Jane: This is But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions
from curious kids just like you, and we find answers. Today we're
talking about a very special family relationship, potentially
one of the longest relationships some of you will ever have in
your lifetime: the sibling relationship. That's right,
today we're talking about brothers and sisters and all the
different kinds of siblings you might have. Love them or hate
them, they can be an integral part of your early life and
shape who you become. Not everyone has a sibling, and
that's great! But in the United States, 80% of people have at
least one, and while there's a lot of focus on the influence
parents have on who we become, studies suggest siblings can
have even more of an impact on our development. But before we
dig into that, first a very important question.
Taylor: Hi, I'm Taylor, and I'm five, from Melbourne, and how do
brothers and sisters turn to brothers and sisters?
Jane: Your brothers and sisters are your siblings. And siblings
are children in the same family who share at least one parent.
So you get your siblings when your parent or parents decide to
add you or another child to the family. Sometimes that's through
birth or adoption. You can also have siblings that you only
share one parent with. Sometimes people call this a half-sibling,
which is kind of funny, because they're definitely a full
person. And you can get stepsiblings if one of your
parents marries someone who already has kids. Some families
care for kids temporarily through foster care or other
arrangements. And those kids can also be your siblings, even if
they only live with you for a short time. There are a lot of
different kinds of families, and so there are actually a lot of
ways to get a sibling. Research shows, though, whether your
sibling is your step, half, or full sibling, they can still
have an impact on your development. Interestingly
enough, most studies of sibling relationships don't even
differentiate between the kinds of siblings.
Charlotte: I'm Charlotte, and I'm five years old. I live in
London, Ontario, Canada, and my question is, why do brothers and
sisters look a lot alike?
Jane: Sometimes siblings look a lot alike, and sometimes they
don't look alike at all! Sometimes you look alike because
you share genetic material with your siblings. You get half your
genes from a male biological parent and half from a female,
but the genes you get are randomly assigned, so siblings
can get different combinations, and some traits are more
heritable--more easily passed down--than others. There are
also environmental influences, both in your genetics and in how
you choose to look. Maybe you and your siblings dress
similarly or make the same facial expressions or say the
same kind of things because you live together. So your
similarities are not just genetic. And sometimes we try
our absolute hardest to look and behave nothing like our
siblings! So you and your siblings might look a lot alike,
or you might look very different, whether you share DNA
or not.
When I was a kid, people used to see me out with my stepfather,
and they'd sometimes stop us and tell us how much we looked
alike. We always smiled and said thank you. But then we kind of
giggled a little bit afterwards, because we aren't biologically
related at all. But we did spend a lot of time together when I
was a kid, so it kind of makes sense that we would look alike.
And your genetics certainly don't define how you feel about
your family or how much they love you. Beyond the story of
how you got your siblings or whether or not you look alike,
your siblings can have a big impact on who you become. One
author we know has spent a lot of time thinking about and
researching why that is. So we called her up to talk a little
bit about what she's learned. Susan Dominus writes for The New
York Times Magazine, and one of her books is called The Family
Dynamic.
Susan Dominus: I actually started off thinking about how
to write a book about how parents help their kids dream
big and go about achieving those dreams. I was really interested
in parents who encouraged their kids to think they could change
the world. When I started reporting the book, what I was
hearing from these, you know, incredible siblings from
families like this, although they talked about their parents,
they also talked about the way their siblings helped them get
to the point that they were trying to reach. And I realized
that that was kind of an underappreciated piece of the
puzzle in general, when people think about how people become
who they are.
Jane: And what did you find from the families that you
interviewed?
Susan Dominus: Well, I think I found often that the parents
were the ones who were maybe setting a tone in the family and
setting--maybe they were inspiring people themselves in
some not necessarily famous way, but a way that was really
meaningful to the kids, you know, maybe they had immigrated
from afar, a country overseas, and had built new lives so their
kids could have better opportunities, or maybe they had
overcome racial stereotypes in order to succeed, and at times
where the world was not really conspiring to help them do that,
but the siblings, it turned out, were often very helpful in
giving logistical advice and pointing them in the right
directions. And older siblings can really guide the way for
younger siblings, because they understand how the school works,
they've looked at their friends and seen what worked for them,
and they can pass that information down. And sometimes
kids, especially teenagers, would much rather have advice
from a sibling, even a sibling that they sometimes fight with,
they'd still rather have that advice come from a sibling than
a parent, because teenagers really don't like to do what
their parents want them to do a lot of the time.
Jane: Research into siblings backs up what Susan Dominus
found in her reporting. Siblings are family, but they're also
kind of like a peer or friend relationship. You learn how to
get along with people by learning how to get along with
your sibling with the safety that they'll always still be
your sibling. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy. We
have a question from Julia.
Julia: I am nine years old. I live in Tarragona, Spain, and my
question is, why do I fight with my sister if I love her?
Susan Dominus: I think that sibling tensions are very, very
natural. And, you know, I don't know this is the kind of thing
you can prove, but evolutionary biologists would say it really
all comes down to resources, or a feeling of resources. It's
hard to avoid the feeling that, you know, love is a pie, and
that the bigger your sister's slice is, that means the smaller
yours is. But one of my favorite short story collections is
called Love is Not a Pie, meaning it doesn't deplete. You
know, if you give some to one person, it doesn't mean there's
not enough for the other person. And so I think part of getting
older is realizing that there's enough to go around. But I also
think that siblings are trying to differentiate from each
other, and that also it's just unfortunate for siblings that
people tend to compare them, and I think that puts people kids,
especially in an uncomfortable place sometimes.
Jane: I love that. Susan mentioned the short story, Love
is Not a Pie. It's one of my favorite short stories (written
for adults), but also the author, Amy Bloom, was on our
show several years ago in an episode called "How does it feel
when your family changes?" You might enjoy listening to that
one. And research has shown that having a younger sibling teaches
older siblings things like empathy--hat's the ability to
understand how someone else might be feeling--and to work on
social skills like sharing and playing.
Coming up: if having siblings is so great, why do they drive you
nuts?
BREAK: BREAK
Nagore: This is But Why, from Vermont Public. I'm Jane
Lindholm. We're learning about brothers and sisters and
siblings. Today we're speaking with Susan Dominus. She wrote a
book about families where multiple siblings did big things
as teenagers and adults. She wanted to know what was
happening in those families that led to the children becoming
what are sometimes called high achievers. The book is called
The Family Dynamic. It's a book written for adults, but Susan
likes thinking about and talking with kids, too, so she was
excited to answer your questions. Here's one we got
from a lot of you.
I'm Nagore. I'm 10 years old, and I live in Colombia, close to
Bogota. Why don't siblings get along perfectly?
Marin: Hi, my name is Marin. I'm eight years old, and I live in
Garrett, Indiana, and my question is, why do siblings
fight a lot?
Phoebe: Hi, my name is Phoebe. I live in Barbadoes. I am six
years old. Why are little sisters and brothers so
annoying? And goodbye.
Ruby: My name is Ruby. I'm seven years old. I live in Fair Oaks,
California. My question is, why are brothers and sisters so
annoying? [Annoying little brother noises]
Unknown: [Laughs] I think it is a little bit of just a question
of proximity. You know what I mean? Even roommates who live
together often, there are, you know, they start to get on each
other's nerves. There's just so many little choices and tasks
and interactions that happen over the course of the day. I
think, with siblings, it's even more complicated, because your
sibling is just enough like you, maybe, that you think that you
should get along perfectly, but siblings actually are also just
different enough that they're going to have different points
of view, different tastes, different personalities. And I
think that sometimes we feel what's known as cognitive
dissonance when we look at someone and say, "You're my
sibling, you might even look like me. Why is it that you, of
all people, don't see things the way that I do?" And I think that
can be really frustrating and surprising to us, maybe.
Jane: Your siblings are learning to have a relationship with
their peers through their relationship with you and any
other siblings. Often that means testing out new strategies,
whether they realize that's what they're doing or not. So maybe
they're making an annoying noise and waiting to see your
reaction. If you think it's funny, maybe they'll try that
noise with their friends. If you think it's annoying, well, maybe
they'll learn. Of course, it's also totally possible they're
just doing it to annoy you, and if you show you're annoyed, they
might do it again.
Do sibling sibling relationships and the effect of having a
sibling tend to flow from the oldest sibling down to the
youngest? Does the oldest sibling always set the tone or
always create the conflict or always create the support to
help another sibling succeed? Or can it be mixed, depending on,
you know, where you fall in the family?
Unknown: Even at a young age, we do know that there is something
called a sibling spillover effect, and what that finds is
that when one sibling starts doing better in school, the
other siblings do as well, and there's a kind of complicated
way that they were able to figure out that it's not because
of how their parenting, you know, has been changed, or
because of some genetic overlap. I won't bore you with the
details, but scientists were very clever about how to do a
study that separated that out so they can really see that no, no,
it's the way that the sibling is behaving that's changing the
other sibling. And those effects can actually work in both
directions. They can go older to younger, but also younger to
older. I think even the older you get, the less the age of the
siblings matters. You know, when everybody's out there in the
world and they're doing their own thing, that's when you
really see, often, a kind of network effect of siblings who
are helping each other. Because, you know, when you're 36 years
old, it doesn't matter if your 32-year-old sister is the person
who makes that introduction for you or gives you advice.
Jane: Does that work for things like musical instruments and
playing sports too, or just in school?
Unknown: There's not tons of research about that, but I would
assume it works for all kinds of things. You know, there's like a
fun fact: There are some researchers who have been trying
to make the case that younger siblings are over-represented,
actually, in sports, and that's because of this idea of
differentiation, because the oldest sibling, for various
reasons, maybe because the parents put the most pressure on
them, that's what some research suggests, but the oldest
siblings tend to be the most academically strong, and so then
younger siblings think, "Well, I'm not going to be able to own
that, so I'm going to instead throw myself into sports." It's
not like we think that they're biologically more athletic for
some reason. It just seems to be a choice in how they invest
their energy.
Jane: Parents have an effect on cognitive development--brain
development--of their oldest kids, because they often spend
the most one on one time with their eldest child. There are no
other kids to compete for their attention. But those benefits
are then passed down to the younger children by that eldest
child, especially around literacy, reading. Older
siblings looking at books with their younger siblings can help
them learn to read. And the eldest's own reading ability is
improved by spending that time reading with their younger
siblings. But are there limits to the sibling relationship?
Akira: My name is Akira, and I'm six years old, and I'm from
Japan, and my question is, can my sister be my best friend?
Unknown: I mean, when that works, it's the greatest thing
ever. I can tell you that my sister is probably my best
friend. And we have...we are really different. In fact, we
look so different that when we were little, somebody once put
my sister in one room and me in another room, and these kids
grilled us on what our father's middle name was and things like
that, because they couldn't believe we were sisters. And we
have fought plenty over the years. And I'll tell you a
little secret: we still fight sometimes. But she's also my
best friend, and I feel so lucky every day that she was the
person plunked into my family along with me. And, in fact, I
even moved around the corner from my sister when I was trying
to figure out where to land with my husband before we even had a
family.
Jane: Sibling dynamics tend to change as kids get older, and
the kids who are older start to allow younger siblings more
power in the relationship. That shift can be messy, but it's
important to developing the relationship that will exist
throughout your adulthood. In Susan's book, she wrote about
how siblings will often push each other to be better people.
They can compete with each other and make each other better.
Unknown: So for example, I wrote about the Holifield family,
which is a sibling of civil rights activists who came out of
Tallahassee, Florida at a time when it was really hard to be a
young Black person in this country. You know, one of the
siblings, when she was only 16 years old, decided that she was
going to be one of the only three kids who were Black who
desegregated the biggest, best high school in the capital of
Florida, which was the last of all of the states, apparently,
to integrate.
Jane: Integration was bringing together Black and white
students into the same schools. This was happening in the 1950s
and 1960s. Students were educated separately before that
because of racism and racist laws.
Unknown: And her older brother, Bishop, said he looked at her
and thought, "Wow, she's really set the bar really high, and now
I want to honor that and live up to it." And when he got to law
school at Harvard, he started the Black Law Students
Association, which was one of the first kind of groups like
that on any any law school. And it was hugely influential. He
helped bring the first Black law professors to Harvard Law
School. Then other schools followed suit. And so there's
all kinds of ways that siblings can inspire each other and
really go on to do great things.
Susan, what if you don't have a sibling?
It's funny. I just had dinner last night with a young woman
who is an only child, and she was telling me that she kind of
instinctively became friendly with lots of lots of young women
her age, and almost would describe many of those friends
like a sister. And I think, in some ways, to have a friend
who's like a sister, but with all the baggage of actually
being a sister, hey, that's like, that's maybe even the best
case scenario. There are really special things about having a
sibling, but there are also really special things about
being an only child and having your parents' undivided
attention and not ever being compared to anybody else, not
having to deal with the day-to-day irritations of maybe
sharing a room or sharing a bathroom, waiting your turn. I
think there are a lot of tensions in life that are very
painful, from which you're really completely liberated.
Jane: Whatever your relationship with your siblings, or if you
are the only child in your family, your relationships with
your family shape your future in important ways. There's no wrong
or right way to have a family.
That's it for this episode. As always, if you have a question
about anything, have an adult record you asking it on a
smartphone using an app like Voice Memos. Then have your
adult email the file to questions@butwhykids.org. Our
show is produced by Sarah Baik, Melody Bodette and me, Jane
Lindholm, at Vermont Public and distributed by PRX. Our video
producer is Joey Palumbo, and our theme music is by Luke
Reynolds. If you like our show, please have your adults help you
give us a thumbs up or a review on whatever podcast platform you
use to listen to us. It helps other kids and families find us.
We'll be back in two weeks with an all new episode. Until then,
stay curious!