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The Sibling Effect

What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us
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Jun 05, 2012jmikesmith rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
It seems obvious, but I hadn't really thought about it until I read this book: your relationships with your siblings will almost certainly be the longest relationships of your life. Your siblings will be with you from early childhood until old age. This book explores the effects that your siblings have on each other. It covers such topics as sibling rivalry and fighting, birth order (first- and last-born tend to get more perks than middle children), parental favouritism, divorce and step- and half-siblings, alloparenting (when older siblings assume some responsibility for looking after younger ones), sexuality (especially whether younger siblings follow in in older siblings' footsteps), twins and only children, and aging. The research on sibling relationships is relatively new, mostly because they are so difficult to study; there are many variables to consider and they are hard to isolate (gender, socio-economic status, innate personality differences, etc.). The author brings his own experience as the second of four boys into the book, showing how his parents' divorce and re-marriage (which introduced both step-siblings and half-siblings) affected his brothers and him. If I have one minor point with this work, it's that it tends to focus on broods of three or more siblings. As someone with one sibling, I would have liked to see more about two-child families. Overall, the writing is clear and simple (Kluger is a science journalist) and engaging. Recommended.