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The Unfavourite: Difference between revisions
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* A lot of kids have suspicions that they might be this.
** That being said, in all likelihood there are probably a number of Unfavourites in the big bad world.
** A recent{{when}} study—yes, an actual, academic study—indicated that most parents do, in fact, have favorites. Equal treatment or attempts at same aside, most people are people and just relate more to one kid or the other, and therefore prefer to spend time with him or her and pursue their shared interests. In order to have a favorite/unfavorite dynamic at least two siblings must exist. Therefore, all other things being equal (though perhaps this is unrealistic), you have exactly a 50% chance of being the favorite. Doing the math to figure out what the actual probability of being the favorite assuming there must be at least one favored and one non-favored for larger sets of siblings is left as an exercise to the reader.
*** It's entirely possible to have more than half of the population the "unfavorite" if families have more than one child, or even if they have only one seeing as how you don't actually need siblings to be an unfavorite child.
* A lot of families do have these, particularly if they were hoping for a child of a certain gender
** In any case, in families that are poorer, oftentimes when they have one child, they'll be able to afford new clothes and such for that child, but when the second one comes along being able to afford to take care of both will undoubtedly be harder, so the second child ends up with a lot of hand-me-downs from their older sibling, which can lead to them feeling like they are loved less, particularly when they're at an age when they can't really understand financial issues.
* According to the history... [[Date Masamune]], despite being the rightful heir of the Date clan and quite liked by his father, is [[The Unfavorite]] for his mother. Thanks to him [[Eye Scream|plucking his eye out]], she has deemed him unworthy to inherit the clan and favors his younger brother. This has gotten so bad that at one point [[Evil Matriarch|his mother tries poisoning his food just so he'd die and his brother could take over]]. Masamune's response? [[Kick the Dog|Kill his brother]] just so his mother can see him rule, like it or not. After his father's death, he ends up banishing his mother to her home clan (his allies, which also goes on to be one of his most trusted allies in Sekigahara).
* Wilhelm II, [[World War I|the last emperor of the German Empire]], was despised by his mother (who even openly refused to write him birthday
** Wilhelm felt very close and dearly loved his grandmother Victoria, who died in his arms. It would seem ''she'' got along better with him than with her son, the Prince of Wales, who appears to have been her least favourite child. This may have contributed to the deep antipathy between Edward VII and Wilhelm II. And it was George V who declared war on Wilhelm, not the other way around.
*** A lot of the bitterness between Wilhelm and his mother can be put down to Bismarck's political maneuvers. Victoria, Princess Royal/Empress Frederick, was a liberal, as was Wilhelm's father. Bismarck saw that when the Crown Prince came to the throne he would be ousted and so set to work distancing the oldest surviving children (Wilhelm, Charlotte and Henrick) from their parents and succeeded. It backfired on him eventually but the damage couldn't be undone. When Bismarck saw the writing on the wall for him he went to Victoria and tried to get Wilhelm to keep him but she just replied that there was no chance of that since there was no relationship between herself and her son. Bismarck had seen to that. It also stopped Wilhelm from listening to the liberals and pushed him into the arms of the military and while he was the favourite of his grandparents it did nothing to stop his ego from getting too big and being a major factor in starting [[World War I|WW1]]. He apparently tried to bully his relatives and did nothing to endear himself to them which wouldn't make him popular in anyone's family. Even with historial revision there's very little evidence that any of his outer family liked him.
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**** It's possible to get permission to have a second child.
***** Or if you are rich enough to not care about fines/state taxes/additional expenses/etc., as many as you can afford.
***** Chinese traditionally favored large families, and in relation to this trope, gives a bigger pool to choose the Favorite or Heir from. You sure as heck don't want the
* As shown in her book ''[[Chinese Cinderella]]'', Adeline Yen Mah was quite obviously the Unfavorite of her entire family despite being very intelligent, simply because her mother died giving birth to her and thus she was considered "unlucky". Her stepmother hated her most of all (though she also clearly favored her own two children over her stepchildren) because she stopped the stepmother from hitting the youngest sister. The rest of the book details the various circumstances the poor girl finds herself in, as everyone shoves her one way and another to get rid of her.
* In a supremely [[Irony]]-filled example (as chronicled in [[Freakonomics]]), there's the case of Richard Lane, who named one of his sons "Winner" and another younger son "Loser". "Loser" ended up becoming a police officer in New York City. "Winner" became a career criminal. Yeah...
** Though the father claims he didn't give Loser's name because of this: apparently he enjoyed the [[Book Ends|book end]] [[Theme Naming|effect]].
* David Pelzer, author of ''[[A Child Called It]]'', was this until he was removed from his family. His mother took out her rage on him, resulting in one of the worst cases of child abuse in California history, and took care of the other children. Sadly, her anger didn't end when Dave was removed from the home...she started abusing his brother Richard when her favorite target was gone.
* Urban Dictionary: Middle Child Syndrome - "it is a known fact the youngest and oldest are treated differently than the middle child for the oldest is the first child aka favorite and the smallest is the baby aka the last child known for getting whatever they desire because they are the "baby". Middle Children sydrome includes neglect, forgotten dates, and sometimes in bad cases forgetting they even exist."
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