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Mothers' Favoritism in Later Life

The Role of Children's Birth Order

Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana

Karl Pillemer

Cornell University Ithaca, New York

The authors used data on 426 older mothers' relationships with their 1,823 adult children to explore the relationship between birth order and parental favoritism. The findings demonstrate that birth order continues to play an important role in explaining favoritism when families enter later stages of the life course. Last-born adult children were most likely to be named as those to whom their mothers were most emotionally close; firstborn children were most likely to be chosen as those to whom mothers would turn when facing personal problems or crises. Further analyses revealed that these patterns remained largely unaffected by family size, race, and child spacing. Middleborn children were substantially underrepresented in mothers' choices; such a pattern is particularly striking considering that the number of middle-born children far exceeded that of firstborn and last-born children in the sample.

Key Words: birth order • parent–adult child relations • parental favoritism

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