What brothers and sisters can teach you

In his new book, “The Sibling Effect,” Jeffrey Kluger, explores relationships among brothers and sisters.

It is these relationships, which form the core of our being though they are not as often studied. Which is strange since from the time we’re born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and our cautionary tales. They are our scolds, protectors, goads, tormentors, playmates, counselors, and sources of envy, objects of pride. They help us learn how to resolve conflicts and how not to; how to conduct friendships and when to walk away from them. Sisters teach brothers about the mysteries of girls; brothers teach sisters about the puzzle of boys. Bigger sibs learn to nurture by mentoring little ones; little sibs learn about wisdom by heeding older ones.

Kluger, a Time magazine science writer, talks about what years of research have taught him about sibling relationships in general. The interesting part is trying to use this research to make some sense of our own relationships. Did mom really love your eldest brother the best? Was your only sister the apple of your dad’s eye? Are the youngest kids more empathetic and funny? Are only children selfish but adult from an early age? Read on and see if you agree with all this research!

On the rules of birth order. Conventional wisdom is that older siblings are usually conservative, striving, competent and authoritative; youngest siblings are often iconoclasts, artists and comedians; and middle siblings tend to get lost in the thicket.

Older siblings get more total-immersion mentoring with their parents before younger siblings come along. As a result, they get an IQ and linguistic advantage because they are the exclusive focus of their parents’ attention. The idea of what businesses call “sunk costs” comes into play here, which means that by the time an older child is 2 or 3 years old, the parents have sunk a great deal of money, time, and physical and emotional energy into them. When a younger child comes along, evolutionarily speaking, it’s like a product that is not as far down the creation and assembly process. So, you put more energy into the product that is further along because that one has the greatest chance of success to thrive in life. There is a lot of parental focus on the older child, even if they’re not aware they’re doing it.

The youngest child has a valedictory quality because he or she is the parents’ final shot. Youngest kids tend to develop a greater ability to use low-power strategies, like getting inside the minds of and charming other people, because they’re the smallest child in the house. When you can’t thump your older siblings to get what you need, you learn to disarm them by being funny, or you learn to have a better intuitive sense.

The middle child seems to get the worst of both worlds. Being neither the oldest of the youngest, they neither get the attention nor do they feel the urge to develop specific strategies to charm other people. The youngest child does eventually become an only child and gets to experience the uniqueness of being the focus of parents’

attention that the firstborn had, if only for a little while, because they’re the last one left in the house. The middle child gets none of this. That’s why they tend to invest in greater ways in friendships outside the home and be much less connected to the family.

On the effects of parental favoritism. Parents do have favorites, Kluger says, but they should deny it with their dying breaths. It's not helpful, he says, and it might be especially harmful for the parental pet. It's what goes on with professional athletes and why they get into so much trouble. They think the rules don't apply to them. No one ever told them 'no.' 

On siblings and risky behavior. The smaller the age differences between siblings, the more likely they are to share friends and bad habits. All things being equal, the younger sib is inclined to pick up the habit. The older brother or sister is the closest model you have to what approaches adult or cool behavior."

On life as a singleton. As only children know, Kluger says, life ain't so bad. In fact, it's just fine. Singletons tend to learn at daycare or camp or school what brothers and sisters learn from each other at home. Indeed studies show that singletons grow up with better vocabularies, more sophisticated humor and a better knowledge of how the world operates.  In the early 20th century, some scientists said things like being an only child is a disease and the world would be better if only children didn’t exist. The idea was that only children learn self-absorption and selfishness when they should learn sharing. They learn entitlement when they should learn earned favors. When you think of an only child, the stereotypical image that comes to mind is of a forlorn figure in a silent house whose parents are occupied by adult chores and who doesn’t know how to play with cousins at Thanksgiving. Yet study after study has found that none of this is true.

Only children tend to exceed other kids in terms of academic accomplishments, sophistication, vocabulary, and often, social skills as well. They have a great ability to make and maintain friends, and to resolve conflict, because they have to be nimble about learning skills outside the home, like in daycare, play groups, and school. One of the advantages of being an only child in the home is that the conversations you hear and participate in, the TV shows you watch, and the vacations you go on tend to skew older. All these things become food for the developing brain, and by the time the child is in first grade, he or she has a background in adult thinking and abstract concepts that children with siblings just don’t get.

On sibling fights. There are so many reasons for sibling fights The most common is, yes, you guessed it, property.  It’s a powerful symbol for kids, since property is a critical way of establishing authority and control over a world in which they have virtually no power. You’re physically little. You don’t have any resources beyond what your parents can and are willing to give you. So, when something is yours, it becomes a real totem of the little bit of authority you have, which is one of the reasons little kids are so terrible about sharing. With very young kids, when researchers look at what the causes of fights are, some 80 percent of all fights in the playroom break out over property disputes. Unfortunately too often this carries on into their adult lives as well. One of the major reasons for family disputes at least in India is property.

Situational fairness. Kids also fight over what Kluger calls "situational fairness." For example, Molly has a fever so she gets to stay home from school and watch cartoons. Betty, her sister, doesn't want to be sick, but she does want to miss school and watch cartoons. What is the first word out of Betty's mouth? "Unfair!"

Our spouses and children arrive comparatively late in our lives; our parents leave us too early. But our brothers and sisters are with us for the whole journey. And so learning about these relationships and nurturing them should be important for all of us.