A — always considered to be the Queen’s favorite, and the result was a man so protected from consequences that accountability became structurally impossible. Being the favorite didn’t make him beloved by the public, successful in his endeavors, or particularly self-aware. It made him untouchable for way too long, which becomes extra problematic when justice is at stake. It also likely left him unprepared for the day he would be photographed looking slumped and scared in the back of a Range Rover while the King announced he would let “the law take its course.”
While not the largest of sample sets, my takeaway from Andrew and many AITA threads is that at its worst, the “favorite” produces not a loved child but an exempted one. Perhaps that’s where my former therapist was actually headed: underneath the terminology was a real question — was I seen as a child? Did I get what I needed? Did I internalize some kind of rank? A legitimate question, just forced into the wrong framing.
Marrying into a new family with three kids ranging from 8 to 15 brought with it new dynamics and hierarchies. It’s a family that didn’t tease much until I joined it, and then everyone was confused when she who could dish it couldn’t take it — part of my charm. What did disturb me at the start was that Oldest was constantly called “perfect.” It was meant to compliment her general kindness and thoughtful demeanor, but I — ever the youngest child with a light chip on my shoulder — was horrified.
How did everyone, extended family included, not see that this freezes the labeled kid in a role and the rest of the family organizes around her? If one child is regularly called perfect, even with a glimmer in the eye, those who are not called perfect know they are at the very least, a little bit less than. While not intended, that kind of thing is playing favorites.
It’s not purely a vocabulary question, although that’s certainly a big part of it: favorite, golden, liked, loved, seen — none of them are exactly the same thing. You can be fair and equitable with various resources but not be equally drawn to everyone. You can love without liking. Affinity isn’t a choice, but you get to choose what you do with it. The goal isn’t to feel the same about everyone; it can be to ensure that your affinities don’t do damage.
That’s what my therapist kept missing, and what the AITA golden child threads mostly miss too. The question was never whether someone was the favorite but rather what the favorite status was doing — whether it was building someone up or exempting them from the ordinary work of being a person (or basic justice). “Perfect” does the same damage as “golden child,” just with better PR. My family’s teasing, obnoxious as I found (and still find) it, was, at least, egalitarian. Everyone got some. Nobody got a pass. And if you tried to get out of it, you found multiple people singing a song to you asking you to smile — every sullen teenager’s dream.
I’ll also admit it’s hard to be around more than one person and not think about who I like more – had I had the chance to be “The Bachelorette,” it would have been a real short season. The true challenge will always come back to how those thoughts manifest.
Navigating all of it is easier when you have three kids: they may outnumber you but the odds are ultimately in your favor. Derek Jeter got to Cooperstown with a 0.310 regular season batting average so liking even one out of three at a time is pretty impressive.
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