Both parents are gone now, but I’ll give a slight edge to my mom.
It sounds like the same cop-out answer we used to get from my folks when they asked which of us kids they liked better, but I love them equally but differently.
Mum and I can call each other for the fourth time in a day having remembered some little details and end up having yet another half hour chat. Dad and I can be working on a project for hours without saying a word beyond “hand me the phillips head”.
I’d say it’s equal, but different. I have completely different conversations and things in common with each.
Female, neither of them.
I have a theory (that I’ll never be able to prove) that my parents wanted to divorce a few years [and two sons] into their marriage, then I came along and spoiled everything…
Nothing was said, but I was always made to feel that I was an unplanned, unexpected, unwanted addition to the family.
My father treated me with anything from casual indifference to outright contempt, and my mother treated me with a passionate loathing - I recall one particular rage she went off on because I was a girl and couldn’t wear my brothers’ old clothes.
In later years Da developed Dementia and thought he was in hospital during WWII having been shot, and he thought I was a nurse. He actually started addressing me by name! Which was freaky…
Now my mother has [a different form of] Dementia and we get along better now than we ever have in the previous 40 odd years.
Funny old game…
Looks like the Moms are winning with both genders. Emouse, does this fit with your perceived expectation?
I’m a girl, and had similar experiences to Lobelia - but I still prefer my mom. You know my mom was crazy, she raged, she yelled, she flipped out over stupid stuff…but at least she did something. Dad was just a lump and didn’t do anything. And still doesn’t.
No, it doesn’t. I was expecting women to be more fond of their father and men to be more fond of their mother.
I’ve noticed that a child often doesn’t mind being compared to the parent of the opposite gender but does mind being compared to the parent of the same gender.
Stories of fathers expecting a lot of their sons and mothers criticizing their daughters also lead me to think that.
The existence of the terms and concepts “daddy’s girl” and “momma’s boy” as well as the inexistence of “momma’s girl” and “daddy’s boy” also made me expect a son/mother and daughter/father preference.
So, this result isn’t what I was expecting but it doesn’t surprise me. Mothers do have a tendency to be more attached and caring. Also, almost all mothers (in countries with easy access to birth control and abortion) wanted the children they had at the time they had them. I get the impression that a significant number of fathers learned about their partner being pregnant even if they didn’t want children or didn’t want them then.
I said my mom. She’s nuts and an alcoholic, but at least she was there when I was a kid, which is a lot more than I can say for my dad. When she wasn’t screaming at us that she wished we’d never been born, she wasn’t bad.
That said, being compared to her – even the thought of being compared to her – both physically and mentally makes me shudder.
My dad. I think I love(d) them both the same, but I just liked my dad more. Our personalities were more compatible. Plus, my dad never once said to me in a negative tone, “You are so like your mother.”