Parental Favoritism - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Parental Favouritism

Datz when i knew i wuz not favourite.

"Mom always liked you best!"

—Tom Smothers, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

"I am gonna lose my mind — my parents just brag and brag about my brother! 'Oh, he's in a room above the garage!' BIG DEAL! He's an ex-con!"

—Pickles the Drummer, Metalocalypse

It's tough being a kid in Fiction Land. Bad enough when you're an only child, but if you're among a pack of siblings, this particular trope is nearly guaranteed to raise its head at some point in order to make life even more difficult.

Parental Favoritism is just what it sounds like — one child is given preference over their siblings. In order to qualify, this has to be consistent. One child being asked to do the other's chores because their sibling is sick is probably not favoritism, although that probably won't stop the kid lumbered with the extra work from grumbling. One child having to do all the chores on a daily basis, while their brother/sister sits and plays video games, however, is.

It may show itself in a variety of ways. If there is an argument or fight, the parent(s) will always take the side of one particular sibling, and the other(s) will be blamed for it/punished. The parents may brag about one child in particular and be dismissive of the others, regardless of the achievements of their brothers and sisters. There may always be one particular kid who gets out of doing their chores, even if the other kids get pulled up for forgetting to tidy their room.

Sometimes, there may be more than one "favorite," or the mother and father will have different "favorites," making life even more of a headache for their siblings.

There are a few different versions of the trope, and a few different "explanations" as to why one child is preferred over the other. These divisions can be by:

Birth Order
- The oldest child is favoured because they are the firstborn/family heir. Tends to apply more to sons than daughters, since old inheritance laws favour boys over girls. This is found more often in fantasy or historical literature, where these laws have a real impact on how the family is run. Sometimes, the oldest child may have a huge set of standards thrown on them, but other times, an overachiever will set other standards for the younger ones.
- The youngest child is favoured because they are the "baby" of the family, and the parents will protect them from being "bullied" by their older siblings even when they are big enough to defend themselves/started the trouble in the first place. This is popular in more modern literature, especially with teen novels and children's TV.
- Middle children get a rough deal; very rarely are they the family favourite, unless they do something really outstanding to explain it. Middle Child Syndrome, as it's known, is a real life phenomenon, that some psychologists are studying today.
Gender
- Preference by gender often relies on the boys:girls ratio within the family. If there are several of one sex and only one of the other, the sibling with a different gender from the others will probably be "the favorite." This can backfire though — they may instead be the "ugly duckling" of the family if the parents prefer one gender over the other, a preference that often hinges on the culture the story is set in (i.e, the solitary sister who's expected to clean up after, and cook for, her brothers).
- If there is one son and several daughters, the son will probably acquire the title of "heir to the family." His parents may believe him to be "more important" than his sisters, and they might be expected to obey him/take care of him.
- If there is one daughter and several sons, she will probably be the "baby" of the family regardless of birth order (possible exception if she is the oldest sibling, in which case she'll be de facto babysitter). Strangely, brothers are seldom shown as resenting their sister — in fact, they'll "defend her honor" more ferociously than their parents will. Any potential boyfriends are in for a hard time.
Personality
- Sometimes, one child is funnier, more gregarious, or more talented than the others, making them "the favorite" almost automatically. Very often, this sibling will be sweetness and light to everyone else, but the Devil In Plain Sight to their brothers and sisters. Alternatively, a Dead Little Sister situation might occur with the parents...or parent, since this applies especially if a spouse has died. In this case, one child will be favoured because of their resemblance to a particular person. Particularly narcissistic parents however, tend to favour the child that most looks/acts like him/herself.
Biological vs. Adoption
- It hardly needs mentioning that dozens of fairy tales (notably Cinderella) involve stepchildren mistreated by their parents in favor of their biological children. This is pretty much a Discredited Trope today; more commonly, you have an adopted child who suffers some perceived slight from his stepparent and must be reassured that he is loved just as much as the parent's natural children.
- This is also commonly inverted - the adopted child will be well behaved, the biological child will be spoiled and jealous, and when the inheritance or the call to adventure is passed down to the adopted child instead of the "true" inheritor, expect the biological child to start a Cain And Abel situation rapidly.

Any of these criteria can backfire. For example, one child might be the favorite because they look and act just like their saintly, deceased mother. Another might be just the opposite — The Un Favourite — because of their resemblance to the mother that walked out on the father — or even because they remind the father of the saintly mother. If the saintly mother died in childbirth, then that child's usually got a hell of a lot of resentment to get over, no matter what the physical similarities.

Occasionally, parents have a child that natually requires more care and attention than the others, because they're very young, disabled or psychologically damaged. This will still seem unfair to the other kids who get less of their parents' time, but it's necessity rather than favoritism...usually. This is a favourite plot for children's books and television, where the lead character is jealous of a new baby sister or brother only to be reassured that "we love you just as much." On the other hand, if the favorite is Too Good For This Sinful Earth, the parents may never learn to appreciate their living children.

Sometimes, the parents are reasonably handing out the privileges and responsibilities with age. When the older child looks only at the responsibilities and the younger at the privileges, both can come to the view that they are the Unfavorite. Or they may responsibly differentiate, but the musically untalented child may resent the lessons as favoritism, and the talented one, the other's free time as favoritism; or the child who must do all the chores resents the sickly child's confinement to his bedroom and inability to play. Cue Sibling Rivalry.

In fact, the obligatory "talk with the parents" is normally part of a Parental Favoritism plot...but don't expect it to solve anything. If the writer is trying to Hand Wave the glaring bias of the parents, there will be a scene where mum and dad will give a long speech on how they value all their kids equally, and will tell the un-favorite child that making them live in the basement and forcing them to bow whenever their little brother enters a room is really a mark of their esteem. The words "you're the responsible one" will probably be mentioned in some form. A more realistic version is where the big talk is honest, and the parent doesn't bother trying to justify what they've done, but attempts to make amends. This is regularly done to "humanise" the hitherto antagonistic parents — but it's probably too late. By the time of the talk, most of the audience will already be set against the parents, and it'll take a hell of a lot of good writing to redeem them.

Parental Favoritism can have a huge impact on characters even when they become adults. The Favorite will probably be spoiled and throw a tantrum if (s)he doesn't get his or her own way; kids at the bottom of the pecking order will usually be bitter and cynical about relationships and family life, or have serious self-esteem issues.

This is all too often Truth In Television.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime & Manga

Why Ken partially resented his older brother in Digimon Adventure 02. Not only was he the younger sibling, and thus overlooked for the firstborn, Osamu was also a child prodigy and a media darling. This ensured that Ken never got the kind of attention he desperately wanted from his parents. It didn't help matters much when Osamu died in an accident, and his parents were too caught up in their grief to notice Ken even after that. After he's manipulated into more or less selling his soul in the Digital World, he gains the prodigy aspect his brother had, and his parents apparently begin to love him... but only as a shadow of what they once had with Osamu. It took him vanishing into the Digital World with the intent to stay there permanently, then returning in the midst of a complete mental breakdown, for them to finally begin loving him as Ken.
Ootori Kyouya is victim of a subtle version in Ouran High School Host Club. As the youngest of three sons in a rich family, he is expected by his father to perform at respectable standards, but never to do anything to one-up his brothers, who will inherit the Ootori business empire.
- His sister also seems to get this treatment to some extent. She's admonished for returning home when she is happily married and has no real business to be there. This has the Ootori family fulfill two of the criteria. She, however, seems to ignore it and act cheery nonetheless, going out with Tamaki on occasion to explore the world of commoner cuisine.
- A similiar fate befalls Azuma Yunoki in La Corda d'Oro, who is forced to give up playing piano by his grandmother because he's better at it than his two older brothers; as he says, "My place is always below my brothers". Most probably a result of Japanese cultural values, and seems wildly unfair to Western readers. Azuma develops a bit of a psychological problem as a result (which probably means it's supposed to seem unfair to the original audience, as well).
Taken to extremes in Saiyuki. Gojyo is a 'child of taboo,' raised by his stepmother and half-brother. She eventually attempted to kill him, but her biological son killed her first.
In Naruto we see in the flashbacks that Fugaku Uchiha preferred his older, genius son Itachi to the younger Sasuke, saying several times to Sasuke that he wanted Sasuke to become a shinobi like Itachi.
- The situation eventually turns around completely after Itachi is suspected of murdering Shisui which he did. After Sasuke masters the fireball technique, Fugaku tells him not to follow Itachi's footsteps.
  - Turned around even earlier when Sasuke's mother told him that in public, Itachi was the shining star. In private, the only thing Fugaku talked about was Sasuke. Or so she says.
- Likewise, Hiashi Hyuuga preferred his younger daughter Hanabi, as he believed Hinata lacked any real talent, especially when compared to her genius cousin Neji. After Neji loses his fight against Naruto, Hiashi's attitude starts to change and he softens up to both Hinata and Neji.
Something that plagues Johan very intently. Which one of them was the unwanted one?

Close Anime & Manga

Film

Literature

Biblical example: The story of Joseph and his brothers. Jacob favored Joseph because of his resemblance to Jacob's favourite wife (he had two, as well as both of their maids, all of whom he'd had children by), who had died. The multi-coloured coat (actually a translation error — it reads "long-sleeved" in most modern translations) was proof of Jacob's favor. All things considered, it's probably not surprising that his brothers wanted to teach Joseph a lesson, especially when he bragged about dreams in which his brothers were made to bow down before him. Benjamin, Jacob's other son by that wife, was second-favorite, but his position as the youngest meant all the other brothers protected him. This makes the trope Older Than Dirt.
- Of course, Jacob had been his mother's favourite, and his rivalry with with Esau (his father Isaac's favourite) was fuelled by this, and led to his fleeing his homeland...
  - Then there's Isaac, who was born to Abraham and Sarah very late, and after Sarah (in despair at a total lack of children) had told Abraham to have a child by her maid Hagar. Once Isaac was born, Sarah told Abraham to banish Hagar and her son Ishmael...which is the Biblical basis for the Arab Israeli Conflict.
- Both Lucifer and Cain were arguably motivated in their bad deeds by this - Lucifer was told to bow down to humans (indicating that they're superior), refused, and was cast out, while Cain murdered his brother because God liked Abel's offerings better. God really seems to like playing favorites.
The Bennet sisters, in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Tearaway Lydia is Mrs. Bennett's favorite daughter; sensible and witty Elizabeth is Mr. Bennett's. Oldest sister Jane, however, is loved by everyone thanks to her sweet nature, but bookish Mary and second-to-youngest Kitty get the short end of the stick.
Fudge, in Judy Blume's series of young adult novels beginning with Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, was the family favorite, getting away with murder while big brother Peter got repeatedly whacked over the head with An Aesop about loving his brother. The fact that Peter Cant Get Away With Nuthin' doesn't help.
- In fact, this is one of those odd instances where it's not clear whether Fudge is the parent's favorite, or the author's. Peter's parents seem as if they're supposed to be the wise, sensible, benevolent type, and they do make up for some of Fudge's excesses, but the fact that Fudge never gets called on his bad behaviour suggests that either he was given serious preference by his parents...or Blume didn't want to let such things as "discipline" get in the way of Fudge's antics.
- In the latest book in the series, Double Fudge, Fudge's latest "phase" is that he's obsessed with money. His parents are actually somewhat worried about this, and Anne, the mother, is positively mortified when Fudge's excessive greed results in him getting evaluated by the counselor and she's told that maybe she should try to stress that "the best things in life are free," etc. The problem is never solved, per se, in order to allow for hijinks and because Warren and Anne really have no idea what to do about it, but it does seem to lessen. Slightly. Fudge books are only published once every ten years, so we might have a bit of wait to find out what happens next, if anything.
- His parents do get fed up with Fudge and punish him when warranted- In Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing Fudge is throwing a tantrum and not eating his cornflakes and his dad makes him stand in the bathtub while he dumps the bowl of cereal on his head, and in Superfudge he was occasionally scolded (and spanked once) by his mother over his misdeeds and at the end was punished by his parents for riding his bike to town without telling anyone.
Played with in Judy Blume's The Pain And The Great One, a kids book told in two parts- The first, an older sister describes how her little brother "The Pain" gets away with murder and is clearly the parents favorite, in the second the brother describes the sister "The Great One" in pretty much the same way, also concluding that she must be the favorite.
Murphy in Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files. In Blood Rites, she asks that Harry time an assault on a vampire lair so that she can skip her family reunion. The timing is off, however; she attends part of the reunion, and learns that her younger sister - who their mother explicitly says is allowed more freedom as the youngest than Murphy had as a youngster - is marrying Murphy's ex-husband. The sister got involved with the ex when he failed to arrest her for underage drinking when she was spending an unsupervised vacation in New Orleans. Their mother is A-OK with this, and criticizes Murphy for her reaction.
Mercilessly deconstructed in Leaving Poppy by Kate Cann. The heroine, Amber, has a younger sister that is so favored by her mother it reaches ridiculous levels. At the start of the story, the heroine is due to go on holiday to celebrate her exam success. But Poppy — who her mother describes as "fragile" — suddenly becomes "ill," crying all the time and throwing tantrums. Their mother guilt-trips Amber into staying...and Poppy "miraculously" gets better.
- In later chapters, it is revealed that Poppy is not sick — she's psychotic, partly as a result of being spoiled, but it's also suggested that she was "born bad." Even as a child, she slashed another kid with scissors — and planned the whole thing meticulously.
In CJ Cherryh's Regenesis, part of the backstory of Giraud and Denys is that their mother wanted to raise a genius, and pressured Giraud, the eldest, to perform as a child; although he was bright, he wasn't up to that level, and was The Un Favorite. Denys, on the other hand, was a genius and was coddled. Denys grew up introverted and antisocial, depending utterly on Giraud to handle interaction with other people.
Paula Danziger is another teen writer who was fond of this, although in Can You Sue Your Parents For Malpractice? she turns the trope on its head — big sister Melissa is the family favourite until she defies her draconian father by moving in with her boyfriend. Rather than choosing a "new" favourite, her father takes his annoyance out on his two younger daughters.
A major part of the plot of Jacob Have I Loved: Sarah Louise's younger twin, Caroline, received all the attention as a baby because she was always weak and ill. She grew up beautiful, popular, talented at singing and the piano, sweet, and perfect, while Sarah Louise became a hard-working tomboy who "never gave her parents a moment's worry." Sarah Louise's mission in the novel is to find a life outside her sister's shadow.
In Diana Wynne Jones' Archer's Goon, the youngest of the seven magical siblings is the most powerful and favored of the group. His elder brothers and sisters are bound magically to protect him.
In Stephen King's novel The Eyes of the Dragon, Gary Stu protagonist Peter is the King's favourite son. This leads younger brother Thomas to build a deep jealousy and hate of his older brother that the Big Bad Flagg takes advantage of.
GRR Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire has a few:
- Tywin Lannister "loves" his oldest son Jaime, who's tall, handsome, a ferocious knight and generally regarded as the ideal son. (For awhile) His second son, Tyrion, is a malformed dwarf whose birth killed Tywin's beloved wife. Tyrion's not the popular son.
- Warrior-like Randyll Tarly (said to be the finest soldier in the realm) bypasses his heir, the cowardly, compassionate, bookish and weight-challenged Samwell, for his younger son Dickon (and by "bypasses" we mean "chains him up for three days, threatens to kill him, then has him forfeit his birthright and be exiled to the ~~Foreign Legion~~ Night's Watch rather then let him become a *gasp* academic").
- He explicitly tells him he'll enjoy hunting him down like an animal if he doesn't join the Watch, while skinning a dead deer. He rips its heart out in front of him for emphasis.
Katie Nolan of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn knows when she gives birth to her son Neely that she'll love him more than her daughter Francie, but promises she won't show it. She rationalizes much of her favoritism by saying that Neely needs more encouragement, while Francie is strong like her and will get what she wants somehow. For example, when she can only afford to send one of the kids to high school, she says it should be Neely because he won't go unless she makes him, but Francie will get an education because she wants it.
In Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men, Tiffany Aching, the next-to-youngest child in a family of girls, is somewhat overlooked because the youngest child is the only boy.
In Lynda Robinson's Lord Meren mysteries, it is revealed in Murder at the Feast of Rejoicing that Meren, the eldest son, was put under great pressure to excel by his AbusiveFather, while his younger brother Ra was indulged and spoiled.
JK Rowling's Harry Potter: Harry endured some pretty extreme abuse at the hands of his aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon, while his cousin Dudley was extremely pampered, owed at least in part to a long-held jealousy Petunia held of his mother.
- Ron certainly felt like this was the case, although readers generally see no evidence of it: among his many insecurities, he frets about being the sixth boy in a family that always wanted a girl.
- It's probably safe to say that Harry Potter is made of this trope: Regulus was the favorite over older brother Sirius (mostly because the former was just as much a bigot as his parents); Dumbledore's sister Ariana required constant supervision, leaving Albus rather aloof; Petunia certainly felt that her parents liked Lily better after discovering she was a witch.
In Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novel Busman's Honeymoon, the Dowager Duchess explicitly tells Harriet that Peter is her favourite child.
In JRR Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings, Boromir (the elder son) is heavily preferred to Faramir by their father, Denethor. It's especially emphasized in The Movies, where Denethor is shown as blatantly unfair; in the book, Gandalf at least believes that it is partly that Denethor is still grief-stricken over the death.
Jacqueline Wilson has used this a few times:
- The Diamond Girls involves a mother who is desperate for her fifth child to be a boy, after having four daughters. She obsesses over it to the point of planning her new life around her son — demeaning the value of her daughters (probably unintentionally) as she does do. This is one of the few cases where Parental Favoritism has started before the kid is born. It doesn't work out so well for the fifth Diamond child when "he" turns out to be a she, however...
- Girls In Love has one character, Nadine, with a younger sister who is the favourite of their superficial and snobbish mother. Natasha is a Devil In Plain Sight, but she looks cute, and later starts a career as a child model, so of course she's "Mummy's favourite."
Goes both ways in the Conqueror books. Temuge is the youngest of five brothers, and his mother dotes on him as a result. This leads to him becoming a rather soft and chubby child who never learns to use a bow or sword effectively, making him the least favourite in his father's eyes.
Jodi Picoult favours the Ill Girl variation on this trope:
- In My Sister's Keeper, youngest daughter Anna was conceived specifically to be a donor for cancer-struck big sister, Kate. While she is pregnant with Anna, her mother, Sara, admits that she hasn't really considered her new daughter's personality, only the genetics that ensure she will make a good donor. Even when Anna is born, Sara's main concern is that the doctors don't damage the umbilical cord (which can be used to save Kate) - she pays very little attention to the newborn baby. Anna's dad is more concerned with her, but even he neglects his oldest child, Jesse. Late in the book, he admits that he hasn't really paid much attention to Jesse's development, and can't fill in the gap between being told that Jesse wasn't a suitable donor for Kate, and being confronted with a seriously troubled 18-year-old. Jesse and Anna are only seen in terms of what they can do for Kate - Kate, to her credit, notices this and doesn't like it one bit.
- In Handle With Care, Willow suffers from severe brittle bone disease, which understandably necessitates a lot of care and caution. However, her mother, Charlotte, takes it to an extreme, ignoring older daughter Amelia and systematically destroying the girl's life as she campaigns to improve Willow's. When Amelia develops bulimia and starts self-harming, Charlotte genuinely can't see why Amelia has such problems. Unlike Willow, who is cared for by her family, Amelia is promptly shuffled off to a clinic in Boston when her problems are revealed, to be someone else's problem for a while. What makes this particularly sad is that before Willow's birth, Charlotte admits that she would hesitate to take a bullet for her husband, because Amelia would need her, but she's protect Amelia no matter what. By the end of the book, it's doubtful that Charlotte would give the same answer.
In Outbound Flight, Jedi Lorana Jinzler is confronted, to her shock, by the brother she never knew, who told her angrily that their parents, who she also never knew, loved her for being a Jedi, loved her more than their other children, held her up as a shining example of what they should be. She's confused and disturbed and both of them come away from that confrontation worse off; at the end of the book, Lorana tells someone to find her brother and tell him that she was thinking of him, and hoping that he could find a way to let go of his anger - at her, at their parents, at himself.
- Fifty years later, in Survivors Quest, that person Lorana talked to finally stops neglecting the promise and arranges for Dean Jinzler to go to the ruins of Outbound Flight, where his sister died. Time has muddled up his anger, and although he still believes that she was unduly favored, he wants to put things to rest and say his goodbyes. During the events of the novel he realizes, in a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming, that he'd been lying to himself for years. Their parents had loved the absent Lorana, but they had loved the children they had just as much. All those years when Dean had been pushing himself to excel in his father's fields, they had been proud. He just hadn't seen it.
"I'm an electronics technician. Like my father before me."
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid is covered' in this. And it's highly obvious that Manny, the baby of the family is the favourite. (Manny is three years old, Greg is around eleven to thirteen, while Rodrick is implied to be in between fifteen to seventeen) Manny is allowed to do all sorts of stuff like bring toys to church, call his brothers names, throw fits to get his way, and crawl out of bed at night. Gregory states that when he was Manny's age, he had none of that. The Parental Favoratism also spreads to the extended family. (Manny is given far more presents for Christmas and more stuff that he wants, Greg is given stuff like books of Algebra or deodorant) Especially the only in-focus grandmother who claims to like all of her grandchildren equally but her fridge is practically wallpapered in pictures of Manny.
- The only onscreen grandfather meanwhile actually subverts this. It's also why he is Gregory's favourite grandparent, for obvious reasons...
"Gregory's my favourite!"
In the Maximum Ride series, Jeb clearly favors his foster children (the Flock) over his six-year-old biological son Ari, to the point at which he leaves Ari in an underground lab filled with unethical scientists who unsurprisingly have no problem experimenting on the poor kid. Because of this, Ari understandably resents the Flock for this (especially Max) and tries constantly to gain his father's favor. Then the parental favoritism becomes literal when it turns out that Max and Ari are half siblings.

Close Literature

Live Action TV

Subverted in many ways on Frasier — brothers Frasier and Niles were each convinced that the other was their parents' favourite, which resulted in the intense and petty sibling rivalry that they each suffer from in adulthood. It's often made clear, however, that their parents didn't play favourites (and in fact their father Martin in many ways considered both of them his least favourite, as they were so completely different from and diametrically opposed to him) and that all this was just their own insecurities acting.
- The female 'baby' of the family is also subverted slightly in Daphne's relationship with her mother — despite Daphne's endless, thankless sacrifices over the years, her mother is nothing less than hyper-critical and demanding of her, whilst doting upon her boorish, obnoxious, feckless and ungrateful older brother.
Played with on Supernatural. Throughout Season One, Sam thinks that John hates him (when he left for college, he told him to never come back) while Dean is the one who obsessively follows his Dad's orders and can't seem to comprehend not following an order. But it's slowly revealed that Sam is the one who John cares the most about (although this could just be through the eyes of Dean) while Dean is the one who had to grow up too fast and was treated, well, more like a soldier than a son. Although John did try to make it up by doing a deal to save Dean's life, Dean's Daddy Issues (the fact that he still thinks he wasn't good enough for him and that he still thinks he's the one who should have died) continue to this very day.
Much drama is wrung out of this question in Heroes: Just who is Angela Petrelli's favorite son? Arthur says it's Peter, much to Sylar's disappointment.
Seen in full flow in Dallas. Youngest son Bobby is the family favourite, much to the disappointment of eldest son JR who has spent years honing his skills, cunning and ruthlessness in the hopes of winning over Jock (middle child Gary became an alcoholic and even after recovering moved away from the family). Strikingly, when Jock dies it hits JR by far the hardest.
Gibbs of NCIS is the Team Dad of the main cast, and makes no secret that Lab Rat Abby is his favorite out of his team of Bunny Ears Lawyer investigators. The other team members seem to accept this with good grace.
Rather cruelly played for humor on Friends. Ross and Monica's mother dotes on Ross endlessly, while giving Monica nothing but hell. Their father also seems to favor Ross, although he doesn't display the cruelty toward Monica that his wife does.
- As Monica put it (to her brother, Ross): "If I could choose my parents, I'd take yours."
An episode of Law And Order Criminal Intent featured a young doctor who could never escape her brother's shadow, despite the fact that he had died many years ago ("He was the lucky one!").
- Det. Goren is aware that he's The Un Favorite in spite of the fact that his brother is (was?) a homeless drug addict.
In That 70s Show, Red favors Laurie over Eric, as he's oblivious to the fact that she's the town slut. OTOH, Kitty's love for Eric goes pretty much into My Beloved Smother territory.
Everybody Loves Raymond. Even the show title suggests so. Robert always gets the short end of the stick from their parents.
Some episodes of Wife Swap have a family in which one or both of the parents have obvious favorite children. Normally the wife of the other family points this out to the father and adds rules pampering The Un Favorite during the rules change. Generally the family learns their lesson in the end and is shown treating their children more equally in the "where are they now?" ending.
In Battlestar Galactica, Ellen Tigh, one of the creators of the humanoid Cylons, apparently considered artistic Daniel as her favorite. As Model Number Seven, Daniel is essentially the second youngest of eight. The eldest is... somewhat resentful of this relationship.
The West Wing presents something of the parent's point of view; President Bartlet clearly has a much more difficult relationship with his middle daughter Ellie as opposed to his eldest Elizabeth and particularly his youngest daughter Zoe, but when accused of this trope, Bartlet angrily denies that he "loves any of his children less than the others".

Close Live Action TV

Tabletop Games

In the world of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks published by Puffin in the 1980s through to the 1990s, the wealthy ruler of the city of Fang blatantly favors his elder son Sukumvit over his younger son Carnuss, making Carnuss develop a searing hatred for his brother. When Sukumvit becomes ruler of Fang on his father's death, he constructs the deadly Deathtrap Dungeon as a private hobby, challenging adventurers to try and survive going through it for a 10,000 gold piece prize. An embittered Carnuss sees a chance at getting revenge on his hated brother, and begins kidnapping people to test them until he can find someone tough enough to send as his champion to penetrate the dungeon and humiliate his brother.
Warhammer 40000 backstory has Horus being the first son found by the Emperor, who was later made Warmaster above his nineteen brothers and generally treated as the Emperor's eldest son. Ironically, he went on to betray the Emperor and lead the unfavorites in what would become the bloodiest war in human history. And bear in mind when we say "bloodiest war in human history" that 40k is the mother of all crapsack worlds, the opening salvo was a biological weapon strike that killed 12 billion people in a matter of minutes before the napalm that the virus made out of their corpses set the planet's atmosphere on fire and the ensuing firestorm rendered the world uninhabitable.
- Also, prior to the Horus Heresy, one of the unfavorites, Magnus the Red, foresaw the entire war and tried to warn the Emperor of Horus' treachery. Predictably enough the Emperor refused to believe that Horus would ever betray him and, suspecting that Magnus was in fact the traitor, he sent one of the brothers who most hated Magnus, Leman Russ and his Space Wolves, to crush him and his Thousand Sons. Magnus, caught completely by surprise by the Imperium attack when he had just been trying to save the Imperium, turned to the Chaos God Tzeentch for aid and would end up going on to side with Horus to overthrow the Emperor when the Hersey began in earnest. That's GRIMDARK for you.
- Games Workshop treats Space Marines as the favorite. Imperial Guard (including IG players who happen to be 40k's second largest source of income) on the other hand was Games Workshop's primary Butt Monkey. This was obvious for years as IG got two underpowered codexes with at least half the units unplayable, an entire mission in 5th that was obviously not play tested with IG in mind, etc. This recently changed with Apocalypsse (IG gets most of the love here) and the new, excellent Guard codex. Every one else is scared that Guard players are going to go into Whos Laughing Now mode. Forge World on the other hand, treats the guard as the favorite.