"Isaac favored Esau because he had a taste for game, but Rebekah favored Jacob." (Genesis 25:28)
It is clear from even a cursory reading of the Torah that it does not present the people it describes as ideal types. Even Moses has his not-so-good moments, which ultimately prevent him from entering the Promised Land, and the people whose stories we read in Genesis are even more flawed. Indeed, in Genesis we read about one dysfunctional family after another! This makes the Torah, frankly, a much better guide for us than if it had been simply a record of ideal people, for none of us is ideal; we all have flaws. Reading about the struggles that our ancestors faced in their lives, struggles that we ourselves have, and seeing the successful and unsuccessful ways they dealt with them can enlighten us about what to do - and what not to do - in our own lives.
Any of us with more than one child will hopefully love them all and make that love manifest in the care that we give all our children and the time and effort we spend in raising them to fulfill their own specific potential for good in both their professional and personal lives. Like Isaac and Rebekah, however, we may, in all honesty, love some of our children more than others. Parents are, after all, human, and we each have our likes and dislikes. Furthermore, children are their own unique selves, with their own personalities and their own interests. Even if they come from the same gene pool and were not adopted, children are very likely to differ among themselves as much as they are alike. The chemistry between each parent and his or her children, then, almost inevitably will differ according to the people involved in each of the family’s internal relationships.
Moreover, as is true in all human relationships, this chemistry may change over time. A parent who had a tight bond with a particular child during early childhood may find that during that child’s teenage years the very closeness of their previous bond now produces the worst battles, as the child seeks to differentiate him/herself from the parent. This may change yet again when the child becomes an adult. During my own children’s teenage years, Mark Twain’s comment was very helpful: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years!" As they marry and have children of their own, the amount of intergenerational understanding can improve immensely.
The key, though, is what one does with these feelings of greater closeness to one child than to another. Today’s Torah reading records an unhappy expression of those feelings - unhappy for both Isaac and Rebekah and for their sons. They clearly let it be known to both of them how each parent favored a particular son, and the sons resented both the other parent and his brother. If nothing else, the Torah is here loudly and clearly telling us that we should not treat our own children as Isaac and Rebekah raised theirs.
What should we do instead? There is nothing wrong with recognizing the strengths and weakness of each of our children and the personalities they have. One need not pretend that each is exactly like the other; in fact, that is a bad thing to do, for it undermines each child’s own sense of uniqueness and individual worth. One can - and should - even enjoy activities with one child that the parent him/herself likes to do without pretending that the parent is a different person than he or she actually is. Children usually see their parents as they actually are, and so pretending to be interested in something just because your child is will probably not work anyway; in fact, it may call into question the degree to which the child can trust you to be honest.
What one should not do is what Isaac and Rebekah did in our story. However a parent feels, parenthood requires that we extend to each of our children love and support, spending time with each of them to develop their individual potential for good. We must also make sure to emphasize the positive with each and every one of our children, prodding them to be the best people they can be. We must also be scrupulously fair in how we spend our time and effort with each child and in doling out whatever family resources we have. This may entail that one parent spends more time at a particular activity with the children interested in it than the other parent does, and there may be some division of labor in this by the two parents, but each parent should be sure to do their best to be interested in, and supportive of, each of their children.
Will this prevent all bumps along the way? Definitely not. We are all, after all, human. But recognizing our own preferences honestly while at the same time doing everything we can to love and support each and every one of our children can lead to relationships between parents and children that recognize our differences and yet entail mutual love and respect among all members of the family. May we all be members of such families.
To read more on this general theme, see the chapter "Parents and Children" in Elliot N. Dorff, Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics.