On Monday I started a series on Parental Favoritism, and followed up on it on Wednesday--now, late on a Friday night, I'm finishing up the series, at least for the foreseeable future. Here are the last four words that I currently have on the subject of how to spice up your parental favoritism (sub)plots.
7. Put the protagonist somewhere in the middle
People, especially young people but old people, too (and sometimes to far more harmful degrees), have this tendency to polarize the world--there is up and down, there is left and right, there is black and white, there is cold and hot, and there is nothing in between. This comes from a lot of different places--childhood naiveté, absorbing too many stories with this same black vs. white mentality, a lack of empathy, strict teachings (usually theological) that stress the duology of an Cosmic Good and a Universal Evil in a universe that acts with an inherent morality, etc.
Now universes with an inherent morality can be very interesting, but only if the universe's morality is the universe's, and not the character's--again, unless your character is some kind of God with special universe-bending powers, they probably shouldn't be the one calling the shots one hundred percent, and their viewpoint shouldn't be the only Absolutely Correct one.
All that being said, sometimes there exists more than just Favorite and Least Favorite; a lot of kids have more than just one sibling. If your character exists in a home where favoritism is going on, or is thought to be going on, instead of putting your character on due north or south, maybe place them somewhere more toward center stage--from this vantage, they can comment on the rivalry (if one exists) as they see it, on how the favoritism (if it exists) plays out, and how it affects the rest of the family--while at much less risk than a family Black Sheep, children who are neither favorite nor least favorite are every bit as affected by things like this, and, if they have a good voice and interesting things to say, could provide a fresh perspective on things.
8. Don't let your kid get hung up on this shit for FOREVER
If your character had to wash more dishes than their sibling as a kid, they shouldn't still be talking about it when they're thirty. Unless you want them to come off as whiny, lazy, boring, and entitled, at least.
Favoritism in a home can cause problems, it's true; some of those problems might last for the rest of the kid's life, or at least have lasting impacts. But unless the wounds really are so deeply scarred, your little kids are likely to put it behind them sometime after college, if not during--you can't exactly pull the "I'm Mom's Favorite" card when your landlord asks you for rent, so privileged kids leading non-privileged lifestyles will learn pretty quick how bad a job Mommy and Daddy did setting them up in the world, while their baby brother, who always had to wash the dishes and clean the toilets and a million other things, will first of all be overjoyed to no longer be under his parents' thumb, but will second of all have a lot of skills that will serve him later on.
Even if the wounds are deep, your character may revisit them from time to time, especially during rocky periods in their life, but they're not going to still be obsessing over it by the time they have a family of their own, because there will be more important matters to deal with than the way Mom used to look at you when you brought home C's on your report cards.
Basically, while it can still be a part of them, don't let it define them.
9. Let your character realize that their parents aren't actually playing favorites
Sometimes it's all in your character's head. Let that be the case sometimes. Let them figure it out. Let them deal with the fallout. Maybe after all those years of thinking they were the least favorite they find out their sister thought she was the least favorite too, and they reconcile--maybe after believing they were the least favorite it turns out they were the favorite, and expected to stand on their own; maybe they thought they were the favorite, but they're only treated so well so they'll shut up and stop bothering their parents.
Maybe their parents just love them the same amount as all their siblings, but in different ways, and your character is forced to face the fact that the universe actually does not revolve around them, and they can't be the center of it at every waking moment.
This has been TheSpiderWriter's take on parental favoritism in fiction. I hope the details provided here have been helpful, and that they serve you going forward. If you have any thoughts to add or something you'd like to discuss, feel free to drop me a line!
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