Another Reason Ken's an Only

Reason #3,487- Favoritism

Yep, this actually is one of the many reasons I only wanted one kid if Dwight and I were going to have a family.  It may sound crazy, but there you have it; this is me after all, so crazy is to be expected. 

All the parents that I've ever known try to be impartial and fair with their kids, and many of them do really well at this, but too often I see them fail at not showing favoritism to one child or another.  It's never purposeful, and there's many different reasons for that bias.  And let me be clear- there are no unbiased humans.  Bias on it's own isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it's just a way that we view the world.  Some people can relate more to children of their same gender, or the one that looks more like them, or a multitude of other reasons, and even purely by chance. 

It's the effects of that bias that gets my goat the most.  Like prejudice and discrimination, I'm not using bias and favoritism interchangeably in this sense, and it is exactly that, a sense, no more.  Where bias or prejudice is the feeling, discrimination and favoritism is the action.  It's the action that hurts people far more.  In both the cases of discrimination and favoritism, the results are real and cause potentially disastrous problems for the subject of the discrimination or favoritism. 

I don't want to risk that for my kid.  I owe it to him to be the best parent I can be to him, and for me that means not running the risk of favoring him over another child, or another child over him.  Especially since he has proven to be such a high-energy and high-demand kid. 

So we stick with what works for us, the same as every other family does.  And that's why every family deserves love and support, without judging.