The Age Old Sibling War
By Heather Schettler
To be perfectly frank, this issue is quite old, and there is no two sides arguing over it either. However, there are different points of view of the situation: the kids in the rivalry, the parents of said kids, and the adult kids still dealing with a strained relation with their brother and/or sister. But no matter the point of view, sibling rivalry can be used for good. The kids learn what is and isn’t acceptable in their later relationships, and it can give children motivation to become better people. Too bad more often than not, sibling rivalry ends up being damaging instead. Not only to the family, but also to future friends, co workers, and spouses.So, the first question that might come to your mind is: “How did all this madness begin in my family?!” Of course there is no one answer for this, but there are a few reasons that apply to most, if not all, sibling relationships:
- A carnal desire for mastery.
- The parents comparing their kids, leading the kids to grow jealous of the sibling they are being compared to.
- The parents playing favorites, also causing envy to grow among the children.
Drs. William, Mada Hapworth and Joan Rattner Heilman all agree that, “Striving to be ‘all that you can be,’ takes us from the cradle to the grave.” The paragraph goes on to talk about how taking control of our own bodies morphs into wanting to be better than someone else and usually, that first people we compete with are our brothers and sisters. (pg 23) The main idea is that this is the foundation laid down from birth that rivalry is built on and makes some kind of competition between brothers and sisters almost inevitable. Though is this really a bad thing? As the old saying goes, hardships make you stronger if they don’t kill you, or something like that. Because of this primal instinct to be better at something and use your sibling as a point of reference so to speak. Then when you throw the parents into the mix, the parents being the first people we humans want to impress, that’s when the already heated relationship gets even hotter. Often times, parents will use the other kids as a reference point to scold the one that is misbehaving or is otherwise displeasing them.
That’s when jealousy is first experienced for the average child. As T. Berry Brazelton and Joshua D. Sparrow point out, “Parents are bound to compare their children with each other...Comparisons, inevitable as they may be, won’t help.” (pg 87) From this we can make two safe assumptions. The first being that parents use their natural instinct to compare themselves to everyone else around them, and this “skill” has, at some point, turned into being able to compare two different people. The second is the children involved in the comparison are effectively told that comparing yourself to someone completely different from you is a good thing and if you can’t measure up, you will lose the favor of your parents and other people you respect. That means that two of three things will happen. First the child being negatively compared will feel their ego be injured. In response, they will either lash out at the other sibling causing a rift to grow between them that may never mend, or do nothing and continue having their egos torn apart and grow up having low self worth. (Cohen pg 59-62) However, comparing can be a great tool to actually strengthen a child’s self worth. It can even be healthy talk to together as a family about each child’s strengths and shortcomings and have the kids help each other grow stronger. (Brazelton, Sparrow pg 90-91) For example, after the 6th grade, my mom was worried about how I was reading below my grade level and signed me up for a summer reading program. After that summer, my reading has gone above and beyond my age group and my nose has been stuck in a book ever since. My mom would always brag about that with her friends and our extended family. This made my older sister understandably jealous of me, but because of our different upbringings and the 8 year age difference, she never held it against me. However, for the sake of this example, lets say she was only about 3-4 years older than me. With Mother bragging to anyone who would listen to her about me, this would put my sister in a position to try and outdo me and gain just as, if not more favor from Mom. This is a feeling that is often felt by the firstborns when the second child is born. Suddenly, the firstborn doesn’t have a monopoly on the parents attention, and now have to fight for it. (Connelly pg 25)As Elizabeth Russell Connelly further explained, this situation makes the first born react one of three ways: the first and most common being the kid learns to be very law abiding, and responsible (like how my sister decided she would do the the same for her kids as was done for me). Second, they could go the opposite way and be complete rebels and enjoy the constant, though negative, attention of their parents, like Bart Simpson from the TV show, The Simpsons (if my sister decided to start whining and complaining, or just cause general trouble). Or finally take the darkest route and start being aggressive with their little brother or sister physically and/or verbally like Stan’s sister from South Park (she could have started calling me names for reading, or even start tearing up my book and possibly even harm me in some way). The last two reactions can possibly be avoided by either involving the first born in the care of the baby and later helping them with basic life functions or by setting a little time aside each day with both parents, to focus on and encourage them. Or in the case of me and my sister, I could recommend fun books for her to read or just simply have a talk about our feelings.
If there is one thing I want you, as the reader, is to know that rivalries will spring up in one form or another. The only way they don’t occur is when everyone (parents included) don’t fight and not share memories together. It’s just a natural part of life. The beauty of it is there are ways to keep the instinct to be better than our kin from boiling over. Not only damaging the immediate relationship of the two siblings, but also their future relationships with coworkers, friends, and possible spouses. It all begins with that first, age-old sibling war.
HS 12/9/12
