Why Parents Treat Their Children Differently: A Parts-Based Perspective

It’s a common observation that parents often treat their children differently, even when they strive to be fair and equal. Psychologist Alfred Adler proposed that birth order affects children’s personality because the family structure and parental attitudes evolve over time.

Birth Order & Family Dynamics

Firstborns enter the world with an existential insecurity, often striving to be a “little adult” to win parental approval. They may develop perfectionist tendencies as they try to maintain their status as the sole recipient of parental attention.

In contrast, later-born children enter a world with established parent-child roles. They understand from the start that they are not in charge, reducing the pressure to be parental stand-ins. Middle children develop peacemaking skills as they navigate their position between older and younger siblings. Youngest children, accustomed to others taking care of them, may remain immature attention-seekers. Only children tend to be mature for their age but also expect undivided attention.

Over time, parents usually relax and become less perfectionistic. The intense monitoring given to a first child gives way to more laid-back parenting with subsequent children. Fathers especially tend to mellow in their discipline after the firstborn. This increasing parental confidence means later children often experience more freedom and fewer rules.

Parts Psychology Perspective

While birth order offers a compelling explanation for differential treatment, parts psychology provides another illuminating lens. Jungian and parts-based therapies suggest that unintegrated aspects of the parent’s psyche shape their behavior in hidden ways.

Voice Dialogue, developed by Hal and Sidra Stone, proposes that we all have multiple selves or subpersonalities. For example, many people learn as children that their role is to perform a specific function for a parent.

Borderline mothers often raise children, especially sons, to focus on the mother’s emotional experience and neglect their own. These sons learn that their job is to enable and stabilize their mother, not to attend to their own needs. They often grow up to marry borderline women, replaying the dynamic. In this way, BPD traits can skip a generation.

Narcissistic parents may instill a “don’t be weak” worldview to bolster their fragile self-image. Children internalize the message that vulnerability is shameful and must be attacked in themselves and others. These beliefs are then perpetuated through dogmatic political and religious ideologies that venerate toughness. Unlike BPD, narcissism is often passed directly to children.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, Richard Schwartz teaches that we all have wounded inner children and protective “managers.” Parents’ unhealed child parts may look to their own kids to meet their emotional needs. Conversely, their defending manager parts may criticize their children in the same way they judge themselves. Only by embracing their own vulnerable parts can parents affirm those parts in their children.

Transactional Analysis (TA) founder Eric Berne described the “games people play,” or dysfunctional dynamics between ego states. When acting from a Child ego state, a person seeks approval and protection. In a Parent ego state, one is critical and controlling. Adult ego states are rational and grounded.

Alcoholic families often play the “Yes, But” game. The alcoholic, in Child mode, repeatedly asks for advice, then rejects all suggestions. This frustrates the advice-giver’s Parent ego state. Both parties end up feeling resentful. The Child learns that indirect communication meets their needs, and the pattern repeats across relationships. Only accessing the Adult ego state breaks the cycle.

Trauma Bonding & the Loyal Child

One of the most poignant examples of differential parenting occurs in abusive families. The most dysfunctional, still-enmeshed adult child often becomes the primary defender of the toxic parent, much to the confusion of healthier siblings. What looks like misplaced loyalty is actually a trauma bond.

This child is psychologically fused with the parent’s most wounded, regressed parts. By clinging to the parent’s destructive qualities, the child preserves the illusion of connection. They may imitate the parent’s substance abuse, bigotry, or violence to maintain the fantasy that “no one else truly understood Mom/Dad.”

Seeing the parent realistically would unleash an avalanche of grief. By keeping the parent’s negative traits alive, the child forestalls this painful reckoning. Unconsciously, they believe that “becoming” the parent will prevent their loss. Healthier siblings who have individuated are perceived as traitors.

This dynamic is well-articulated in schema therapy. The Punitive Parent mode, an internalization of the abusive parent, dominates the Vulnerable Child mode to preempt abandonment or punishment. Imitation becomes a matter of psychic survival. Healing involves accessing the Healthy Adult mode to reparent and protect the Vulnerable Child.

Coherence therapy offers a similar formulation. The loyal child weaves a felt sense of connection with the toxic parent, no matter how painful. Letting go of this emotional “truth” feels like annihilation. Only by viscerally accessing early memories of terror and helplessness can the client build a more adaptive understanding.

Differential parenting arises as parents project disowned parts of themselves onto their children. The perfectionist mother shames her daughter’s creativity. The stoic father punishes his son’s tears. These banished traits become “hooks” for negative parental projections.

In Psychosynthesis, the therapeutic aim is to disidentify with these limiting roles and access the Wise Inner Parent. From this higher vantage point, we can embrace all our parts with compassion. We transform our own childhood hurts and become more integrated parents.

Other Factors in Parental Projection

Beyond birth order and parts psychology, various other factors can influence how parents project onto their children:

Unfulfilled Dreams:

A parent who always wanted to be a doctor but never pursued that path may project those aspirations onto a child, pushing them towards a medical career.

Personality Traits:

Parents may see their own introversion or extroversion reflected more strongly in one child over others.

Talents and Abilities:

A parent who excels at music may be quicker to notice and encourage musical talent in a child who shows an inclination.

Negative Traits:

Parents can project their own insecurities, fears or weaknesses onto a child, leading to extra criticism in those areas.

Gender Roles:

Mothers may project more of their own personality and experiences onto daughters, while fathers do so with sons.

Appearance:

Parents can project more of themselves onto the child who looks most like them physically.

Temperament:

Parents may interpret a child’s shyness, intensity or sensitivity as a mirror of their own temperament.

Interests:

A parent passionate about a hobby like sports or art may project that zeal onto the child who shows the most enthusiasm for the same activity.

Relationships:

How a child relates to others may remind a parent of their own social strengths and struggles, leading to projections in that realm.

Raising the next generation challenges us to confront those banished aspects of ourselves that derail healthy relating. Parts work provides a powerful road map to restore inner and outer attunement.

As we encounter our exiled parts, we become less likely to exile those parts in our children. We transition from unconscious reactivity to intentional nurturance. In this way, even the most painful legacies can be alchemized into a more conscious, compassionate way of loving. We honor the unique being of each child as we learn to honor the complexity within.