Efua Mensah, standing in her kitchen on a Saturday morning, frying plantain watched as her two children argued over whose turn it was to set the table. Her elder daughter, Naa Adjeley, sixteen and sharp-tongued, rolled her eyes and said, "Why do I always have to be the one who fixes everything in this house?"
Her younger son, Kwabena, thirteen and visibly relieved, shrugged and wandered off to watch television, unbothered, the way he usually did when chores were mentioned.
Efua laughed it off, the way many parents do, calling Naa "the responsible one" and Kwabena "the free spirit." But that evening, she found herself replaying the scene, uneasy about how naturally those labels had settled into her home, and how long they had been there without her ever choosing them on purpose.
One child becomes the golden child - praised, trusted, held up as the standard others should meet. Another becomes the scapegoat - blamed first, believed last, and somehow always the one "causing wahala" even when the full story never quite adds up.
These roles rarely arrive with a formal announcement. They form slowly, through a thousand small moments: who gets praised for the same grade, who gets blamed for the same broken plate, who gets the benefit of the doubt when a story doesn't quite make sense.
These roles, once formed, don't stay in childhood. They travel into adulthood, shaping how our children see themselves, trust others, and show up in their own marriages, friendships, and careers, long after they've stopped living under our roof.
No parent sets out to create a golden child or a scapegoat. Nobody wakes up and decides to favour one child over another; it happens in the exhaustion of daily life, in the shortcuts our brains take when we're tired, distracted, or simply repeating patterns we inherited from our own parents without questioning them.
Guilt rarely changes behaviour; awareness does. What we want every parent reading this to walk away with is a simple, uncomfortable question: when was the last time I checked whether my responses to my children were about what actually happened, or about who I already believe they are?
That single question, asked honestly and often, is where the correction begins, long before any lasting damage sets in.
How The Roles Quietly Form
It usually starts with something small and understandable, like a parent under pressure needing one child to be "easy" so the household can function, and that child, sensing the need, rises to meet it by becoming agreeable, helpful, and low-maintenance.
Over time, that child's good behaviour gets rewarded with praise, trust, and privileges, while their needs and feelings get quietly overlooked because they never cause enough disruption to require attention.
Meanwhile, another child, perhaps more expressive, more strong-willed, or simply born during a harder season of the parents' lives, gets noticed more for their mistakes than their strengths, until every household conflict somehow finds its way back to them, whether they were involved or not.
Naa Adjeley became "the responsible one" not because she was naturally more mature than Kwabena, but because Efua, juggling a demanding job and an ailing mother-in-law, needed one child to be dependable, and Naa, wanting to be seen and valued, filled that role without anyone ever asking her to.
Kwabena, on the other hand, became "the easy-going one" partly because expectations were simply lower for him, a soft label that let him drift through childhood with far less pressure, but also far less genuine engagement from his parents about who he actually was.
Both roles carry a hidden cost, even the one that looks like a compliment. The golden child often grows into an adult who cannot rest, who ties their entire sense of worth to achievement and approval, who struggles to ask for help because asking might shatter the image everyone has built around them.
They become the friend who is always fine, the colleague who never says no, the partner who apologises even when they've done nothing wrong, because somewhere in childhood they learned that love was conditional on being exceptional.
The scapegoat, meanwhile, often grows into an adult carrying a quiet, persistent belief that they are somehow the problem, that conflict is always their fault, that they must work twice as hard to be believed or trusted, even in relationships where no one has actually blamed them for anything.
They may become defensive quickly, or conversely, they may shrink themselves in rooms, expecting to be dismissed before they've even spoken.
Both are the natural, predictable result of roles that formed quietly, one ordinary day at a time, without any single moment feeling significant enough to notice.
The Sibling Dynamic
What makes this even harder is that these roles don't just shape how children see themselves individually; they also shape how siblings relate to each other for the rest of their lives.
The golden child may feel a private, confusing guilt they can never quite explain, sensing unfairness but benefiting from it, which can create distance rather than closeness with a sibling they may otherwise love deeply.
The scapegoat may carry resentment that surfaces at unexpected moments, during a wedding toast, a family funeral, or a simple holiday dinner, when years of feeling unseen finally find a crack to escape through.
Efua saw a glimpse of this herself one evening when Naa Adjeley, now seventeen, snapped at Kwabena over something minor, then immediately burst into tears and said, "I'm just so tired of being the only one who has to be good in this house."
It was really about the years of an invisible weight she had never been asked whether she wanted to carry, and Kwabena, confused and a little hurt, simply asked, "Am I really that bad?" A question that broke Efua's heart more than any argument ever could.
The good news is that these roles, while powerful, are not permanent, and the moment a parent notices them is genuinely the moment things can begin to shift, no matter how old the children are.
Start by paying attention to your own language at home, noticing when you say things like "at least she's not stubborn like her brother" or "he's just naturally difficult," because labels spoken casually still land permanently in a child's sense of self.
When conflict happens, resist the instinct to assign blame based on history rather than evidence, and instead ask each child, separately and calmly, what actually happened, giving both the same benefit of the doubt you'd want extended to yourself.
Make space to praise the quieter child for something beyond good behaviour, and challenge the golden child gently when they're wrong, because both need to know they are loved for who they are, not for the role they've been assigned.
Talk to your children directly about this if they're old enough, not as a confession of guilt, but as an honest, ongoing conversation, the way Efua eventually did with both Naa and Kwabena over a quiet dinner, telling them plainly, "I see now that I haven't always been fair, and I want us to fix that together, starting today."
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