Favorite Child: How a Favorite Impacts Every Family Member for Life

By Ellen Weber Libby

Book Overview

For more than thirty years, veteran clinical psychologist Ellen Weber Libby has been helping successful, often-powerful clients in Washington, DC--a place known for its outsized personalities--deal with their personal problems. One pattern that has emerged out of some 60,000 hours of therapy is what she calls "the favorite child complex." In this groundbreaking book, she describes in intimate detail how being the favorite child can confer both great advantages and also significant emotional handicaps.While many of Dr. Libby's clients are successful because of their favorite-child status--they have been brought up to believe that they can do anything and are unafraid of challenges-- they suffer from an array of personality problems. Behind the outward appearance of money, power, charm, and attractive looks, they feel an intense pressure to maintain the fa ade at all costs. Sometimes their ability to tell the truth becomes shaky; sometimes their intimate relationships are elusive. In a series of chapters that offer insightful vignettes from actual therapy sessions (the identities of clients are disguised), Dr. Libby explores why parents, consciously or unconsciously, choose a favorite child, as well as the long-term effects of being the favorite son or daughter of either or both parents. She also discusses family situations where parents have successfully made each of their children feel favored and have instilled in their children a healthy emotional balance. She details parental skills and family processes that increase the likelihood of this type of success and that, most importantly, reduce the risk of the favorite child's curse--power corrupted. Illuminating for adults trying to come to terms with their own emotional baggage as well as parents seeking the best way to rear their children, The Favorite Child makes for rewarding reading.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591027624
• ISBN13: 9781591027621
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Prometheus Books
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

If you have siblings or if you are the parents of siblings...

"The Favorite Child" offers insights into a family issue that has never been fully explored. Favortism is brought out from under the carpet and examined for both its positive and negative implications. This book is highly readable and insightful.

If you deal with people...

this book is going to help you. Not only does it provide some answers to why some folks who appear to have it made do some pretty reckless things, but it offers insight into how early childhood experiences shape (read run) our lives. Whether you were the favorite child or not, you're bound to see some familiar stories in these pages. You don't have to be a therapist to read it, Dr Libby makes the case in plain English. I work with a lot of high performing people in close counseling. This book is going into my reference library!

Outstanding, a must for everyone

The Favorite Child is an amazing explanation of children and family issues that all of us are affected by. Dr. Libby shares stories of families and how so many of us struggle with preferences in a family. Everyone should read this book. I highly recommend it to any parent, any daughter, any son. Dr. Jane R. Snider Learning Disabilities Specialist

Outstanding Book on a Compelling Topic

Dr Libby has taken a topic known to all of us intrinsically, but not dealt with until now. It provides the reader, in a readable way, a path to understanding leaders of our society, as well as our own place in our original family. The book is a treasure, for the everyday reader to the therapy community. I recommend it highly!

An Engaging, Informative Book

This is an excellent addition to the literature on the psychology of family life. While it is not an unrecognized thought that parents or siblings may favor each other differently as a normal part of family interaction, this book incisively delves into the potential complexities of this dynamic. I found the discussion of the possible gains and losses in "winning" this kind of familial competition very thought provoking. The portrayal of the burdens that may be the winner's lot, or the possibility of the favorite being spared from learning the consequences of their actions, is worth the price of the book in itself. The thoughtful discussion of the author's own family life is a remarkable illustration of the book's premise. I enthusiastically recommend this book.