WHEN my middle child was a toddler he used to regale us daily with what we laughingly referred to as his "league table of love". This was a constantly shifting list of the people he rated most in descending order. His best friend du jour was generally at the top, followed by his grandparents and his brothers. If I had just handed out sweets, I had an outside chance of making it into the top 10.
Anyway, the list was funny because it was so silly: fancy believing love was something with finite limits; something concrete, which could be measured, divided up and shared out in exact portions. Only a child could see the world in this way. A child
or a fictional character such as King Lear – who forced each of his daughters to tell him how much they adored him so he could decide how much of his kingdom they deserved to inherit. But then Lear was a peacock short of an Elizabethan banquet, and had to endure all manner of torments to learn the moral of the tale: that families are messy, complicated businesses and that the love within them is difficult to define and impossible to articulate.
Now, however, a website survey suggests mothers up and down the country are struggling to get to grips with the same concept. According to a poll, conducted by the online parents' forum Netmums, one in six say they love one of their children more than the others. In other words, they too have an internalised league table of love (although they would never stoop so low as to give their progeny regular updates as to their current chart positions).
For these mums, the fact they have a secret "favourite" is said to be a source of shame and guilt, a burden they will carry their entire lives. But is all this angst really justified or is it predicated on an idealised but spurious notion on what family life entails?
Before your children are born you might nurture a dream of a conveyor belt of biddable little clones, all equally affectionate, communicative and appealing. And you might truly believe you will feel exactly the same way about each and every one of them.
Once they are real, live people, however, you realise they are as diverse and complicated as any other human beings. And as such, it's unlikely they will provoke exactly the same emotional response in you.
I would give my life for any one of my three, very different sons, but I wouldn't insult their intelligence by pretending I feel an identical blend of love, pride and frustration for each of them.
The Netmums survey may claim to break the last taboo, but isn't it obvious that your relationship with your kids will depend on how their personalities mesh with your own? If one of your daughters shares your perspective on life, while another takes pleasure in rebelling against it, then it's likely you'll have to work harder to bond with the latter, although you won't necessarily love her any less. Or perhaps one of your sons is just too like you for comfort: there's nothing more likely to cause friction in a relationship than seeing your own faults reflected back at you.
The way you relate to your children is also likely to be affected by their position in the family and by your own life circumstances at the time they were conceived. As psychologists have pointed out, first children may have a rocky ride because their mothers weren't prepared for the way in which their world would be turned upside down. Equally, a child born into a marriage which went sour long ago may bear a portion of their parents' bitterness or disappointment.
But just because a mother's love for a particular child is tinged with frustration, anger or resentment doesn't make it any less potent. In fact, quite the opposite, as last week's fly-on-the-wall documentary The Family demonstrated.
The programme – which is modelled on the first ever reality show – follows the ups and downs of couple Simon and Jane and their four children aged between 21 and 14 over a period of four months. On the surface, the first episode consisted of almost 60 minutes of hostility between Jane and the most difficult of her three daughters, 19-year-old Emily, who goes out clubbing late at night, gets a sick line for work, and can't be bothered to spend time with her mum.
Yet intriguingly – although Emily was a constant source of strife – she was also the one her mother seemed closest to. The other children, who tiptoed around Jane, were largely ignored as she and Emily locked themselves into their private and often painful universe. The extent of their mutual understanding was revealed in a fleeting moment when Emily cuddled up beside her and they sang the Kate Nash song 'Foundations' together.
Even if you do love all your children equally you can't win, because at some point in their young lives most children will perceive themselves to be emotionally-neglected, usually when they are being denied something they want.
How many of us have heard the chilling words: "You love her/him more than you love me" and given in to whatever demands prompted the slur? It's called emotional blackmail and it's a powerful tool because it plays on our greatest fears: that maybe they're right and their whole lives will be blighted by our failings.
Personally, I think we should all stop worrying so much. So long as our progeny know they are the centre of our universe, what does it matter if our love for one takes a different form from our love for another? And even-handedness can be over-rated. Evelyn Waugh once said he despised all six of his children equally. Now doesn't that put a tiny bit of favouritism into perspective?
The full article contains 992 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
