Do mum's prefer sons?

[emilytankengine]

A few things have happened in my life and recently that makes me wonder??

Feeling guilty about my posts earlier now (about my Mum prefering my brother). I think the thing is, she has done the right thing and denied it, but to my eyes it is just obvious. Ho hum. She has tried her best and admittedly I was the 'difficult one as a child.

dont feel guilty

My mum cried when they left him at university for the first time.
When they drove off after leaving me they didn't even look back.

and he got all the financial bail outs when he ended up in massive debts...ho hum.

I think my mum just assumed I'd "be all right" but that my brother needed "looking after" which is such a weird attitude when you think traditionally men were supposed to be strong and earn the money and keep a family.

DD's Granma openly prefers boys to girls. I think she finds girls ''cold''. Her absolute favourite is her first born grandson.

I absolutely adore my DD. She runs around in princess shoes .We go out for coffee and cake (she has juice).

miggsie

that university thing very true of me..

that woman did no give two hoots

dont know why she came anyway she had buggered off out of the family home four years previous but turns up for an occasion

dd's one and two she virtually wrote their degrees for them

boys are useless for longer... (by useless I mean no self sufficient)

Girls are easier to leave than boys because you know they can handle it.

Sorry, but even at 32, boys need some kind of guidance!

amd yes, from all experience adn all that friends tell me, girks are easier as children, but evil as teenagers. Boys are difficukt and hell-bent on bashing into furniturem, but better as teenagers

oh dear, i'm sorry... k = l mostly!

damn Pinot!

I'm delighted to read this thread because (as a mother to 3 boys) it has never seemed to me that boys are favoured over girls- quite the reverse.

I was lucky in that my brother and I were treated completely equally when growing up and still are.

But I can see a really extreme example of the girl preference thing with my MIL/SIL. SIL is in her mid 30s but has never had a lasting job or any type of relationship in all the years I've known her. Every time she walks out of a job (because someone has been "mean" to her or such like) she has her mum running around complaining on her behalf or paying off her mortgage for her,so that she remains totally childlike and needy which MIL seems to relish. So its not just boys who can be useless as adults. My MIL seems so obsessed with her "best friends" relationship with SIL, that I honestly think she'd prefer to SIL to use a sperm donor for children rather than find a partner, because it would reduce MIL's control and dominance in her life. Very selfish imo.

I would like a little girl as well, but would be extremely careful not allow her to become the "princess". And if I don't have any more children, my boys will never hear from me that I might have wanted a girl as I think this could be very damaging to their self esteem, especially the youngest one (who I utterly adore and could not be more loving and affectionate towards me).

Yes a majority of the women i know prefer their sons and the men prefer their daughters. "daddy's girl" "mummy's boy".
I have one of each and i love them both. i love dd v.v.much and ds too but there's something different about the way i feel about ds. So maybe its not the love, maybe most moms tend to get along more with their sons and dads with their daughters.

aww @ daffodingles post

This is a very interesting thread. I was told by both my parents that they knew that I had struggled as a teenager, but that they had concentrated on my brother as they knew that I would cope but were worried about him. I suppose that they were right, as I am OK, but those years were a nightmare and I felt as though I was dealing with them completely alone. And I didn't have to - my parents could have acknowledged what I was going through. At the time I thought that they didn't know. It was quite a shock to find out that they had made a concious choice to ignore it.

Thank you Trout

Public perception is that Mums prefer sons- just watch the latest PERSIL advert. Did any of us realise that ALL these adverts over the years only featured mums and sons? I think it is hysterical that they obviously realised this and stuck a girl in at the end! No really...watch it!

Favouritism is vile. My DP is the golden boy in his family- I think it just makes a child spoilt and gives them a false sense of entitlement.

I love my DS, I am 3mths pregnant, I would like a girl purely because one of each will be nice- however, I will be just as thrilled with another little boy. I will never have favouritism- I will love them both equally and try to treat them the same.

My DS is also the clear favourite of the great grandchildren in DP's family.

maamajullah - yes I think you are right. I think you expressed it a lot better than I did earlier.

Interesting that we have a lot of women on here saying they were favoured less well than their brothers. I wonder what men would say about their sisters? I wonder if they would agree?

Erm ... OK I am a man so what do I think?

Well, I have to admit my parents paid for my private education and my sisters went to state school. I also get on better with my Mum than my Dad because we seem to connect intellectualy in a different way.

Maybe sons are favoured.

What do your sisters think about you getting a "better" education than you ABetaDad?

As a sister stuff like that really piss me off. My mum would help my bro out in a heartbeat without him having to ask but she wouldn't offer for me. I would have to go cap in hand.

Would you send one of your dc to private school and not the other?

I think it is definitely possible to have a more easy and comfortable relationship with one particular child at different points in time. And I think this can be (mis)interpreted as favouritism unless the parent is really very careful.

aGal - I felt very uncomfortable about it at the time and have thought about it many times over the years. My Mum & Dad now frequently help both my sisters out financially and with quite a lot of money and I have never had a penny since leaving school. I have absolutely no problem with that.

I also made a very concious decision when I was a teeneager to work full time for my Dad in the holidays 10 hours a day on his farm and not get paid at all. I told him directly that I wanted to pay my school fees by working for him. I felt I did not want to 'owing' or getting something for nothing.

I certainly would not do that to my children - both go to private school and both have been told that they are equal and will be for ever in my eyes although both are sons. I would feel the same if I had a son and daughter.

My parents took out a term assurance thing for my brother which matured when he was 18, I think. They didn't do one for me.

I aim to treat my kids equally.

Yes they should be treated equally but you cant help your feelings sometimes. some arents feel more love for a child but get along more with another child.

I'm really not surprised by the whole education inequality thing. I've met a lot of people of my parents' generation who've lacked the funds to send all the children to private (public) schools and sent the boy instead.

I've tried to be scrupulously fair with mine. I just hope that they feel fairly and equally treated when they are adults.

*parents

I work with a 62 year old woman who has 3 gown up kids - 1 boy and 2 dsughters. She adores them all, but openly admits to loving her ds that little bit more. She glows when she talks about him.

At the moment I dislike mine all equally. No favouritism in this house.