As soon as I found out I was having twins, I asked a friend who had two 18-month-old boys to lunch. This woman had always struck me as unusually kind and sane, as someone admirably measured and mature. Not long into the meal, however, she said something that took me by surprise. "Well, the thing is, I really favor Paul," she said of one of her sons. "I think it's because right away my husband favored Jack, since he was bigger, so maybe I just gravitated toward the underdog. It's not unusual for it to go like that with twins."
I immediately felt judgmental: She might as well have told me that mothers of twins generally bottle-feed their babies Sprite Zero and that more often than not, the father ends up sleeping with the nanny.
I decided my friend was clearly a lot less together than I'd thought—until I showed up a few weeks later for a twins-parenting class taught by Lamaze instructor and lactation consultant Sheri Bayles. She gave us advice on avoiding premature labor and the pros and cons of simultaneous nursing, and then broke the same news to us less than gently. "I'm telling you now, you're going to favor one child over the other," she said. "Try to work against it, and don't let your kids know it, but that's just how it is, so don't beat yourself up about it." Still, I vowed that wouldn't be me. And then, within weeks of giving birth, promptly broke that vow.
Favoritism is one of those paradoxical, rare taboos, a phenomenon so common that it's all but unavoidable—and yet it's an issue that very few parents will cop to, even to close friends or to themselves. Perhaps because it's starker for parents of twins, they own up to it more easily. But generally speaking, it's unspoken.
Bayles told me that when she asks her classes if there was a favorite in the family growing up, it's the rare person who says no. According to a 1998 study in The Journal of Family Psychology, parents favor one or more of their children in one-third to two-thirds of families. And yet if a parent talks openly about favoring a child, it's considered shocking, even offensive. Justifications are frequently offered: If special privileges are being bestowed or particularly strong emotions evoked, parents usually chalk it up to the children's variation in ages. The baby needs Mommy more, or maybe it's special attention for the 4-year-old who's threatened by the newcomer. But in families with twins, these rationalizations don't apply; the comparisons between children are leveled, not to mention constant, more urgent, and altogether harder to ignore.
Soon I was talking about my boys, unflinchingly, in much the same frank way my friend had over lunch that day. Where I had once felt threatened, now I felt initiated, unapologetic. I remember talking to a friend about one of my two boys, when they were 8 months old, in terms that made it clear that one of them was, at that moment, the apple of my eye. "I adore David; I love him madly," I said, "but Stephen." I put my hand over my heart. (Before you're tempted to judge me more than you perhaps already have, let me assure you I have changed their names.)
Next Page: "Don't you think that's a dangerous way to think about your children?"
