PARENTS battle daily with the desire to love and treat their children equally, aware that all children are not the same. Each provoke different feelings and treating them the same can prove extremely difficult.

Now, it seems, whether or not parents should even try to treat their children equally is debatable.

Dr Jim Sheehan is the senior social worker and director of training programmes in family therapy at the Mater Child and Family Clinic. "You can't treat all you children the same," he says. "It's an unfair goal to impose on parents. Even the language of equality is not fitting in the family context. It shoves underground the uniqueness of each child and each parent / child relationship."

Barbara Carr has six children aged from 16 to two and a half and she is expecting her seventh child this Christmas. "I know I treat my children differently," she says. "I try to treat them the same but you would need to be exceptional to achieve that. We have the same rules for everybody to create a sense of fairness, but it doesn't work equally well with them all.

"In an ideal world you could implement standards so each child's difference was recognised, but it's hard to take each individual into account all the time."

On a practical level equal treatment is feasible, says Sheehan. "Equality is understandable in terms of material things in the family - for example, giving everyone the same amount of pocket money or the same amount of food." However, even an area such as time allocation defies notions of equality.

"It is quite natural for a new born baby to get more affection than an older child. The older children learn to make space for the younger. This in turn helps teach older children that others sometimes need more support and attention, he says.

Barbara Carr finds it impossible to give all her children the same amount of time. "I breastfed them all when they were really small so when they complain I tell them they each had that time with me when they needed it. I do try to give them each time alone, but I can't give them all the same amount of time."

Loving them all equally is as difficult as treating them all equally. Personalities are similar or they clash, and certain characteristics are easier to love then others.

Dr Tony Humphreys, a consultant clinical psychologist and author of The Family, Love It and Leave It, says: "Ideally parents would love their children equally, but in reality children are loved differently. Our relationships are determined by unresolved subconscious issues and this applies to how parents relate to their children.

"A mother may relate more warmly to a male child because she didn't have a close relationship with her father and the closeness with her son may help heal the lack of love she felt. Similarly a father may have had a distant relationship with his mother and feel more drawn to his daughter."

Jim Sheehan sees the notion of love and equality in the family context as being highly charged. "There are different kinds of love involved in relationships and different ways of loving. Aspiring to some sort of equality with regard to love discounts the complex of feelings you have for the individual child."

Barbara Carr agrees: "My children definitely bring out different aspects of my personality and sometimes they bring out qualities which make me feel like an awful parent. If love is unconditional, I would say I love them all the same, but day to day I feel differently about them. Some are easier for me to get on with than others."

Sheehan believes expecting parents to love all children equally puts them under unnecessary pressure, with detrimental results. "It just makes parents feel guilty and once the guilt sets in it becomes difficult to set in place anything which would help the development of the relationship."

However, according to Humphreys, children do notice when they receive different treatment and parents should develop an awareness of how they relate to each child.

"If the difference is moderate, there are some consequences but not a huge amount. The relationship can't be the same with each child, but parents should examine their motivations and heal their wounds so as to relate lovingly to all the children."

Coupled with that self awareness, parents should take time to reassure their children that they are loved, says Sheehan. "Parents don't need to go overboard. An over display of love and affection might provoke anxiety in the child. Just talk to them and let them know how much you love them - and, if it is genuinely felt, physical affection is a good one to share around."

Barbara Carr recognises that "relationships in life aren't equal. You bring everything that has happened to you into all your relationships. If I have six friends I love each individual to the utmost. But I wouldn't put them in a pecking order of preference. It's the same with my children - I love them all differently.

"But we have to accept responsibility for our behaviour and look at ourselves critically. It is important to view things objectively every so often and not let the differences get in the way."