tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/siblings-934/articlesSiblings – The Conversation2024-02-09T13:33:14Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225902024-02-09T13:33:14Z2024-02-09T13:33:14ZSome of the Renaissance’s most romantic love poems weren’t for lovers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574483/original/file-20240208-16-27mgyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C5%2C750%2C552&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sonnets still have a reputation for being about the unrequited love of a man for a woman.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Codex_Manesse_Bernger_von_Horheim.jpg">AndreasPraefcke/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As poets have demonstrated for centuries, a sonnet for your beloved never goes out of style. The gift of verse may carry extra cachet this Valentine’s Day, on the heels of Taylor Swift’s announcement that <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-tortured-poets-department-track-list-1234962007/">her next album is poetry-themed</a>. </p>
<p>But in carrying out <a href="https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463720274/petrarch-and-the-making-of-gender-in-renaissance-italy">my research on Renaissance literature and gender</a>, I’ve been struck by how many of that period’s love poems were not for lovers.</p>
<p>These sonnets, composed for friends and family, are not just beautiful; they’re also a reminder that love and Valentine’s Day aren’t exclusively for couples.</p>
<h2>The love sonnet is born</h2>
<p>The sonnet was invented in 12th century Italy as a 14-line poem with 11 beats per line and various rhyming patterns. Its originator, Giacomo da Lentini, was a poet in the Kingdom of Sicily who had been inspired by <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/the-heretical-origins-of-the-sonnet/">older Arabic and French poetry</a>.</p>
<p>But it was the Italian poet <a href="https://poets.org/poet/petrarch">Petrarch</a> who put the form on the map. In the 14th century, he wrote a collection of 366 poems, mostly sonnets. He penned the collection for a woman named Laura, whom he loved from afar in life and after her death.</p>
<p>Petrarch died in 1374, but his poetry became the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Petrarch/tkbVMQEACAAJ?hl=en">most widely published</a> literature of the Italian Renaissance. It was so popular that it inspired generations of poets, imitators known as “Petrarchists.” Petrarchism became a global phenomenon in the 16th and 17th centuries, spreading to Spain, France, England <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo3645653.html">and even the Americas</a>. </p>
<h2>Playing with sonneteering stereotypes</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-wyatt">Thomas Wyatt</a> is thought to have written the first English sonnets, in the early 16th century. His poems strongly relied on Petrarch; some of the best known, like “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/aug/10/poem-of-the-week-thomas-wyatt">Whoso list to hunt</a>,” are quasi-translations of the Italian poet’s work.</p>
<p>Writing <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-poems/#:%7E:text=While%20he%20may%20have%20experimented,writing%20sonnets%20seriously%20around%201592.">a half-century later</a>, Shakespeare changed the form, ending his sonnets with a rhyming couplet, giving birth to the “Shakespearean sonnet.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Title page of a collection of Shakespeare's sonnets featuring a colorful illustration of Shakespeare, flowers and two cherubs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many of Shakespeare’s sonnets were addressed to an unnamed young man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/detail/FOLGERCM1~6~6~1189282~187533:-Songs--Songs-and-sonnets--manuscri?qvq=q:112125&mi=0&trs=1#">Folger Digital Image Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More than four centuries after the first printing of Shakepeare’s sonnets in 1609, his poems are still oft quoted. Many valentines will find themselves <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/18/">compared to a summer’s day</a> or swearing there can be no impediments between <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/116/">the marriage of true minds</a>.</p>
<p>Less well known, however, is the fact that half of Shakespeare’s poems were addressed to a young man, an unnamed “<a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/mysterious-identity-fair-youth/">Fair Youth</a>.” Depending on which Shakespeare scholar you ask, the gesture is either platonic, romantic or a little of both. In any case, it introduces an element of queerness, in that there’s homoeroticism and a <a href="https://huntington.org/verso/queerness-shakespeares-sonnets">challenge to what society deems natural</a>.</p>
<p>Yet today the Renaissance sonnet still has a reputation, even among scholars, for being about the unrequited love of a man for a woman. But even before Shakespeare, in Renaissance Italy, the sonnet was a lot more varied than that.</p>
<h2>For friends and lovers</h2>
<p>For starters, even Petrarch wrote about more than just his love for Laura. </p>
<p>A number of his poems were composed for friends, with several of them for the Florentine poet <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/petrarchs-plague/#p-3-0">Sennuccio del Bene</a>. In <a href="https://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=113">poem 113</a>, Petrarch writes about returning to the region where Laura was born, but he opens by describing his love for his friend, saying he is only “half” himself without Sennuccio, and that both men would only be “whole” and “happy” if they were together.</p>
<p><a href="https://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=287">Poem 287</a> is a sonnet on Sennuccio’s death, in which Petrarch’s mourning is only mitigated by the knowledge that his friend is in heaven with other great poets, like Dante, and the now-deceased Laura. The short poem mixes his love and grief for both people, his beloved and his friend.</p>
<p>Today’s “<a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a26052713/galentines-day/">Galentine’s Day</a>” – a celebration of female friendship – has yet to spawn a male-friendship-centered “<a href="https://theconversation.com/galentines-day-has-become-a-thing-why-hasnt-malentines-day-130862">Malentine’s Day</a>.” </p>
<p>But platonic love between men carried no stigma in the Renaissance. Take the verses of Venetian writers <a href="https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/orsatto-giustinian_(Dizionario-Biografico)/">Orsatto Giustinian</a> and <a href="https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/celio-magno/">Celio Magno</a>, who published their poetry in a single book in 1601. </p>
<p>Magno and Giustinian portray their friendship with the vocabulary of Petrarchan love. <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Rime_di_Celio_Magno_et_Orsatto_Giustinia/SI81w2hdFcMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA160&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22tu%20non%20viui%22">In one sonnet</a>, Magno describes how he hates being separated from his friend, which is almost like being severed from himself: “You do not live, I do not live; together we are far from ourselves in this bitter state.” </p>
<p>At the risk of being the <a href="https://archermagazine.com.au/2021/03/heteronormativity-popular-history/">“and-they-were-roommates” historian</a>, I’ll note that the book also contains passionate poems from Giustinian to his wife, Candiana Garzoni. </p>
<p>That doesn’t cancel out the homoerotic tension in the men’s poems to each other, but it does make classifying their sexuality challenging. And maybe this shouldn’t be the point. If anything, their <a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a46410977/broad-city-10th-anniversary-loving-your-best-friend/">romantic friendship</a> seems to skirt simple categories of sexual orientation. </p>
<h2>Sororal sentiment</h2>
<p>Most published writers in Renaissance Italy were men, but a not-insignificant number <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Five-Women-Shaped-Italian-Renaissance/dp/0367533995">were women</a>. Existing in a single copy in a library in Siena, Italy, is a joint poetry collection written by two sisters, Speranza Vittoria and Giulia di Bona. They lived with their mother and four other sisters.</p>
<p>Their sisters Lucrezia and Cassandra both died at a young age. The sonnets that Speranza and Giulia <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=ahDhW3sAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=ahDhW3sAAAAJ:Zph67rFs4hoC">composed for them</a> take the sort of heartbreaking imagery used to describe a lost partner, but is repurposed to portray their grief: the swan song, the sun gone dark, the poet’s wish to die in order to be near the object of their love. </p>
<p>In one melancholic poem about Lucrezia’s death, Speranza weeps for the “strange place, dark earth, and bitter stone” that “possess” her sister, and thus her own happiness.</p>
<p>The poems traded between Speranza and Giulia are brighter, exhibiting an abundance of love and admiration. In one pair of sonnets, written playfully yet impressively with matching rhyme words, the two liken each other to white ermines, <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/lady-with-an-ermine/HwHUpggDy_HxNQ?hl=en&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A8.872019804523145%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A2.7206646564529637%2C%22height%22%3A1.2375000000000012%7D%7D">an animal considered a symbol of moral virtue</a>. </p>
<h2>Love is big</h2>
<p>There are so many other Renaissance Italian poems written for friends, parents, children and grandchildren – not to mention fiery love poems dedicated to Jesus and the saints, some by clerics, like <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv15d81vf?turn_away=true">Angelo Grillo</a>.</p>
<p>They serve as reminders of what the love poem can be. They push back against narratives that champion heterosexual relationships or that tout <a href="https://medium.com/the-sundial-acmrs/teaching-premodern-asexualities-and-aromanticisms-908cc375af12">romantic coupling and sexual attraction</a> of any orientation as the most important relationship in a person’s life, <a href="https://theconversation.com/single-on-valentines-day-and-happily-so-155191">minimizing the importance of other loving relationships</a>.</p>
<p>These poems also encourage everyone to think more expansively about their own love and home lives. As an unmarried mother of a 5-year-old – and as someone who has only ever lived with friends or siblings – I have benefited immensely from <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/12/01/1216043849/bringing-up-a-baby-can-be-a-tough-and-lonely-job-heres-a-solution-alloparents">alloparenting</a>, the care provided for my son by all of the nonparents in his life.</p>
<p>I ended up in these living situations in part because of the pandemic, which, in a way, was a form of luck: Sometimes it takes a disruptive event <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-rhaina-cohen.html">to break cultural expectations</a> for the nuclear family and childrearing.</p>
<p>If writers could describe different types of love during the Renaissance, why limit what we can envision for ourselves?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon McHugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>These moving poems are a reminder that on Valentine’s Day, it’s OK to celebrate a broader definition of love.Shannon McHugh, Associate Professor of French and Italian, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2087762023-09-13T15:39:33Z2023-09-13T15:39:33ZBeing an only child doesn’t affect your development – family background matters more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545531/original/file-20230830-21-1h0twj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3828%2C2149&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/girl-mother-father-holding-hands-on-1909537033">Motortion Films/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Being an only child is a “disease in itself”, according to 19th century psychologist <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/14/reviews/mckibben-child.html">Stanley G. Hall</a>. Even though Hall’s views and scholarly <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2006.tb00405.x">research methods</a> have been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00221325.2016.1240000">questioned and criticised</a>, only children’s reputation as spoiled, overprotected and lonely has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211116-why-only-children-are-still-stereotyped-as-selfish-and-spoilt">persisted ever since</a>.</p>
<p>If you’re the parent of an only child, you may have had worries about how growing up without siblings may affect your child’s social skills. But <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2006.tb00405.x">research</a> has found that only children are not different from their peers with siblings when it comes to character and sociability. </p>
<p>My own <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padr.12560">research</a> with colleagues found that when looking at how children performed in cognitive tests, only children tend to be similar to children growing up with one sibling. </p>
<p>What’s more, we wanted to find out whether only children’s differences or similarities to children with brothers and sisters might have more to do with their parents’ characteristics than whether or not they have siblings. </p>
<p>We found that only children’s cognitive development by age 11 is more affected by things like their parents’ relationship and their family’s socioeconomic status than whether they have brothers and sisters. What financial and emotional resources there are in the household overall might matter more in determining children’s life outcomes than how many children they need to share these resources with. </p>
<h2>Family structure</h2>
<p>The study relied on data from the <a href="https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/cls-studies/#:%7E:text=The%20UCL%20Centre%20for%20Longitudinal%20Studies%20%28CLS%29%20is,groups%20of%20people%20born%20in%20a%20given%20year.">British cohort studies</a>. These are nationally representative surveys which follow the lives of groups of 5,362 children born in 1946, 17,416 born in a single week in 1958, 16,571 born in a single week in 1970 and 19,244 born around the year 2001 in Britain. The data collects extensive information on the group members and their families, including the parents’ level of education, social class and family structure.</p>
<p>To measure children’s development we looked at results from cognitive tests the children in the study took at age ten or 11. These tests assessed their verbal skills. </p>
<p>Only children showed similar cognitive scores to children from two child families, and higher scores than children growing up with two or more siblings. Nonetheless, the only child “advantage” appeared to be weaker in the 2001 group compared to the older groups. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Happy children playing tug of war" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545532/original/file-20230830-20-tvnaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545532/original/file-20230830-20-tvnaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545532/original/file-20230830-20-tvnaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545532/original/file-20230830-20-tvnaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545532/original/file-20230830-20-tvnaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545532/original/file-20230830-20-tvnaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545532/original/file-20230830-20-tvnaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Research has found that only children aren’t different from children with siblings when it comes to sociability, among other things.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/children-playing-tug-war-park-459100483">Robert Kneschke/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>We were able to show that the variation we observed across generations could partially be attributed to the changing characteristics of only child families. We found that single-child families in Britain, on average, tend to be better off. However, over time being an only child has become more associated with potentially disadvantaged conditions, such as growing up with separated parents. </p>
<p>The changing composition of single-child families helps to explain why, compared to the past, only children nowadays show a smaller advantage compared to children growing up with siblings. </p>
<h2>Changing the narrative</h2>
<p>Taken together, the results suggest that having or not having siblings does not have a large impact, or at least has a smaller one compared to other family characteristics. For example, our research showed that growing up in a disadvantaged household appears to carry a larger effect on how children performed in the cognitive tests than being an only child versus growing up with siblings.</p>
<p>The results also suggest that it is time to shift away from the perspective of only children as a single group sharing particular traits. </p>
<p>We should instead embrace the idea that there are likely a variety of different pathways into having an only child, which include having an only child by choice or because of external circumstances. These pathways, in turn, matter for and shape children’s outcomes and life trajectories. </p>
<p>Being an only child is not a timeless concept and experience. It depends on changes in societies and to the diverse set of families who have only children. This shift in our approach to how we see and study only children will not only increase our understanding but also help to debunk stereotypes which still persist in general society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Goisis receives funding from UK Economic and Social Research Council under Grant numbers ES/S002103/1</span></em></p>Only children’s cognitive development by age 11 is more affected by things like their parents’ relationship and wealth than whether they have brothers and sisters.Alice Goisis, Associate Professor of Demography and Deputy Research Director in the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2129672023-09-10T20:05:32Z2023-09-10T20:05:32Z‘That’s getting a bit wild, kids!’ Why children love to play-fight and why it is good for them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546588/original/file-20230906-15-kbyfn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C16%2C5535%2C3657&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/kids-playing-wrestling-in-the-bed-6684671/">Cottonbro Studio/Pexels </a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>That’s getting a bit wild, kids! Why don’t you play something quieter?</p>
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<p>How often have you found yourself saying something like this to your children as they’re rolling around on the lounge room floor? </p>
<p>Even if they are smiling and clearly having fun, as parents, we often worry that someone will get hurt or it will turn into aggression, and ultimately, tears.</p>
<p>As a family and child psychology researcher, parents often ask me why children engage in this type of rough-and-tumble play. What is it? Is it good for them? Should I be stopping it? </p>
<p>The short answers are: it’s fun, it’s good for their development and you can encourage a good quality rough play session with a few boundaries. </p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-your-squabbling-kids-driving-you-mad-the-good-bad-news-is-sibling-rivalry-is-developmentally-normal-186300">Are your squabbling kids driving you mad? The good/bad news is, sibling rivalry is 'developmentally normal'</a>
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<h2>What is rough-and-tumble play?</h2>
<p>Rough-and-tumble play is a type of energetic physical play that involves wrestling and chasing in a playful manner. </p>
<p>Parents often refer to it as “roughhousing”, “rumbling” or “play-fighting”. </p>
<p>An interesting thing about rough-and-tumble play is it is not unique to humans. In fact, it’s seen in <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-022-03260-z">almost all mammals</a>, from <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.1033999/full">rodents</a>, to wolves, to bears and non-human primates.</p>
<p>Have you ever sat and watched a litter of puppies in their first four to six weeks of life? All they do is eat, sleep and rough-and-tumble play. When a behaviour is seen across numerous species, it suggests the behaviour plays a functional role in development.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Puppies wrestle in a similar way to children and other mammals, such as baby pandas or kittens.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>There are developmental benefits</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious benefit of this type of play is physical development. </p>
<p>Children develop <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507902/">balance, coordination, strength and agility</a> through play fighting, wrestling and rolling around on the floor together or with a parent. </p>
<p>This style of play provides opportunities for children to explore and understand their bodies’ capabilities and limitations. One of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004430.2014.1000888?journalCode=gecd20">our studies</a> on father-child rough-and-tumble play showed children who engaged more frequently in this style of play had a lower injury risk than children who didn’t play like this often. This supports the idea that rough-and-tumble play helps teach children about their physical limits.</p>
<p>Rough-and-tumble play also helps children to develop their social and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004430.2012.723439">nonverbal communication skills</a>. In a good bout of roughhousing, children engage in negotiation and cooperation with each other – they learn how to initiate the play, set boundaries and respect the boundaries of their play partner. </p>
<p>Most of this is done nonverbally. Children learn to read their play partner’s signals, such as their facial expressions and body language – are they leaning into the play or pulling away from it? Are they smiling or grimacing?</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kids-learn-valuable-life-skills-through-rough-and-tumble-play-with-their-dads-119241">Kids learn valuable life skills through rough-and-tumble play with their dads</a>
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<hr>
<h2>Managing emotions</h2>
<p>Children also learn how to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/imhj.21676">manage their emotions and self-regulate</a> through this type of play. Think about all the emotions a child may go through while wrestling with their sibling. There might be: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>excitement at the thought of winning and the opportunity to be loud and boisterous</p></li>
<li><p>frustration their sibling is stronger and it’s hard to pin them down or wriggle out from under them</p></li>
<li><p>enjoyment of the bond they are sharing with their sibling</p></li>
<li><p>and maybe a little bit of fear if they get a bit too wild and Mum or Dad breaks it up, or they accidentally knock something over. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Experiencing all these emotions and learning how to navigate them helps children develop emotional resilience.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two children fight with pillows." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547100/original/file-20230907-2965-bq7onr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kids can experience a wide range of emotions, from excitement to frustration and fear when play fighting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/teens-playing-pillow-fight-7693132/">Karolina Grabowska/Pexels</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Helping cognition</h2>
<p>Rough-and-tumble play is also related to cognitive development. In <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/9/7/962">one of our recent studies</a>, we showed children who do more rough-and-tumble play have better working memory ability and fewer working memory problems.</p>
<p>Working memory is a cognitive function that allows us to hold and manipulate a small amount of relevant information. </p>
<p>If I gave you a maths problem (such as 4 + 6 - 2) and asked you to solve it in your head, you would be using your working memory (the answer is 8, by the way!). Similarly, if I told you the rules of a rough-and-tumble game, like “<a href="https://kids.kiddle.co/Sock_wrestling">sock wrestle</a>”, you would have to keep those rules in mind while playing the game and at the same time trying to win.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F0no07_eJKU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">How to play ‘sock wrestle’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How can you encourage good play?</h2>
<p>Given all these benefits, how should you encourage good quality rough-and-tumble play?</p>
<p>Most importantly, you want to keep it safe. </p>
<p>Ideally, rough-and-tumble play should happen in large open spaces. Having a designated playmat is a good idea, as is moving the coffee table out of the way if you get a chance before the play starts.</p>
<p>You should also make sure all players actually want to play. Setting some rules around what types of contact are off-limits – no hitting, kicking or biting is a good place to start.</p>
<p>You also want to allow enough time so everyone wears themselves out. </p>
<p>It’s a nice idea to have a signal the kids use to indicate the play is over and which helps build a warm and loving connection – a handshake, high-five or hug, whatever works in your house.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Freeman receives funding from the Hunter Medical Resarch Institute, Department of Health and Aged Care, and the University of Newcastle. </span></em></p>Play fighting can help children’s development in many ways, from their balance, to their nonverbal skills and cognition.Emily Freeman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2047762023-05-15T14:45:01Z2023-05-15T14:45:01ZFor Canada jays, sibling rivalry can be deadly as winner takes all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523878/original/file-20230502-16-le9k60.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6399%2C3694&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young Canada jays fight to keep their siblings out of the parents' territory.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(M. Fuirst)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the animal kingdom, sibling conflicts — mostly in the form of competition for food from parents — are fairly common in birds. Sometimes death can occur as a result of this competition, but siblicide almost always occurs when young are still in the nest. </p>
<p>Conflicts among siblings suggest a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.1998.0842">trade-off between competition for resources and the benefits of having blood relatives</a>. In many species, despite sibling conflicts, juveniles have the choice to stay within the home territory or leave and seek out a new home. </p>
<p>But Canada jay siblings will fight one another for their home territory after leaving the nest. If they lose, they must leave.</p>
<p>My colleagues and I compared <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1863">the survival and reproductive benefits of being the dominant juvenile, while taking into account the costs related to kicking out closely related siblings</a>. This study on sibling conflict in wild animals is the first to measure the cost of kicking out siblings. The cost of kicking out close relatives is that individuals that might help spread the family genes are instead sentenced to exile, where they have a high probability of dying.</p>
<h2>Canada jay behaviour</h2>
<p>Using six years of radio-tracking data and our 50 years of data on individually marked Canada jays in <a href="https://www.algonquinpark.on.ca/index.php">Algonquin Provincial Park</a> in central Ontario, we were interested in whether the benefit of kicking out your siblings outweighed the cost. </p>
<p>To do this, we examined the survival and lifetime reproductive success of all known dominant juveniles and ejectees. Because Canada jays can live up to 17 years, it took over five decades to collect lifetime data on a sufficient number of individuals in the population. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canada_Jay/overview">Canada jays are full-time residents of North Americas’s boreal forests</a>, and they rely on stored food items to survive through the winter. They are only one of two known species (<a href="https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/sibjay1/cur/introduction">the other being the closely related Siberian jay</a>) in which sibling conflicts result in expulsion of one or more siblings from the home territory after juveniles have left the nest.</p>
<p>About six weeks after offspring have left the nest but still remain in the home territory being fed by parents, an intense battle commences. The end result is the ejection of weaker siblings (ejectees) from the home territory by the dominant juvenile. By being forced out, ejectees must find a new home before the onset of winter.</p>
<p>We found that while dominant juveniles do incur a cost of kicking out their siblings, the benefits of higher first-year survival and long-term reproductive success outweigh the costs of sibling expulsion.</p>
<h2>Winner takes all</h2>
<p>The decision to kick ejectees out of the home territory has a tremendous trade-off for Canada jays. Our research found that by remaining as the sole offspring at home, a dominant juvenile has a higher probability of survival in their first year and more successful reproduction in adulthood.</p>
<p>This is likely because the dominant juvenile does not need to find a new place to live, is able to live in a group in the first year of its life and is already familiar with the habitat where they can store food for the winter.</p>
<p>And while the dominant juvenile reaps those benefits, ejectees are sentenced to a risky first year of life, where they are less likely to survive.</p>
<p>It is not necessarily a beneficial thing to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.1998.0842">kill or expel a sibling</a>, even if the ability is there. Siblings share genes, so harming a sibling has a negative effect on the genetic success of an individual’s lineage. However, in the animal world, such behaviours come down to costs and benefits. </p>
<p>If, by monopolizing resources in the nest, a sibling is able to gain a lifetime benefit that outweighs the cost it would otherwise incur by sharing resources, then the trait would be considered adaptive and likely spread in the population over time.</p>
<p>In the case of Canada jays, the expelled siblings don’t all die. Our research found that although ejectees have lower survival rates over their first summer, most that survive are adopted by unrelated adults. We saw juveniles with parents who did not have young of their own. A smaller proportion found a mate to breed in their first year or remained alone. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523670/original/file-20230501-926-xeiogk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a grey and white small bird wearing a bright orange band on its foot peers into the camera" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523670/original/file-20230501-926-xeiogk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523670/original/file-20230501-926-xeiogk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523670/original/file-20230501-926-xeiogk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523670/original/file-20230501-926-xeiogk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523670/original/file-20230501-926-xeiogk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523670/original/file-20230501-926-xeiogk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523670/original/file-20230501-926-xeiogk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A colour-banded fledgling Canada jay in a spruce bog in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(M. Fuirst)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sibling behaviour and survival</h2>
<p>In Algonquin Provincial Park, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15445">the number of Canada jay territories has declined by over 75 per cent in the last four decades</a>. This trend is due to warming temperatures and higher frequencies of freeze-thaw events that spoil the highly perishable food that jays store for winter. </p>
<p>Our study is important for the field of behavioural ecology, and it provides novel insights into the evolutionary drivers of sibling conflicts. With the Algonquin Park jay population in major decline, understanding the behaviours of Canada jays is essential to understand the challenges individuals may be facing to survive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Fuirst received funding from the Weston Family Foundation Fellowship for Northern Conservation</span></em></p>Canada jays who are able to expel their siblings from the nest and home territory have better chances of survival.Matthew Fuirst, Instructor, Integrative Biology, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1992472023-03-01T13:28:25Z2023-03-01T13:28:25ZSibling aggression and abuse go beyond rivalry – bullying within a family can have lifelong repercussions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510723/original/file-20230216-28-r81b4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5200%2C3432&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hurting a sibling is not the same thing as healthy rivalry.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/boy-grabbing-girls-arm-on-stairs-royalty-free-image/588312516">Glasshouse Images/The Image Bank via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2011/demo/p70-126.html">80% of U.S. children grow up with a sibling</a>. For many, brothers and sisters are life companions, close confidants and sharers of memories. But siblings also are natural competitors for parents’ attention. When brothers and sisters view parents’ love and attention as limited – or lopsided in favor of their sibling – rivalry may ensue. </p>
<p>Rivalry can motivate children to develop unique talents, abilities – such as in academics, sports or music – and other characteristics to gain their parents’ attention. Sometimes, however, rivalry can lead to jealousy and bickering – and too much of it can lead to aggression, bullying and even abuse and violence. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=chKAWywAAAAJ">We are</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4NJRZ_AAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">researchers</a> who focus on sibling dynamics, parenting and mental health. Conflict among siblings is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838015622438">widely viewed as normal</a> but, in the past decade, a new body of research consistently shows that sibling aggression and abuse are far from harmless – and can have lifelong repercussions.</p>
<h2>Overlooking aggression</h2>
<p>Aggressive behavior is characterized by an intent to cause harm, including physical pain and humiliation. Many behaviors between siblings fit this definition. </p>
<p>In 2013, using data from over 1,700 U.S. children, we found <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.01.006">one-third of children under age 18 experienced</a> physical, property or psychological sibling victimization in the previous year. In fact, sibling aggression is the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0676">most common form of family violence</a>, with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0676">more children victimized by a sibling than by a caregiver</a>. It’s a form of family violence not talked about, despite its ubiquity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511715/original/file-20230222-26-ttpy0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Kids and a teacher in the hallway of a school making a no bullying sign." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511715/original/file-20230222-26-ttpy0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511715/original/file-20230222-26-ttpy0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511715/original/file-20230222-26-ttpy0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511715/original/file-20230222-26-ttpy0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511715/original/file-20230222-26-ttpy0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511715/original/file-20230222-26-ttpy0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511715/original/file-20230222-26-ttpy0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More and more schools have embraced anti-bullying programs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/campdarby/5690539312">Joyce Costello, USAG Livorno Public Affairs/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Great efforts have been aimed at <a href="https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/article-abstract/24/4/167/6527/Bullying-prevention-campaign-launched">reducing peer aggression</a>, better known as peer bullying. The negative <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/gr.6-5-50">consequences of peer bullying</a> are widely recognized. But a 2015 survey of 4,000 American children showed more are victimized over the course of a year <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0676">by a sibling (21.8%) than by a peer (15.6%)</a>. </p>
<p>When peer bullying occurs, parents want it stopped – and experts encourage parents to talk with their children about what happened. Corrective action can include <a href="https://www.stopbullying.gov/prevention/middle-school">helping the bully</a> develop understanding and empathy. </p>
<p>Yet, when the very same aggressive behaviors are displayed by siblings, they are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-013-9741-2">typically dismissed by parents</a> and <a href="https://doi.org//10.1007/s10896-015-9766-y">even by the victimized siblings themselves</a>. In fact, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sibling-Abuse-Trauma-Assessment-and-Intervention-Strategies-for-Children/Caffaro/p/book/9780415506861">victim blaming often occurs</a>, in which the victimized sibling is faulted for angering the abusing sibling or being overly sensitive. </p>
<p>Confusion about the difference between rivalry and sibling aggression prevents people from recognizing it. Aggressive behaviors, such as pushing, hitting or breaking cherished personal items, go beyond mild conflicts or fleeting bickering. But parents often rationalize aggressive sibling behavior – it’s just rivalry, it’s normal, no one got hurt. Sometimes adults even think <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-013-9741-2">it’s good for kids’ development</a> to deal with aggressive behavior – that it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-015-9766-y">makes them tougher</a>.</p>
<p>For some, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000087">sibling aggression can be chronic</a> and cross over to sibling abuse, which can leave physical or psychological injuries. Abuse involves objects, weapons, multiple tormentors or sexual assaults. About <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.01.006">4% of U.S. children</a> report that during incidents in which their sibling beat, kicked or punched them, they sustained an injury or a weapon was used. A widely held view is <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sibling-Abuse-Trauma-Assessment-and-Intervention-Strategies-for-Children/Caffaro/p/book/9780415506861">aggression between siblings cannot be abuse</a>. But for a surprising number of children, it is. This false belief has led to many suffering in silence. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510728/original/file-20230216-22-5knoam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A worried young woman in profile stressed out and unhappy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510728/original/file-20230216-22-5knoam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510728/original/file-20230216-22-5knoam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510728/original/file-20230216-22-5knoam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510728/original/file-20230216-22-5knoam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510728/original/file-20230216-22-5knoam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510728/original/file-20230216-22-5knoam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510728/original/file-20230216-22-5knoam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sibling aggression is linked with poor mental health.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/sadness-and-depression-women-stressed-out-at-home-royalty-free-image/1299892261">globalmoments/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Long term effects</h2>
<p>Sibling aggression is linked to worse mental and physical health across the life span of the perpetrators and victims. Both experience higher rates of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2012-3801">depression</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260514539760">substance use</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1077559517751670">delinquency</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-013-9741-2">and</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2015.09.007">sleeplessness</a>. Additionally, data shows <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2012-3801">just one incident of victimization</a> at the hands of a sibling is linked to worse mental health in childhood and adolescence.</p>
<p>Experiences of sibling aggression also influence other relationships. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-013-9741-2">Parent-child relationships</a> can suffer. Some victims may become <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12486">estranged from their sibling and parents</a>. Additionally, sibling aggression and victimization behavior is often reflected in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-018-0021-1">peer</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/088626099014008005">and</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.5993/ajhb.28.s1.3">dating relationships</a>. </p>
<h2>Origins of sibling aggression and abuse</h2>
<p>The cause of sibling aggression can be rooted in family dynamics. Parents may model negative behaviors that are then repeated by children. </p>
<p>Our research found parental conflicts, violence and harsh parenting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000016">are all associated with</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000592">sibling victimization</a>. In another study, we showed family adversity – such as job loss, illness and death – was also associated with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000087">sibling aggression and abuse</a>. </p>
<p>Certain personality traits, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1348/026151009X479402">low empathy</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260514539763">and anger</a>, are also associated with being aggressive toward a sibling. </p>
<h2>Prevention and intervention</h2>
<p>Parents often want simply to stop the behavior and move on – or ignore it. However, this is a missed opportunity for teaching important social skills. To help children have positive relationships in their lives, parents should teach how to navigate conflicts in a healthy way.</p>
<p>When aggressive behavior occurs, parents should immediately interrupt it. Without taking sides, parents can help their children from a young age learn skills that lessen aggression, such as listening, seeing another person’s perspective, managing anger, negotiating and problem-solving. These important skills <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838015622438">reduce destructive conflict</a> and are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000833">associated with better mental health</a>. They also potentially stave off aggression in other kinds of relationships. </p>
<p>In cases of sibling abuse, teaching siblings conflict resolution skills is not appropriate. Engaging in mediation may further victimize the targeted child when there is a power imbalance and potential or actual serious harm present. Being <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sibling-Abuse-Trauma-Assessment-and-Intervention-Strategies-for-Children/Caffaro/p/book/9780415506861">victimized and abused is not a form of rivalry</a>; it requires the family to seek help from a mental or physical health professional. </p>
<p>Research shows it’s time to change the commonplace idea that aggressive sibling dynamics are harmless. Caregivers should take these behaviors as seriously as they do peer bullying or other forms of family violence. Addressing sibling aggression and abuse can improve children’s mental and physical well-being – as well as the quality of their relationships, both inside and outside the family.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Corinna Tucker receives funding from Louis and Anne Abrons Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanya Rouleau Whitworth works for the Sibling Aggression and Abuse Research and Advocacy Initiative (SAARA), which receives funding from the Louis and Anne Abrons Foundation.</span></em></p>All brothers and sisters have tensions or disagreements from time to time as they jockey for position in the family. But when one sibling victimizes another, there can be serious and ongoing harms.Corinna Jenkins Tucker, Senior Project Director, Sibling Aggression and Abuse Research and Advocacy Initiative (SAARA) at the Crimes Against Children Center, University of New HampshireTanya Rouleau Whitworth, Research Scientist at the Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New HampshireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1906092022-09-16T15:19:08Z2022-09-16T15:19:08ZWilliam and Harry reunite to mourn the Queen — here’s why the death of a family member can bring siblings together<p>Much has been made of supposed tensions between princes William and Harry over the last few years. But in the wake of the Queen’s death we have seen the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62866247">brothers come together</a> with their family, uniting to pay tribute to their grandmother and take part in official mourning activities.</p>
<p>Regardless of speculation about their relationship, it is typical for sibling bonds to be bolstered or rekindled at critical moments such as the death of a family member. Often our longest lasting relationships, sibling relationships are far from static. </p>
<p>Being one in a series of siblings is significant to who we are, though this role evolves throughout our lives. Hierarchies associated with birth order and age gaps can shift or <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-981-287-026-1_7">even flip entirely</a> as siblings weather illnesses, bereavements, parenthood, marriages, divorces, redundancies and so on.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526142177/">my new research</a>, I’ve analysed over 100 adults’ written reflections about their sibling relationships, commissioned and archived as part of the UK’s <a href="http://www.massobs.org.uk/about/mass-observation-project">Mass Observation Project</a>. My findings reveal how critical life moments, such as the death of a family member, often led to these relationships intensifying and improving. This was true even between siblings who had not been in regular contact or whose relationship had become strained.</p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/hope-from-despair-how-young-people-are-taking-action-to-make-things-better-184859?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Hope from despair: how young people are taking action to make things better</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-how-careful-do-i-still-need-to-be-around-older-and-vulnerable-family-members-187556?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">COVID: how careful do I still need to be around older and vulnerable family members?</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-gentle-parenting-an-expert-explains-184282?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">What is gentle parenting? An expert explains</a></em></p>
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<p>Many participants described coming together to care for ill parents and to sort out administrative logistics following their death. They were grateful that they did not have to bear these burdens alone. While William and Harry’s responsibilities certainly look quite different, the sight of them performing the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62864876">public face of mourning together</a> is a familiar one to many siblings.</p>
<p>It is not just the sharing of practical tasks that bring the significance of sibling relationships into sharp relief following a family death. Many participants wrote about reminiscing on shared childhood memories at this time, and a feeling of privileged knowledge about their family shared only with their sibling. </p>
<p>Siblings can be something of an “anchor” in these situations. They help one another feel grounded, and facilitate a sense of belonging in time as they age and their families change. </p>
<p>One 58-year-old man described how his relationship with his older brother and sister improved following the death of their parents. As children, his sister (ten years his senior) had irritated him by trying to “mother” him. He argued regularly with his brother as they struggled to share a cramped bedroom. Contact with his siblings decreased once they moved out of the family home but resumed as they supported their mother and made arrangements following the death of their father.</p>
<p>The writer had also recently lost his mother. With both his parents gone, his bond with his siblings, formed through shared childhood experiences of poverty, took on a renewed significance in his life. </p>
<p>Of course, William and Harry’s childhood experiences and adversities will have been quite different, and we have seen them come together to publicly mourn the death of their mother as children. The importance of shared childhood memories, whether happy or difficult, are often heightened following the death of a close family member. </p>
<h2>Coping without siblings</h2>
<p>Of course, siblings do not always come together at moments like this. Respondents who remained estranged from their sibling or who did not have siblings often felt the absence of this relationship more strongly following a family bereavement or illness. Many “only children” in their 20s, 30s and 40s described feelings of trepidation about future caring responsibilities, which they worried about shouldering alone. </p>
<p>One 48-year-old man wrote poignantly about his sister’s terminal cancer diagnosis, and the strangeness of realising that they would not grow old together. He would have to face the responsibilities and challenges of caring for ageing parents alone.</p>
<p>One writer in her 40s described the ways her relationship with her sister, who is five years younger, improved in adulthood. The irritations and injustices of their childhood faded and their age gap felt less significant, allowing them to become friends. </p>
<p>However, this writer expressed worries about the future of her relationship with her sister. She envisioned a “nightmare” time trying to negotiate caring responsibilities for their mother in her old age.</p>
<p>William and Harry are living their family bereavement on the world stage. In many ways, their caring responsibilities bear little resemblance to the financial and time pressures that many families experience at times of loss. However, sibling bonds are special. </p>
<p>Even where relationships are turbulent, having siblings can feel something like travelling through life with a convoy. They anchor us to our past, and the background sense of “being there for us” can be revived at key moments in life, like the death of a parent or grandparent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190609/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katherine Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sharing administrative tasks and reminiscing on family moments can bring siblings together during tough times.Katherine Davies, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1885322022-08-24T22:45:49Z2022-08-24T22:45:49ZDoes a sibling’s gender influence our own personality? A major new study answers an age-old question<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480678/original/file-20220823-632-lq8kfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C8%2C5590%2C3715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our siblings play a central role in our childhoods, so it stands to reason they influence our personality in the long term. In particular, researchers have long been interested in how growing up with a sister compared to a brother might influence who we become as adults. </p>
<p>How do children interact with their sister or brother? How do parents behave differently towards their children of different genders, and how does that interaction influence the children? </p>
<p>Past theories have made quite different predictions: siblings of the opposite gender may plausibly result in either <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2786054">gender-stereotypical personalities</a> (a girl may take on a more feminine role to differentiate herself from her brother) or <a href="https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512800807">less gender stereotypical personalities</a> (a girl may take on more masculine traits because she imitates her brother).</p>
<p>In fact, psychological research has been exploring these differences for over half a century. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.02.037">In some studies</a>, siblings of the opposite sex seemed to be more gender-conforming. Girls with brothers later become more “typically female” and boys with sisters more “typically male”.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030055">Other studies find the exact opposite</a>, however. Opposite gender siblings developed in typically gender-conforming ways. To resolve these contradictions, we wanted to test the effect of sibling gender on personality in a rigorous and comprehensive way.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480681/original/file-20220823-16-4ll79p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480681/original/file-20220823-16-4ll79p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480681/original/file-20220823-16-4ll79p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480681/original/file-20220823-16-4ll79p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480681/original/file-20220823-16-4ll79p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480681/original/file-20220823-16-4ll79p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480681/original/file-20220823-16-4ll79p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Like brother, like sister? Researchers have differed on the likely influence of an opposite gender sibling on personality.</span>
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<h2>Using big data</h2>
<p>In our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976221094630">new study</a> we focused on the relationships between children and their next older or younger sibling. We compiled a unique data set by combining 12 large representative surveys covering nine countries across four continents (US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, China and Indonesia).</p>
<p>This resulted in a data set of more than 85,000 people – many times the sample sizes used in previous studies.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/when-do-children-develop-their-gender-identity-56480">When do children develop their gender identity?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>We also investigated many more personality traits than previous studies have. This included the traits that have been most widely studied in other research, and which have been shown to be important predictors of people’s decisions and choices.</p>
<p>The “big five” of these traits are: openness to experiences, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The other traits examined were: risk tolerance, trust, patience and “locus of control” (the degree to which people believe they have control over their lives).</p>
<p>We also created an index describing to what extent people have a typically female personality. This allowed us to test comprehensively whether growing up with an opposite gender sibling leads to a more or less gender-stereotypical personality.</p>
<h2>Sibling gender and life experience</h2>
<p>This study is not only innovative in its use of a large data set, but it also applies a consistent method to identify any causal effects of a sibling’s gender on personality traits. </p>
<p>To estimate credible causal effects, we make use of an interesting fact of nature: once parents decide to have another child it is essentially random whether they have a girl or boy. In this “natural experiment” some people are therefore “randomly assigned” a younger sister or brother. </p>
<p>This allows us to estimate the causal effect of sibling gender on personality by comparing the average personality of people who grew up with a sister as their next youngest sibling with those who grew up with a next younger brother. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-your-squabbling-kids-driving-you-mad-the-good-bad-news-is-sibling-rivalry-is-developmentally-normal-186300">Are your squabbling kids driving you mad? The good/bad news is, sibling rivalry is 'developmentally normal'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Brothers and sisters</h2>
<p>Our results suggest sibling gender has no effect on personality. For all nine personality traits and the summary index, we find people who have a next younger sister display, on average, the same personality traits as people who have a next younger brother. </p>
<p>We also see no difference in personality between people who have a next older sister and people who have a next older brother. Because we have data on more than 85,000 people, these results are estimated with great precision.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/when-parents-play-favourites-what-happens-to-the-kids-110019">When parents play favourites, what happens to the kids?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The results help refute the idea that brothers or sisters cause each other to develop “feminine” or “masculine” personality traits over the long term.</p>
<p>However, the results don’t mean sibling gender has no long-term effect at all. Other studies that applied a similar methodological approach have shown that women with brothers in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2019.02.009">US</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-021-00830-9">Denmark</a> earn less. And a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjt011">study of Asian populations</a> has found women with younger sisters marry earlier and women with older sisters marry later. </p>
<p>So, there seem to be interesting sibling dynamics related to gender – but personality is probably not part of the explanation for those effects.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188532/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>During this research project, Thomas Dudek received funding from QuakeCoRE, a New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission-funded Centre. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Ardila Brenøe and Jan Feld do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Researchers have long differed on whether growing up with a sister or brother influences who we become as adults. New research using big data aims to finally settle the argument.Jan Feld, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonAnne Ardila Brenøe, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of ZurichThomas Dudek, Postdoctoral Researcher, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1863002022-07-06T19:56:10Z2022-07-06T19:56:10ZAre your squabbling kids driving you mad? The good/bad news is, sibling rivalry is ‘developmentally normal’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472663/original/file-20220705-20-pjq5jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C32%2C5447%2C3604&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As any parent will tell you, a common feature of the school holidays is an increase in squabbling kids. Whether in the back of the car, at the park or by the TV, you will hear the whingey sounds of “Muuuum, Ollie just called me a stupid head!”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"805888461680951296"}"></div></p>
<p>It is a popular idea that if you have multiple children they will have a playmate and life is easier for everyone in the family. </p>
<p>But this is not what the research says. While it is true the sibling relationship is often the longest most people will have, having another child <a href="https://theconversation.com/having-a-second-child-worsens-parents-mental-health-new-research-107806">increases</a> time-pressures and stress for parents. </p>
<p>And of course a new child introduces a new challenge – sibling rivalry.</p>
<h2>Sibling rivalry</h2>
<p>From an evolutionary point of view, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03949370.2014.880161?casa_token=ZfTfiYhEpNoAAAAA%3AfoPbGcnMky2pJnzRNbPwl3gaqC83_-cfL5sAAxe0BQItdTVm9RdvI7sABRP8idHx4WnZJbiREN3wJU4">sibling rivalry</a> is about competition for resources. Think of baby birds in a nest, squawking the loudest to receive their food. They can even kick competitor chicks to their death to increase their share of the bounty. </p>
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<p>Human sibling rivalry can also turn very nasty in extreme cases (you can read more about the severe end of the sibling bullying spectrum <a href="https://theconversation.com/nearly-30-of-kids-experience-sibling-bullying-as-either-bully-or-victim-118684">here</a>). But in an everyday sense, bickering among siblings is a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000992289103000510">developmentally normal expectation</a>. This allows children to work out differences among themselves, develop skills in negotiation, conflict resolution and emotional regulation. </p>
<p>When you look at it this way, squabbling can even be seen as a positive. Even if parents would prefer it didn’t happen under their roof so often.</p>
<p>The good news is you can help your children work through conflicts, and in doing so, increase their empathy. If school holiday or routine squabbling is stressing out your household, here are a few things to consider:</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nearly-30-of-kids-experience-sibling-bullying-as-either-bully-or-victim-118684">Nearly 30% of kids experience sibling bullying – as either bully or victim</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Are you playing favourites?</h2>
<p>Children will quickly pick up on any indication you may be playing favourites and may act out negatively to get your attention back to them.</p>
<p>Be honest with yourself – are you paying more attention to one child because they are more similar to you, or share your interests? If that’s the case, make an extra effort to be involved with all of your children equally.</p>
<h2>Kids need to do some growing up</h2>
<p>Children genuinely pass through different stages of development. </p>
<p>For example, a two-year-old can be quite narcissistic and may even hit, bite and scratch to get their way. Explaining firmly they are not allowed to do that to other people, and introducing the idea that their behaviour hurts others can help build empathy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Siblings with arms crossed, pulling faces." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472667/original/file-20220706-12-144k4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472667/original/file-20220706-12-144k4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472667/original/file-20220706-12-144k4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472667/original/file-20220706-12-144k4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472667/original/file-20220706-12-144k4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472667/original/file-20220706-12-144k4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472667/original/file-20220706-12-144k4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Developmental stages can have an impact on sibling squabbles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p>Children also take until they are about four to develop a “<a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/theory-of-mind-4176826#">Theory of Mind</a>”
or the capacity to understand issues from another’s perspective. So, it is important to take time to explain why their sibling is upset with them and ways in which they could resolve this conflict. </p>
<h2>Is there a big age gap?</h2>
<p>If your children have a larger age gap, consider just how different their interests and developmental capacity truly might be. </p>
<p>Asking a teenage child to “hang out” (or in reality, babysit) a younger sibling and thinking this will foster a friendship between them may be unfair and lead to tensions. </p>
<p>You also need to explain to younger children why a teenage sibling is allowed to do x, y and z but they can’t (or else this will seem unfair and possibly lead to resentment). </p>
<h2>Are the siblings very different?</h2>
<p>Also consider that people can be genuinely differ in terms of personality or temperament. For some siblings, trying to live with someone who is so fundamentally different to them (and they would never willingly choose as a friend) is a real challenge. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gallaghers-the-stefanovics-and-the-rineharts-whats-behind-sibling-rivalries-37222">The Gallaghers, the Stefanovics and the Rineharts: what's behind sibling rivalries?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Occasionally a highly introverted family finds themselves with a tap-dancing, attention-seeking extrovert, whom they find reckless and exhausting. Similarly, a rowdy hyperactive mob gets thrown a nerdy introvert who they find boring and weird. </p>
<p>Sometimes you just need to accept that your kids aren’t going to grow up to be best buddies, they are too different, and that’s OK.</p>
<h2>Have a plan</h2>
<p>When kids are thrown together for longer periods than usual, have a plan. </p>
<p>Try to arrange activities that are fun for the whole family, as well as some things they can do on their own if they need a break from one another. This may include arts or craft, gardening, practising sports skills, or visiting friends and family. </p>
<h2>Support kids to talk</h2>
<p>When conflicts arise, you really can help children by supporting them to express themselves and say why they’re upset, then have a balanced discussion about what might be a reasonable solution. </p>
<p>Discuss why conflict might be occurring - perhaps they have differences in temperament, interests and age-related abilities. This will really help kids of all ages build social understanding. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1544034035139284993"}"></div></p>
<p>If you’re dealing with highly emotional or aggressive behaviour, resist the urge to launch into a big negotiation straight away. Keep kids separate for a bit and engaged in a calming activity such as reading, Lego or outdoor play. </p>
<p>Once the dust has settled, then you can come back and talk about it calmly. </p>
<h2>The squabble silver lining</h2>
<p>Sibling rivalry and squabbling are common. But they can be made worse by parents stretching themselves too thin, not paying attention to their kids, or playing favourites.</p>
<p>Similarly, rivalries can be inflamed by genuine incompatibilities between children and developmental differences. </p>
<p>Try to remember this is your kids’ first go of figuring out how to get along with others. Squabbling is annoying but it is also an opportunity to teach them empathy and social skills that will benefit them outside the family as well as within.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186300/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Sharman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A psychology researcher explains, squabbling is a child’s first go at figuring out how to get along with others. So, it is possible to see it as a positive.Rachael Sharman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of the Sunshine CoastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1657812021-12-20T13:15:38Z2021-12-20T13:15:38ZFamily rifts affect millions of Americans – research shows possible paths from estrangement toward reconciliation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437322/original/file-20211213-21-ma2md3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C0%2C7293%2C4308&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Early research suggests that nearly 1 in 5 Americans, about 68 million people, are in the midst of a family estrangement.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/man-and-woman-walking-on-different-directions-royalty-free-image/1219697052?adppopup=true">baona/iStock/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Family relationships are on many people’s minds during the holiday season as sounds and images of happy family celebrations dominate the media. Anyone whose <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-deal-with-difficult-family-holidays/">experiences don’t live up to the holiday hype</a> may find this difficult or disappointing, but those feelings may be felt even more acutely among those involved in family rifts. </p>
<p>I have done <a href="https://www.human.cornell.edu/people/kap6">a significant amount of research</a> on ambivalence and conflict in families, which led to a five-year study of family estrangements. </p>
<p>At the outset, I was surprised at how little evidence-based guidance exists on the frequency, causes and consequences of family estrangement, or how those involved cope with the stress of family rifts. There are few studies published in academic journals on the topic, as well as limited clinical literature. I sought to fill these gaps through a series of interrelated studies and have presented and described my findings in my 2020 book “<a href="https://www.karlpillemer.com/books/fault-lines/">Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them</a>.”</p>
<p>My findings suggest that estrangement is widespread and that there are several common pathways people take on the way to a family rift. Also, people who decide to try to close such a rift have discovered a number of different routes for getting to reconciliation.</p>
<h2>Anyone can experience a family rift</h2>
<p>To get an idea of how much estrangement is going on, in 2019 I conducted a <a href="https://www.karlpillemer.com/books/fault-lines/">national survey</a> that asked the question: “Do you have any family members (i.e., parents, grandparents, siblings, children, uncles, aunts, cousins or other relatives) from whom you are currently estranged, meaning you have no contact with the family member at the present time?” </p>
<p>The survey involved a nationally representative sample of 1,340 Americans aged 18 and older whose demographics closely mirrored the United States population. </p>
<p>The data from this survey revealed no statistically significant differences in estrangement according to a number of factors, including race, marital status, gender, educational level and region where the respondent lived. This finding suggests that that estrangement is relatively evenly distributed in the population. </p>
<p>Over a quarter of the respondents – 27% – reported a current estrangement. Most had a rift with an immediate family member: 24% were estranged from a parent, 14% from a child and 30% from siblings. The remainder were estranged from other relatives. </p>
<p>There have yet to be any longitudinal studies on family rifts – studies that repeatedly survey participants with the same questions over time. So we do not know if estrangement is increasing or decreasing. </p>
<p>The sheer numbers, however, are striking. Extrapolating the <a href="https://www.karlpillemer.com/books/fault-lines/">national survey responses</a> to the entire U.S. adult population suggests that around 68 million people have at least one current estrangement.</p>
<h2>Pathways to estrangement</h2>
<p>Between 2016 and 2020 my research team conducted 270 in-depth interviews with individuals who experienced estrangements, around 100 of whom had reconciled. </p>
<p>The findings of this study, which are <a href="https://www.karlpillemer.com/books/fault-lines/">included in my book</a>, reveal that there are multiple “pathways” to estrangement: diverse trajectories toward family rifts that unfold across people’s lives. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>The long arm of the past. The groundwork for a family estrangement can be established early in life, through disruptions and difficulties that occur while growing up. Harsh parenting, emotional or physical abuse or neglect, parental favoritism and sibling conflict can impair relationships decades into the future. </p></li>
<li><p>The legacy of divorce. One frequent estrangement scenario involves the long-term effects of divorce in the lives of adult children. Loss of contact with one parent, or hostility between the former partners, can weaken parent-child bonds. </p></li>
<li><p>The problematic in-law. <a href="https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/commstudiespapers/68">In-law relations can be challenging</a> under ordinary circumstances. But when the struggles between family of origin and family of marriage become intolerable, they can reach a breaking point.</p></li>
<li><p>Money and inheritance. Conflicts over wills, inheritance and financial issues are a major source of family rifts.</p></li>
<li><p>Values and lifestyle differences: <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fjomf.12207">Disapproval of a relative’s core values</a> can turn into outright rejection.</p></li>
<li><p>Unmet expectations: Estrangement can result when relatives violate norms for what others believe is proper behavior.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>What about reconciliation?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.karlpillemer.com/books/fault-lines/">This study</a> was the first in the field to focus intensively on individuals who had successfully reconciled after years or decades of estrangement. </p>
<p>By carefully analyzing their detailed accounts, my research team identified a number of strategies and approaches that worked for them: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Focus on the present. Many interviewees reported that the history of the estranged relationship was inseparably interwoven with present circumstances. In some family rifts, the past almost entirely overwhelmed the present moment. As a result, many people interpreted relatives’ present actions as signs or symptoms of underlying, decades-old pathologies. Nearly all who successfully reconciled reported that one key step was giving up attempts to force their interpretation of past events on the other person. They abandoned efforts to process the past and instead focused on the relationship’s present and future.</p></li>
<li><p>Revise expectations. Often respondents said that family values held them back from reconciling, because the other person had violated their standards for proper family life. Reconciliation involved modifying or dropping past expectations and abandoning the urge to force the relative to change. </p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man and a woman converse in front of bookshelves." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437327/original/file-20211213-31407-2j62ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437327/original/file-20211213-31407-2j62ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437327/original/file-20211213-31407-2j62ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437327/original/file-20211213-31407-2j62ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437327/original/file-20211213-31407-2j62ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437327/original/file-20211213-31407-2j62ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437327/original/file-20211213-31407-2j62ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many people interviewed in a research study on estrangement said that focusing on the relationship’s present, rather than continuing to try to understand its past, was a key step toward mending the family rift.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/man-and-woman-walking-on-different-directions-royalty-free-image/1219697052?adppopup=true">Cecilie_Arcurs/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li>Create clear boundaries. Interviewees reported that making the terms of the reconciliation as unambiguous as possible was key to moving beyond old grievances and patterns of behavior. Even people who had severed ties because of intolerable behaviors were able to create clear, specific, take-it-or-leave-it conditions for one final try to repair the relationship.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Whether or not to reconcile</h2>
<p>Whether to attempt a reconciliation is a complicated decision. Some family situations involve damaging behavior, a history of abuse or currently dangerous individuals. People experiencing these extreme situations may find that cutting off contact is the only solution, and a critical one for their safety and psychological well-being. </p>
<p>Many interviewees in challenging situations like these reported that working with a counseling professional helped them answer the question, “Am I ready to reconcile?” In some cases, the answer was “no.”</p>
<p>[<em>Too busy to read another daily email?</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-toobusy">Get one of The Conversation’s curated weekly newsletters</a>.]</p>
<p>One positive finding of my research is that those who reconciled their rift found it to be an engine for personal growth. Reengaging with the family – after careful consideration and preparation – was almost never regretted. </p>
<p>However, it was a highly individual decision and not for everyone. </p>
<h2>A need for knowledge</h2>
<p>There are still gaps to fill in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12216">basic research on how and why family rifts</a> and reconciliations occur. Further, there is no evidence-based therapy or treatment for individuals coping with or trying to resolve estrangements. Therefore, intervention research is critically needed.</p>
<p>Expanding research and clinical insight on this widespread problem may help pave the way to solutions that will help not just at the holidays, but over the course of the entire year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karl Pillemer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A researcher who studied family estrangement identifies the main reasons behind it and how people can find a path to reconcile and heal family rifts.Karl Pillemer, Hazel E. Reed Human Development Professor and Professor of Gerontology in Medicine, Cornell UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1262152020-02-07T14:34:51Z2020-02-07T14:34:51ZAre firstborns really natural leaders?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305450/original/file-20191205-38988-1hl1eat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=604%2C93%2C4145%2C2411&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/581286055?src=ab7796b7-687c-4362-81d1-21b270366613-1-0&size=huge_jpg">Dmitry Naumov/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Everybody knows that firstborns are natural leaders, middle children are rebels and the baby of the family is spoiled yet confident. At least, that’s what received wisdom tells us. But is any of it true? And where did this idea come from in the first place?</p>
<p>In the 1930s the Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler was the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jason_Kaufman3/publication/282442353_The_Role_of_Birth_Order_in_Personality_An_Enduring_Intellectual_Legacy_of_Alfred_Adler/links/56a10ebb08ae24f62701e979/The-Role-of-Birth-Order-in-Personality-An-Enduring-Intellectual-Legacy-of-Alfred-Adler.pdf">first to study birth order</a> and its effect on personality. He believed that “every difficulty of development is caused by rivalry and lack of cooperation in the family”. </p>
<p>According to Adler, an only child never has to compete for their parents’ attention and is never “replaced” by other siblings. Similarly, the oldest child receives most of the parents’ attention and is likely to feel responsible towards their younger siblings, which is reflected in their perfectionism, hard-working attitude and conscientiousness. </p>
<p>A second-born child is constantly competing with their older sibling and trying to catch up with them. Middle children are caught between their older and younger siblings, who may often leave them out or gang-up on them. As a result, the middle child may become easily angered and sensitive to criticism. </p>
<p>The youngest child is often the most pampered in the family. They depend on their family more than any other siblings and may demand that everything is done for them. In the opposite case, they may feel unwanted, disliked or even ignored.</p>
<p>Adding a child to the family has an impact on how a family operates. But Adler suggested that other factors play a role, too, such as family size, health, age, culture or the child’s sex. </p>
<p>Adler’s theories continue to hold sway and birth order is still an important area of study in psychology. And the role of firstborn holds a particular fascination. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313293/original/file-20200203-41507-1ghyf1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313293/original/file-20200203-41507-1ghyf1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313293/original/file-20200203-41507-1ghyf1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313293/original/file-20200203-41507-1ghyf1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313293/original/file-20200203-41507-1ghyf1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313293/original/file-20200203-41507-1ghyf1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313293/original/file-20200203-41507-1ghyf1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bill Clinton is a firstborn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/governor-bill-clinton-addresses-denver-campaign-107340785">Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The firstborn effect</h2>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w23393">recent Swedish study</a>, firstborns have more favourable personality traits, including openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, extroversion, friendliness and greater emotional stability, than their later-born siblings. As a result, they are more likely to become chief executives and senior managers, whereas later-born children, who love to take risks, often end up being self-employed. </p>
<p>Firstborns tend to possess psychological characteristics related to leadership, including responsibility, creativity, obedience and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886905003314">dominance</a>. They are also more likely to have higher academic abilities and levels of intelligence than their younger siblings. These qualities are believed to make firstborns more successful. But the “baby” of the family is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224540009600502">more likely</a> to take risks, rebel, show addictive behaviour and lack independence compared with their older siblings. </p>
<p>There are two explanations that could justify this firstborn effect. From the evolutionary perspective, parents favour and invest (shelter and food) in their firstborn to increase their chances of survival and reproduction. But this comes at a cost because the parent is now unable to invest the same amount of resources in later-born offspring.</p>
<p>Younger siblings then have to compete for these limited parental resources and attention. (So parents who spend less time helping their later-born children with schoolwork may do so because of the lack of spare resources.)</p>
<p>But children who are born last often receive preferential treatment. This is because parents now have the last chance to invest their resources. They are also older and tend to have more money at this point. Parents are more likely to invest in the education <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313072471_Birth_Order_and_Parental_Investment">of their latest-born offspring</a>. </p>
<p>Parental expectations could also explain the more favourable personality traits among firstborns. That is, parents tend to be stricter in their parenting with the firstborn. Parents also encourage toughness because firstborns need to act as role models (and surrogate parent) for their later-born siblings and defend the values of the parents. </p>
<p>Firstborns must keep their “first” position and never fall behind the younger sibling. The rivalry and conflict between firstborn and later-born offspring is the result of the younger sibling’s need to establish their position in the family. Although they try to race and copy the role of their older firstborn sibling, this privileged position is already taken. Laterborns must also differentiate themselves to attract parental resources, which could explain their rebellious behaviour. </p>
<h2>Mixed evidence</h2>
<p>These explanations are sound, but the evidence to support the link between personality traits and birth order is mixed. Some studies show a strong association between <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886913012142">leadership abilities and birth order</a>, but others <a href="https://articlegateway.com/index.php/JOP/article/view/1094">do not support these findings</a>. </p>
<p>The inconsistencies in findings may stem from factors that are sometimes neglected, such as the sex of the siblings. The firstborn effect (and the chances of becoming a chief executive) is weaker in the case of later-born males with older brothers as opposed to those who have <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/0162-895X.00343">older sisters</a>.</p>
<p>Age gap spacing also needs to be taken into account because larger age gaps between siblings result in a more nurturing surrogate parent role of the older sibling and reduces the <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203837962">rivalry conflict between the siblings</a>. </p>
<p>The fertility age of the mother could also sway the personality outcomes because mothers who have later-born children are older than when they had their firstborn and many studies don’t control for this factor.</p>
<p>It appears that the psychological profiles of firstborns may have been over-generalised.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126215/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Klara Sabolova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Here’s what psychological studies have discovered about birth order.Klara Sabolova, Lecturer in Psychology, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1214352019-09-16T20:38:52Z2019-09-16T20:38:52ZCurious Kids: why are some twins identical and some not?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286866/original/file-20190805-117871-cfa7xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C0%2C6500%2C4320&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Identical twins look the same, are the same sex, share the same birthday and shares the same genes. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.shutterstock.com%2Fgatekeeper%2FW3siZSI6MTU2NTAwNDA1NiwiYyI6Il9waG90b19zZXNzaW9uX2lkIiwiZGMiOiJpZGxfNzUwOTcwMDU3IiwiayI6InBob3RvLzc1MDk3MDA1Ny9odWdlLmpwZyIsIm0iOjEsImQiOiJzaHV0dGVyc3RvY2stbWVkaWEifSwiaVFIeGdBL2NPMkQrVG0wSm9RNW9xZTBHQkJnIl0%2Fshutterstock_750970057.jpg&pi=41133566&m=750970057&src=fi5P8G5angPStHSzIyE-Ig-1-8">www.shuttershock.com </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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</figure>
<p><em>If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au.</em> </p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Why are some twins identical and some not? - Chloe, age 12, Australia</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>We have spent many years explaining how genes work to people who would like to have children, so we’re happy to answer this excellent question.</p>
<p>There are two types of twins: fraternal and identical.</p>
<p>Fraternal twins may be born on the same day but are not genetically the same. They look different, have different genes and may be of the same sex or the opposite sex. </p>
<p>Identical twins, on the other hand, look the same, share the same birthday and share the same genes. They are the same sex, meaning they will both be girls or they will both be boys.</p>
<p>To understand why, we need to look at what happens at the time a pregnancy starts. We call the start of a pregnancy the time of conception. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-people-grow-to-certain-sizes-105131">Curious Kids: Why do people grow to certain sizes?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What happens when a woman becomes pregnant?</h2>
<p>Most women produce one egg each month. Each time a man and woman have sex, the man produces thousands of sperm. If the man and woman have sex and do not use contraception (for example a condom, IUD or the Pill), there is a chance that a sperm will fertilise the egg and the woman will become pregnant. </p>
<p>Most of the time, a single egg is fertilised, and goes on to develop into a single baby. If the egg is not fertilised, the woman will soon have her period, which is the way a woman’s body prepares itself for a new egg to be fertilised the next month.</p>
<p>We call a fertilised egg a “zygote”. This is a good word to remember, as we use it to help us understand the different ways identical twins develop during pregnancy (and knowing a word like zygote might impress your science teacher one day). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286867/original/file-20190805-117866-1r3rlpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286867/original/file-20190805-117866-1r3rlpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286867/original/file-20190805-117866-1r3rlpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286867/original/file-20190805-117866-1r3rlpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286867/original/file-20190805-117866-1r3rlpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286867/original/file-20190805-117866-1r3rlpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286867/original/file-20190805-117866-1r3rlpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286867/original/file-20190805-117866-1r3rlpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Identical twins have come from a single egg and a single sperm, so they share the same genes as each other.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzledfrog/134646915/">Heather/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How do identical twins happen?</h2>
<p>As you may know, genes are the instructions that tell our bodies how to develop and grow. They are like a recipe for creating each of us as unique individuals. </p>
<p>We have two copies of each of our genes: one from our biological mother and one from our biological father. That’s why we look like both our mother and our father.</p>
<p>Identical twins happen when a zygote splits into two in the first few days after conception. They have come from a single egg and a single sperm, so they share the same genes as each other. The reason the zygote splits is thought to be inherited, which may be why some families have a few sets of identical twins.</p>
<p>Because identical twins come from a single zygote that splits in two, they have exactly the same genes – exactly the same recipe. They will both have the same coloured eyes and hair, and will look the same. Identical twins are always the same sex too – they will both be girls or they will both be boys. </p>
<h2>How do non-identical twins happen?</h2>
<p>Identical twins are also called monozygous twins. This just means that they have come from the same, single zygote (mono means “one”). Non-identical twins are sometimes called dizygous twins (di means “two”, so dizygous means two zygotes). </p>
<p>Earlier on, we said that most women produce one egg each month. Occasionally, a women will produce more than one egg in a month. Non-identical twins happen when a woman produces two eggs (in the same month) and both eggs are fertilised by two different sperm. </p>
<p>Unlike identical twins, non-identical twins do not share the same genes as each other. They grow together and share the same birthday, but they are only as related as any other brothers and sisters. Non-identical twins could both be girls, or both be boys, or could be one girl and one boy twin.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291661/original/file-20190910-109915-1gas6pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291661/original/file-20190910-109915-1gas6pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291661/original/file-20190910-109915-1gas6pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291661/original/file-20190910-109915-1gas6pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291661/original/file-20190910-109915-1gas6pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291661/original/file-20190910-109915-1gas6pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291661/original/file-20190910-109915-1gas6pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291661/original/file-20190910-109915-1gas6pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Identical twins come from a single zygote that splits in two. Non-identical twins happen when a woman produces two eggs (in the same month) and both eggs are fertilised by two different sperm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Interestingly, there are more non-identical twins in Australia now than there have been before. The number of twin pregnancies has grown over the past 30 years. This might be partly because women in countries like Australia are having children when they are older and the chance of a twin pregnancy increases as women get older (as they are more likely to produce more than one egg in the same month). </p>
<p>The chance of a twin pregnancy is also higher if a couple uses assisted reproductive technology to help them to become pregnant. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-do-babies-learn-to-talk-111613">Curious Kids: how do babies learn to talk?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison McEwen is the vice president of the Human Genetics Society of Australasia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Jacobs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Interestingly, there are more non-identical twins in Australia now than there have been before. The number of twin pregnancies has grown over the past 30 years.Alison McEwen, Head of Discipline of Genetic Counselling, Graduate School of Health, University of Technology SydneyChris Jacobs, Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Health, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1018472018-09-26T05:12:00Z2018-09-26T05:12:00ZGone but never forgotten: how to comfort a child whose sibling has died<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237394/original/file-20180921-129862-fhj12v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children not only lose their sibling, their parents can also disappear into profound grief.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/qm6YjzFNeo8">Kylo/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1971, when I was four years old, my brother died of a congenital heart condition. Writing about this experience has prompted more responses than anything else I’ve ever written or spoken about. Untold and unheard stories appear in comments sections, strangers tell me cross-culturally consistent tales in the soft corners of conference rooms and speak about the siblings they’ve lost and how present the memories of them still are in their minds and hearts. </p>
<p>These stories all have one thing in common: a sense of being forgotten, left out of conversations about the dead, of rituals of mourning, and excluded from the respectful circle that is drawn around the bereaved. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/death-and-families-when-normal-grief-can-last-a-lifetime-32959">Death and families – when 'normal' grief can last a lifetime</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>One of the reasons stories of sibling loss spark so much interest is that the research literature in the area is so sparse. We still know so little about what children who’ve lived through this kind of death need as they mourn. </p>
<p>While <a href="https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/12/1247/3793083">the quantitative literature</a> has explored the profound negative lifelong physical and psychological health impacts of this kind of bereavement, so many social and familial factors contribute to these impairments that it’s hard to imagine how the figures would look if families and communities were better equipped to respond to grieving children. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237399/original/file-20180921-129877-13ctsya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237399/original/file-20180921-129877-13ctsya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237399/original/file-20180921-129877-13ctsya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237399/original/file-20180921-129877-13ctsya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237399/original/file-20180921-129877-13ctsya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237399/original/file-20180921-129877-13ctsya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237399/original/file-20180921-129877-13ctsya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children don’t forget about their lost siblings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/oWDRVgk04EA?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Janko Ferlič</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Part of the picture of sibling loss is that it is compounded. Children not only lose their sibling, but also the parents they knew disappear at least for a time into profound grief. This can lead to the loss of the child’s position as they try to cope with the higher expectations on their shoulders. </p>
<p>Adding to this complexity, the small body of qualitative research into children’s experience of losing a sibling highlights a raft of social failures. Silence about the mechanics of death, family isolation and the persistent myth across many cultures that children bounce back from grief more easily than adults are some of the most salient. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/singing-death-why-music-and-grief-go-hand-in-hand-81679">Singing death: why music and grief go hand in hand</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26669875">this literature</a>, grieving children tell us about what they wanted and didn’t get, and reading it provides some guidance on how to support bereaved siblings for anyone willing to listen. The following short list of suggestions is drawn directly from this qualitative literature.</p>
<h2>Make genuine room for children in discussions</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28541834">evidence is very strong</a> that grieving children of all ages need to be involved at every level in discussions about death and in the planning and performing of death rituals.</p>
<p>But, if we’re going to make room for them, we have to get across our own death material and be prepared to answer painful, graphic and profound existential questions about death and dying, such as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can you show me what a decomposing body looks like? Why are we going to burn my sister in her coffin? When will you die? And how? When will I die? Why do some people die while others keep on living? Why my brother and not someone else? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>To tell the truths about death to children and to really include them in family and community meaning-making is to expose our culture’s myths of death and dying, whatever they are, to profound criticism and scrutiny. That is what we are being asked to do.</p>
<h2>Accept that children’s grief is no different to ours</h2>
<p>Sibling bereavement <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317374442">researcher Betty Davies’s participants</a> spoke to her again and again about their need for the lifelong persistence of their grief to be understood. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237398/original/file-20180921-129865-hmicis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237398/original/file-20180921-129865-hmicis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237398/original/file-20180921-129865-hmicis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237398/original/file-20180921-129865-hmicis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237398/original/file-20180921-129865-hmicis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237398/original/file-20180921-129865-hmicis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237398/original/file-20180921-129865-hmicis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You never stop grieving the loss of a sibling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/KQCXf_zvdaU">Jordan Whitt</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They spoke of wanting the adults in their lives to accept that their grief is no different to ours, that they are never too young to feel loss and that just because they are children doesn’t make them any more resilient than grown-ups. </p>
<p>They are asking us to challenge the almost universal myth that children forget, and instead to stand with them in their bereavement rather than setting them apart to take solace in their imagined innocence.</p>
<h2>Honour continuing bonds with the dead</h2>
<p>Our siblings play a significant role in our development, and this helps to explain some of the reasons why we are so deeply impacted when a sibling dies. </p>
<p>We develop our self in relationship to others, and our siblings are a kind of mirror. When they die, we lose a relationship that provided an essential reflection of who we are and who we might become. Children whose sibling has died need to have a place for their ongoing thoughts, feelings and connection to the dead throughout their lives.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/grief-rituals-what-australia-can-learn-from-the-day-of-the-dead-86047">Grief rituals: what Australia can learn from the Day of the Dead</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For children who never knew their dead sibling, this <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07481187.2017.1287137">affirmation of their connection</a> to the lost one has a different quality but is no less important. While for these children the links are not made up of memories of a relationship, they are important symbolic representations of the self through the lens of the grief that came before. </p>
<p>For both groups of children, those who knew their dead sibling and those who did not, stories about the lost child help to make sense of who they are and of their place in the world. </p>
<p>We can all play a part in making space for children whose sibling has died to bear the unbearable – by offering solace in the form of genuine inclusion and by breaking the silence that can turn pain into suffering. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Zoë Krupka is the author of Holding hands in the dark: Unburdening a child whose sibling has died, a chapter in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326316478_Holding_hands_in_the_dark_Unburdening_a_child_whose_sibling_has_died">Brothers and Sisters Coping with Loss and Grief</a>, published in 2018 by Interactive Publications.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101847/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoë Krupka does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s important to make genuine room for children in discussions about death, ritual planning and meaning-making.Zoë Krupka, PhD Student, Faculty of Health Sciences, Lecturer, The Cairnmillar Institute, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/907552018-02-20T05:05:36Z2018-02-20T05:05:36ZNew research shows siblings can make you more empathic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206634/original/file-20180215-131029-de5c6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New research shows that both younger and older siblings uniquely contribute to each others’ empathy development. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For decades, researchers have demonstrated the numerous ways in which parents can positively influence their children’s development. This includes <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197104000600">how confident they are</a>, how <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-005-3950-1">well they do in school</a> and how they <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0035736">interact with their friends</a></p>
<p>Far less attention has focused on the impact of children’s relationships with their brothers and sisters, despite the fact that most people grow up with at least one sibling and they tend to spend more time with one another than with <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10567-011-0104-5">parents or friends</a>. </p>
<p>Our research at the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto shows that siblings, like parents, can have a dramatic impact on one another’s development. We’ve found, for example, that warmth and support from an older sibling can help boost the younger sibling’s <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/133/2/e394.short">language development</a> and their <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-12257-001">understanding of others’ minds and points of view</a>. </p>
<p>In a new paper, published today in the journal <em>Child Development</em>, we show that siblings can also play a role in the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13015/full">development of empathy</a>. </p>
<p>We found that children who are kind, supportive and understanding influence their siblings to act and behave in similar ways. And if one sibling is struggling to be empathic but has a sibling with strong empathy skills, they manage to become more empathic over time. </p>
<h2>Studying sibling empathy</h2>
<p>A child who demonstrates strong empathy skills is able to show feelings of care and concern for others in need. </p>
<p>Learning to be empathic early in development can set in motion lifelong strengths in <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12632/abstract">treating others with kindness, respect and understanding</a>. Empathic children become empathic friends, spouses and parents. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206638/original/file-20180215-131021-kl7pix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206638/original/file-20180215-131021-kl7pix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206638/original/file-20180215-131021-kl7pix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206638/original/file-20180215-131021-kl7pix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206638/original/file-20180215-131021-kl7pix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206638/original/file-20180215-131021-kl7pix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206638/original/file-20180215-131021-kl7pix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Unsplash/Aman Shrivastava)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the research context, we study empathy by observing how young children respond to an adult who pretends to be upset when they broke a cherished object, hit their knee or caught their finger in a briefcase. </p>
<p>We are interested in how empathy skills grow over time and whether one sibling’s empathy influences the other sibling’s growth in empathy. </p>
<p>What’s important in this newly published research is that we were able to remove the influence of parents so we can attribute growth in a child’s empathy skills directly to their sibling (and not their parents). </p>
<h2>Younger siblings have influence too</h2>
<p>We commonly think of older siblings as having a greater impact on their younger siblings than vice-versa: Older brothers and sisters are more experienced and knowledgeable. </p>
<p>However, we’ve found in our research that both younger and older siblings uniquely contribute to each others’ empathy development. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206639/original/file-20180215-131024-1xgbpmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206639/original/file-20180215-131024-1xgbpmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206639/original/file-20180215-131024-1xgbpmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206639/original/file-20180215-131024-1xgbpmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206639/original/file-20180215-131024-1xgbpmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206639/original/file-20180215-131024-1xgbpmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206639/original/file-20180215-131024-1xgbpmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Unsplash/ Tim Gouw)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Older siblings can be role models to the younger siblings, and vice versa —younger siblings with strong empathy skills can be role models to their older siblings. </p>
<p>As long as one sibling is empathic, the other one benefits. </p>
<p>What about age differences? Does it matter if one sibling is much older than the other? </p>
<p>All siblings in our study were within a maximum of four years of one another in age. But we did find that in families where siblings were further apart in age, older brothers and sisters had a stronger influence on their younger siblings. </p>
<p>So, the bigger the age gap, the better older siblings are at modeling empathic behaviours. </p>
<p>We also found that younger brothers did not significantly influence their older sisters.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206640/original/file-20180215-131006-jrw6lb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206640/original/file-20180215-131006-jrw6lb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206640/original/file-20180215-131006-jrw6lb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206640/original/file-20180215-131006-jrw6lb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206640/original/file-20180215-131006-jrw6lb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206640/original/file-20180215-131006-jrw6lb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206640/original/file-20180215-131006-jrw6lb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Unsplash/eye for ebony)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>It’s not just parents who influence how well children develop. Siblings do too. And sibling relationships are not just about rivalry, animosity, jealousy and competition for parental attention. </p>
<p>Child development is a family affair.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90755/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheri Madigan receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Research Chairs program, and the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Jenkins receives funding from Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Atkinson Charitable Foundation, Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation, Lawson Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Jambon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research shows that children who are kind, supportive and understanding influence their siblings to act and behave in similar ways.Sheri Madigan, Assistant Professor, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development, Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, University of CalgaryJennifer Jenkins, Atkinson Chair of Early Child Development and Education and Director of the Atkinson Centre, University of TorontoMarc Jambon, Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/734162017-02-23T11:23:33Z2017-02-23T11:23:33ZHow genetics can uncover links in chronic pain and other conditions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157877/original/image-20170222-1316-zf19do.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chronic pain can be disabling.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/backache-young-afroamerican-man-shirt-tie-223835530?src=ImckOuTyC1wrizxWO8l-9w-2-3">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the recent <a href="http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60692-4/fulltext">Global Burden of Disease</a> study, four of the top ten causes of disability worldwide were chronic pain conditions. Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts beyond normal healing time – usually three months – and is one of the most common global causes of incapacity. It rarely occurs by itself, however, and is one of the <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60240-2/abstract">most common conditions to present itself alongside other chronic conditions</a>, such as diabetes and <a href="https://www.blf.org.uk/support-for-you/copd">COPD</a>. This increases the overall burden of disability, and the impact of each chronic condition. </p>
<p>The exact reason why some people suffer from several chronic diseases and others don’t, is not well understood. However, <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0170653">we have discovered</a> that genetics could partially explain this. </p>
<p>Two of the most common disorders which occur alongside chronic pain are depression and angina. There is already <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60240-2/abstract">evidence of shared socio-demographic risk factors</a> for all of these conditions, particularly older age and social deprivation, as well as lifestyle factors. However these do not explain all of the shared risk.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157894/original/image-20170222-1344-cn1ljg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157894/original/image-20170222-1344-cn1ljg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157894/original/image-20170222-1344-cn1ljg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157894/original/image-20170222-1344-cn1ljg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157894/original/image-20170222-1344-cn1ljg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157894/original/image-20170222-1344-cn1ljg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157894/original/image-20170222-1344-cn1ljg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chronic pain can often bring other issues with it, like depression.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/88786104@N08/8674053127/in/photolist-JjtjnJ-gTTyUH-gTRXiL-gTSdGn-eduMN8-gTScLJ-5LxUE-FE7JK-nhRkoY-8TZBhu-8jS8Ha-gTRXRS-AjQ3u-iNzFk-8eqcL6-7W5wfz-cVppZU-Qp2K-9bCsqs-9ZycEo-5uWyBF-4P5vg1-BVeth3-jsZp4A-4ai2Sq-fonJi5-5cVPQG-4xbsmp-cVqwsb-6bPTwP-gPST7H-2EAepd-ankD3Q-QM734g-HdEYX-biT4qv-aAMm7n-ogYUKT-pcL8eC-7ir23q-a3xacY-dFGJXK-j9HbdW-67c7JC-ruvs6n-q6Sz2A-mZft3a-ofGjiD-cVprbU-2fCJPR">mattwalker69/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In order to investigate a risk within families and a genetic explanation for chronic disease, we examined two major groups, for the co-occurrence of chronic pain, depression and heart disease in individuals and their siblings. </p>
<h2>Family links</h2>
<p>Data from <a href="http://www.ed.ac.uk/generation-scotland/about">Generation Scotland</a> included 24,000 individuals, recruited in family groups, with data on multiple chronic illnesses, socio-demographic and psychological factors, and blood from which DNA was genetically analysed. When the data was collected, 18% of participants reported chronic pain, 13% had a history of major depressive disorder and 10% had angina. </p>
<p>We looked at the existence of two or three of these conditions in individuals and we found that people with depression were two and a half times more likely to experience chronic pain; while people with both depression and heart disease were nine times more likely to experience chronic pain. It is clear that the existence of one condition increases the chance of an individual having another, or both of the other conditions.</p>
<p>A familial risk was confirmed when we looked at siblings of people affected by these conditions. A sibling of someone with heart disease was twice as likely to have chronic pain, and siblings of those with depression were twice as likely to suffer from heart disease. This suggests that genetics plays a part in these chronic diseases, in addition to known social and demographic factors. </p>
<p>The magnitude of a shared genetic explanation for these chronic conditions was examined by looking at sets of twins. <a href="http://www.twinsuk.ac.uk/">TwinsUK</a> has data on 12,000 identical and non-identical twins from across the UK, of 16-98 years of age. In a sample of 2,902 of these, 20% suffered with chronic pain, 22% had depression and 35% reported a cardiovascular disease. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157883/original/image-20170222-1319-11oflva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157883/original/image-20170222-1319-11oflva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157883/original/image-20170222-1319-11oflva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157883/original/image-20170222-1319-11oflva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157883/original/image-20170222-1319-11oflva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157883/original/image-20170222-1319-11oflva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157883/original/image-20170222-1319-11oflva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The health of twins can be revealing for genetics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/studio-portrait-young-happy-twin-sisters-555764521?src=eqgeWy8WO0KO6-q-ILq8ow-3-46">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>We compared the rates of occurrence of a condition, and of co-occurrence with another, between identical and non-identical twins. In identical twins, it was consistently more likely that both individuals would be affected, by any of the conditions, than non-identical twins, which further confirms that there is significant genetic contribution. When we examined the co-occurrence of chronic widespread pain and heart disease in our twins we found that the model that best explained the co-occurrence was a combination of both genetic and non-shared environmental factors.</p>
<h2>Treatment research could follow</h2>
<p>Although there are numerous causes of chronic pain, there are similarities in the socio-demographic factors explaining their development. Recent research shows that there are also similar biological factors present in the development of different types of chronic pain. </p>
<p>For the sufferer, it is the pain itself, rather than the cause, that produces the most distress and disability – <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1016/j.ejpain.2005.06.009/abstract">most chronic pain sufferers</a> had it for more than five years at more than one site. The most common chronic pain, back pain, accounted for <a href="http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60692-4/fulltext">146m years lived with disability in 2013</a>, three times the level of depression. </p>
<p>Overall, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1016/j.ejpain.2005.06.009/abstract">19%</a> of adults in Europe, and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11356737">6%</a> in the UK, were found to have significant chronic pain that was intense, severely disabling and limiting. This is similar to the prevalence of conditions such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. </p>
<p>As well as the issue that chronic pain represents for individuals, its management places an important burden on healthcare services – and it impacts on families, society and the economy. Therefore, the finding that a genetic mechanism could help to explain the co-occurence of these conditions is significant to allow further research. The exact genes involved in the occurence and co-occurrence of chronic pain need to be identified, so that we may switch them off at an early stage and try to develop new treatments. </p>
<p>Of course, it will always be important to understand and address the socio-demographic causes of disability and co-occurrence of conditions – especially with regards to factors we could change, such as deprivation. However, our research also suggests a new model of chronic disease, based on genetics and biological factors.</p>
<p>Genes are important in determining the risk, both of chronic disease itself, and of co-occurrence of other disabilities. Only a deeper understanding of these factors will allow the development of new preventive and targeted treatments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blair H. Smith receives research funding from the EU (Horizon 2020) and the Scottish Government, and has previously received research funding from the Medical Research Council. He is a member of the Scottish National Party.</span></em></p>Chronic pain often comes with other illnesses. Researchers have now shown that genetics can play a part in how likely you are to suffer.Blair H. Smith, Head of Population Health Sciences Division, Professor of Population Science, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/516992015-12-10T09:47:07Z2015-12-10T09:47:07ZChristmas is the hardest time of year for those estranged from close family<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104849/original/image-20151208-32408-16qsqx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not everyone looks forward to Christmas. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">dmitry zubarev/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With Christmas just around the corner, many will be finalising plans to see their families over the festive period. Yet for others, family relationships are challenging, distant and a source of pain. In some cases, relationships break down entirely leaving people estranged from close relatives.</p>
<p>Results from a new <a href="http://standalone.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/HiddenVoices.FinalReport.pdf">online survey</a> of people estranged from family members that I conducted with the charity <a href="http://standalone.org.uk/">Stand Alone</a>, has shown how difficult Christmas can be. The survey was completed by 807 people who identified as being estranged from a parent, sibling or an adult child. </p>
<p>Almost all identified the holiday season as the most challenging time of year, describing feelings of loneliness, isolation and sadness. These feelings and experiences are in direct contrast to the idealised images of happy families around the dinner table that feature in Christmas advertising and the media at this time of year. One respondent said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everyone always says ‘what family plans do you have for holidays?’ and look at you funny when you say none. It’s hard to explain to people why you don’t want to be with your own parents.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two-thirds of the respondents felt there was a stigma about family estrangement. They described feeling judged or blamed – and feeling that estrangement was a taboo subject about which there is little understanding or acknowledgement. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">An advert for the German supermarket Edeka focuses on families living apart.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No two estranged relationships looked alike. Yet common factors often led to estrangement, such as having mismatched expectations about family roles and relationships, clashes in personality and values, and <a href="http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2461738#Introduction">emotional abuse</a>. </p>
<p>Estrangement was found to be more complex than simply a lack of contact or communication between family members. Although most of the respondents who were estranged from a parent, sibling or an adult child had no contact whatsoever with this individual, approximately 25% had contact that was minimal in nature. These results are similar to those of Australian social worker <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/family-conflict/201409/family-estrangement-aberration-or-common-occurrence-0">Kylie Aglias</a>, who has distinguished between family members who have no contact at all (physical estrangement) and those whose contact is infrequent, perfunctory, and often uncomfortable (emotional estrangement).</p>
<p>We also found that estranged relationships change over time and that cycles in and out of estrangement are common. Of those who said they wished that their estranged relationship was different, most wanted a relationship that was more loving, warm and emotionally close.</p>
<h2>What can be done to help?</h2>
<p>When it came to getting support, respondents said those friends and support services which offered them emotional and practical support and took the time to listen to them and show them understanding were the most helpful. They found it unhelpful when they felt friends or counsellors dismissed them or when they felt they had been judged and blamed for the estrangement. </p>
<p>It would be wrong to assume that all those experiencing estrangement wish for there to be reconciliation in the future. Feelings about the future of estranged relationships were varied. Of those who were estranged from a mother or father, most felt that there would never be a functional relationship between them in the future. Yet for those who were estranged from an adult son or daughter, most felt that there could be a functional relationship in the future or were unsure of the future direction of the relationship. </p>
<p>Four out of five respondents also reported that there had been a positive outcome from their experience of estrangement. These included feeling more free and independent, feeling happier and less stressed, and having gained a greater insight or understanding of themselves and relationships more broadly. </p>
<p>By listening to the hidden voices of people who are estranged from close relatives, we can begin to move beyond assumptions about what families could or should look like and begin conversations about families and family relationships as they really are.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Blake works at the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. She is a trustee of the charity Stand Alone. </span></em></p>A new survey of people living estranged from a parent, sibling or adult child has found many feel judged or blamed for their family breakdown.Lucy Blake, Research Associate at the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/500762015-11-19T19:05:48Z2015-11-19T19:05:48ZDo you share more genes with your mother or your father?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102448/original/image-20151119-19367-w73ku0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5279%2C3077&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">To whom is she more closely related?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many of your relatives probably have an answer to the question of whether you are more your mother or your father’s child. But the correct answer to the question is not as simple as it might seem.</p>
<p>Genetically, you actually carry more of your mother’s genes than your father’s. That’s because of little organelles that live within your cells, the <a href="http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/mitochondria-14053590">mitochondria</a>, which you only receive from your mother.</p>
<p>Mitochondria are the energy-producing factories of the cell; without them, a cell would not be able to generate energy from food.</p>
<p>Mitochondria have an interesting history, as about 1.5-billion to 2-billion years ago they were free-living organisms. The ancestor of all mitochondria was a bacterium that was engulfed by another bacterium, but for one reason or another not digested, giving rise to the eukaryotes. The eukaryotes are basically all plants, animals and fungi, plus some rather weird organisms grouped together under <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Protista.aspx">Protista</a>.</p>
<p>Because of their evolutionary history as free-living bacteria, mitochondria have retained their own genome, called mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. Each cell contains many copies of mtDNA, as mitochondria freely replicate within the cell.</p>
<h2>The mother effect</h2>
<p>Tissues that require a lot of energy, such as your brain and your muscles, have cells packed with mitochondria. Because all mitochondria you received come from your mother only, you are technically more related to your mum than you are to your dad.</p>
<p>This is true for pretty much all animals. In plants and fungi too, mitochondria come from one parent only, although not necessarily from the mother.</p>
<p>Why do we have two different kinds of inheritance, one for nuclear genomes (nDNA) that combine parts of the mother and the father, and one for mitochondrial genomes, that excludes one parent completely?</p>
<p>The reason behind the evolution of so-called uniparental inheritance has long been a mystery among evolutionary biologists. One thing was clear: it better be for a good reason. </p>
<p>Mammalian males go through the bother of actually tagging the mitochondria in their sperm so that it is easier to destroy them after the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167488913001092">egg has been fertilised</a>. In plants too, the mitochondria from one parent are actively destroyed, this time before <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10265-009-0306-9">fertilisation takes place</a>.</p>
<p>For decades <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/281/5385/2003.full">the prevailing theory</a> explaining why mitochondria inherit uniparentally was the “conflict theory”.</p>
<p>The idea is that mtDNA replicates independently within the cell, so the number of copies increases over time. And the more copies there are, the more likely some will be transmitted to the daughter cell when that cell divides.</p>
<p>If all mtDNA comes from one parent only, then mtDNA within a cell are closely related to each other, as they are all clones. Hence, there is not much scope for competition, as copies of the mitochondrial genomes are basically competing with exact copies of themselves.</p>
<h2>Unhealthy competition</h2>
<p>But imagine what could happen if organelles were derived from both parents, the four grandparents, and so on ad infinitum. This would set the scene for a genetically variable population of organelles in every cell.</p>
<p>And this could be bad news as now different clonal lineages of mtDNA are competing with each other. The faster mtDNA replicates, the more copies it produces and the more likely it will spread to the next generation of cells.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the slower reproducing organelle lineage will be eliminated from the cell lineage. The smaller an organelle’s genome, the faster it can replicate. Thus, competition among organelles within cells selects for smaller genomes.</p>
<p>At some stage genomes will be so small that the function of the organelle is affected. Remember that the mitochondria produce the energy the cell needs, so when their genome size becomes very small, the organelles cease to function properly and the host cell suffers.</p>
<p>Interesting idea. But what is the evidence? Sadly, none.</p>
<h2>Cleaning the mix</h2>
<p>Recently a much simpler explanation was proposed: what if the simple mixing of mitochondrial lineages within the same cell is for some reason costly in itself?</p>
<p>This very simple assumption actually nicely explains the peculiar inheritance of <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005112">mitochondria in theoretical models</a>. </p>
<p>But there is more. Mice that were experimentally constructed so that individuals carried two mitochondrial lineages were less active, ate less, were more stressed and were <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2012.09.004">cognitively impaired</a>. It seems carrying mitochondria from both your parents is bad for you.</p>
<p>So why is the question of whether you are more like your mum or dad so hard to answer? Because your genetic make-up is only part of the equation. Which genes are expressed is the other part. And apparently your dad has the upper hand when it comes to <a href="http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v47/n4/full/ng.3222.html">which genes are expressed</a>.</p>
<p>So, you may look more like your dad but are more related to your mum after all. How is that for a simple answer?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeleine Beekman receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the International Union for the Study of Social Insects. </span></em></p>How many times do people make the comment about which parent a child takes after. So what does genetics say?Madeleine Beekman, Professor of Behavioural Ecology and ARC Future Fellow, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/493822015-10-19T19:20:26Z2015-10-19T19:20:26ZFirst-borns may have higher IQ but sibling bonds are what really shape our future<p>First-borns are responsible, middle children are people pleasers and the youngest are attention seekers, we <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1351567/First-born-Piggy-middle-Or-baby-How-place-family-rules-life.html">often hear</a>. But scientists have failed to find any real evidence for a link between birth order and personality. </p>
<p>Now a <a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1506451112">new study</a>, published in the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a> and based on data from 20,000 individuals, concludes that birth order does matter when it comes to IQ – with the oldest having slightly higher IQ than their younger siblings. However, the difference is small and it is likely that the relationships we have with our siblings have a much bigger influence on what we are able to achieve later in life. </p>
<h2>The science of siblings</h2>
<p>Most children have siblings and, apart from twins who are usually born within minutes of each other (but still squabble about who is older), will fit into a birth order. The first-born usually has the undivided attention of their parents for some time but is also subject to first-time “experimental” caretaking while the new parents explore what works and what does not. When brothers or sisters arrive, attention needs to be divided by the parents, leaving the first-born child “dethroned”. </p>
<p>Whether birth order matters has occupied scientists for centuries. <a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/francisgalton.aspx">Francis Galton</a> found that first-borns were over-represented among English scientists in the late 19th century. <a href="http://www.muskingum.edu/%7Epsych/psycweb/history/adler.htm">Alfred Adler</a>, the philosopher and psychoanalyst, believed that <a href="http://psyclassics.com/book/adler-understanding-human-nature">comparisons to siblings may make us feel inferior</a>. He postulated (but never tested) that the first-born receives the most attention but also has the highest burden to look after younger siblings. Adler, the second child in a family of six, suggested that this may make them more neurotic. In contrast, the youngest would tend to be overindulged, leading to poor social empathy while the middle child was neither burdened nor overindulged and most likely to be well adjusted.</p>
<p>Evolutionist <a href="http://www.robertboynton.com/articleDisplay.php?article_id=1535">Frank Sulloway</a> believed that birth order reflects disparities in age, size and power. Because of this, he suggested, the best way to reduce competition and facilitate cooperation would be for siblings to find niches that enhance the fitness of sibships – much <a href="http://www.sulloway.org/Sulloway-Why%20Siblings%20Are%20Like%20Darwins%20Finches--2010.pdf">like Darwin’s finches</a>. So the roles within the family may shape our personality, for example, the eldest might be more dominant and less agreeable while the later born would compensate by being more sociable and thus extroverted to compete within the family. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98854/original/image-20151019-23254-jvumjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98854/original/image-20151019-23254-jvumjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98854/original/image-20151019-23254-jvumjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98854/original/image-20151019-23254-jvumjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98854/original/image-20151019-23254-jvumjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98854/original/image-20151019-23254-jvumjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98854/original/image-20151019-23254-jvumjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Listen to me, it is safer to walk here.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=siblings&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=179644862">ISchmidt/Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Studying the effects of birth order sounds simple but it is not. Siblings differ in age, sex and number across families. Cohort studies, those that follow children born at a certain time from birth, usually only follow one child from each family. That means that birth-order effects have previously been compared between families rather than within families. </p>
<p>The new study used data from three longitudinal or panel studies in the US, UK and Germany, allowing for replication across studies and between and within family comparisons. All studies assessed intelligence with standard general or verbal ability tests in childhood (two studies) or adulthood (one study). Personality was assessed in all studies in adulthood (when siblings were usually living apart) with different versions of the so-called “<a href="http://pages.uoregon.edu/sanjay/bigfive.html">Big Five</a>” personality trait scales: extroversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness. </p>
<p>However the researchers looked at it, first-borns had, on average, an IQ of 1.5 points higher than second-born siblings, who in turn had a 1.5 higher IQ than third-borns and so on. Indeed, earlier-born siblings also evaluated their own intellectual abilities in relation to younger born siblings as more favourable such as “being able to quicker understand things”.</p>
<p>This small advantage may be because parents had more time to invest in the early cognitive and language development of the first or earlier-borns (the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614001500">social-rank hypothesis</a>), or because older siblings profit intellectually from being “teachers” to younger siblings. Furthermore, older children are born when mothers are younger and with each pregnancy maternal antibody levels tend to increase and may affect brain development (the <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5832/1717.full.pdf">gestational hypothesis</a>). Evidence so far has been <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5832/1717.full">most consistent</a> with the social-rank hypothesis.</p>
<p>Although this is a robust and statistically significant finding the IQ difference is small. It means that in six out of ten cases the older sibling will have a higher IQ than the next youngest sibling. Conversely, it also means that in four out of ten cases younger siblings have a higher IQ. </p>
<p>Contrary to Adler’s or Sulloway’s predictions, no differences in personality traits was found – indicating there is very little evidence to support claims that birth order makes us different in our personality from our siblings. </p>
<h2>The power of the sibling bond</h2>
<p>But it may not be birth order that matters but rather how we relate to our siblings – older and younger. Siblings play an <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1992.tb00859.x/abstract">important role</a> in each others’ lives as companions, teachers, and caregivers. This means they can also <a href="http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/13/3/124.short">significantly influence</a> one another’s development and adjustment.</p>
<p>Positive sibling ties and interactions can <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/227685031_Theory_of_Mind_Is_Contagious_You_Catch_It_from_Your_Sibs">facilitate cognitive development</a>, provide emotional support, and <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01699.x/abstract">buffer siblings from adverse life events</a>, including marital conflicts or poor peer relationships. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98856/original/image-20151019-23264-15z4bet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98856/original/image-20151019-23264-15z4bet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98856/original/image-20151019-23264-15z4bet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98856/original/image-20151019-23264-15z4bet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98856/original/image-20151019-23264-15z4bet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98856/original/image-20151019-23264-15z4bet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98856/original/image-20151019-23264-15z4bet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cain Killing Abel, 1618-1620.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daniele_Crespi_-_Cain_Killing_Abel_-_WGA5743.jpg">wikimedia</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Sibling relationships, however, are not always harmonious and supportive. Severe sibling jealousy and rivalry have been documented since ancient times, most notably through the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel. Sibling bullying, when there is repeated aggression, either physical or psychological, is frequent with up to <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ab.21557/abstract">40% of them involved in it every week</a>.</p>
<p>What is most surprising is that the effects of physical assault and verbal abuse between siblings and their effect on personality and mental health has been mostly ignored, perhaps because it is so common. But there is now increasing evidence that being bullied by siblings <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/282526410_Bullying_in_the_family_sibling_bullying">doubles the risk of mental health problems</a> such as depression and anxiety disorder into adulthood. Some have been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24867267">tormented by their siblings</a> in such a way that they wished they had never been born.</p>
<p>This surely supports the view that the quality of the sibling relationship rather than the actual birth order has significant influence on mental well-being. In particular, reducing bullying between siblings is likely to have a significant influence on population mental health, and sibling relationships <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23159327">should be considered as much as parent-child relationships</a> in research and mental health settings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dieter Wolke receives or has recently received funding from Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Medical Research Council (MRC), Nuffield Foundation, Wellcome Trust, FP6 and FP7 EU framework, Bundesministerium fuer Forschung und Bildung (BMBF, Germany)</span></em></p>Being the oldest, middle or youngest child doesn’t affect personality as much as we may think. But the relationship we have with our siblings can influence both cognitive and emotional development.Dieter Wolke, Professor of Psychology, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/492132015-10-19T19:05:55Z2015-10-19T19:05:55ZAnxious conservative or easygoing rebel? Busting the birth-order myths<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98797/original/image-20151019-7748-19v3bto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Birth order clearly matters, just not for personality.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/charamelody/5258526958/">charamelody/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anyone with siblings knows they can differ from us in maddening ways. They share our parents and our family history, but their personalities can be so different. Birth order offers an intuitively appealing explanation for these perplexing differences. </p>
<p>The only problem is, it’s a myth. </p>
<p>Psychologists have speculated on the effects of birth order on personality for well over a century. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton">Sir Francis Galton</a> – pioneer of statistics, fingerprint analysis, weather maps and <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2006-01672-004">arithmetic by smell</a> – supposed that firstborn children benefited from greater responsibility and undivided parental attention. As a result they were over-represented among high achievers. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98798/original/image-20151019-7789-1m9d7d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98798/original/image-20151019-7789-1m9d7d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98798/original/image-20151019-7789-1m9d7d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98798/original/image-20151019-7789-1m9d7d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98798/original/image-20151019-7789-1m9d7d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98798/original/image-20151019-7789-1m9d7d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98798/original/image-20151019-7789-1m9d7d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98798/original/image-20151019-7789-1m9d7d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Firstborns are thought to have more authoritarian tendencies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/22280677@N07/4158482035/">Sean/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler">Alfred Adler</a>, protégé of Sigmund Freud, argued that the dethroning of firstborns by younger siblings left an enduring impression on their character. </p>
<p>Firstborns, he argued, feel weighed down by responsibility and have neurotic and authoritarian tendencies. Laterborn siblings are often overindulged and seek creative alternatives to conventional achievement.</p>
<p>Frank Sulloway’s <a href="http://www.sulloway.org/borntorebel.html">Born to Rebel</a>, published in 1996, made the strongest case for birth-order effects on personality. Referring to the popular <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits">big five personality traits</a>, he proposed that firstborns tend to be more conscientiousness and neurotic than laterborns, are less agreeable and less open to new experiences. In essence, firstborns are anxious conservatives and laterborns are easygoing rebels.</p>
<p>Scouring the historical record, Sulloway found that laterborns were more likely than firstborns to support the French Revolution and the Protestant Reformation. They were also more likely to be at the vanguard of scientific revolutions, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution.</p>
<p>These links between personality and birth order ring true for many people. But decades of research have failed to show any consistent and substantial association between birth order and any personality trait. </p>
<p>Two studies published this month should drive the final nails into the coffin of birth-order effects.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98801/original/image-20151019-7756-9utkol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98801/original/image-20151019-7756-9utkol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98801/original/image-20151019-7756-9utkol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98801/original/image-20151019-7756-9utkol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98801/original/image-20151019-7756-9utkol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98801/original/image-20151019-7756-9utkol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98801/original/image-20151019-7756-9utkol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Any differences in their personalities may simply reflect firstborns’ greater maturity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/6845667576/">Lars Plougmann/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>In the first study, published today in the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/">Proceedings of the National Academy of Science</a>, researchers examined the big five traits (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) in very large samples from the United States, Great Britain and Germany. </p>
<p>In every sample, there was no statistically reliable link between any trait and birth order, after controlling for factors such as gender, age and family size. Firstborns did not differ from laterborns, either when comparing siblings from different families or within the same family.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656615000525">second study</a> examined the big five traits in 377,000 American high school students. </p>
<p>After statistically controlling for gender, age, family size, socioeconomic status and family structure, associations between personality and birth order were uniformly tiny. </p>
<p>The trivially small effects they found also contradicted common beliefs about birth-order effects. Firstborns were very slightly more conscientious than laterborns, but they were also very slightly more agreeable and less neurotic, contrary to expectation.</p>
<p>If the evidence for birth-order effects on personality is so flimsy, why do people continue to believe in them? This belief is a classic example of what psychologists call “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation">illusory correlation</a>”: the conviction that two things are associated when they are not.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98787/original/image-20151019-7751-1axumuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/98787/original/image-20151019-7751-1axumuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98787/original/image-20151019-7751-1axumuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98787/original/image-20151019-7751-1axumuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98787/original/image-20151019-7751-1axumuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98787/original/image-20151019-7751-1axumuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/98787/original/image-20151019-7751-1axumuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There is no statistically reliable link between any trait and birth order.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jdennes/5106744234/">James Dennes/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One reason for this illusory belief is that birth order is confounded with age. Any differences in sibling personalities may simply reflect firstborns’ greater maturity. </p>
<p>Conscientiousness, for instance, increases over the course of childhood development. So, at any given time, firstborn children will tend to be more conscientious than their laterborn siblings.</p>
<p>A second reason for the illusory correlation involves birth-order stereotypes. People who are aware of common beliefs about birth order will bias their perceptions to confirm their expectations, even in the absence of supportive evidence. </p>
<p>This dynamic accounts for supposed correlations between astrological star signs and personality traits. Some weak associations exist, but only among people who are aware of the traits associated with their sign. These people perceive their personalities through the distorting lens of their <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Astrology-Superstition-Nias-David-Eysenck/dp/0140223975">astrological expectations</a>.</p>
<p>The third reason for illusory correlations between personality and birth order is overgeneralisation. Birth order may indeed be associated with differences in behaviour in the context of early family life. </p>
<p>Older siblings may tend to be more dominant and responsible; young ones to be more indulged and free-spirited. However, differences in specific roles within the narrow confines of the childhood family environment do not generalise to broad, enduring personality traits in the big wide world of adult life. </p>
<p>But while birth-order effects on personality are illusory, it is now generally accepted that birth order influences IQ. Both studies mentioned earlier support this link. </p>
<p>On average, laterborn children are somewhat less intelligent than firstborns. Six times out of ten, the second of a pair of siblings will score lower on IQ than the first. </p>
<p>Birth-order effects may also extend to physical health. A <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614007308">recent study</a> of more than 200,000 Swedish military conscripts found that firstborns have somewhat greater cardiovascular fitness than laterborns. </p>
<p><a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13524-015-0377-2#page-1">Another study</a> of more than one million Swedes found firstborns were significantly less likely to die prematurely, especially of accidents and suicide. </p>
<p>Birth order clearly matters, just not for personality. Siblings loom large in our lives, and the extent of their individuality can be striking. Their differences cry out for an explanation, which unfounded ideas about birth order provide.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Nick will be on hand for an Author Q&A between 10 and 11am AEDT on Wednesday, October 21, 2015. Post your questions in the comments section below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49213/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Haslam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Birth order offers an intuitively appealing explanation for the perplexing differences between us and our siblings. Only problem is, it’s a myth.Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/482632015-09-28T12:05:04Z2015-09-28T12:05:04ZSiblings in the scrum: long history of brothers makes rugby a family affair<p>It’s well known that <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17461391.2013.805250">family plays a key role</a> in a child’s initial socialisation into sport and his or her continued participation. This family involvement is certainly evident on a Sunday morning at my local rugby club where siblings of both genders and all ages participate in a range of activities. Add to this the fact that as many of the mums and dads are former players who now help with coaching and refereeing, with a few grandparents thrown in as well, there can often be three generations of the same family involved. </p>
<p>The level of family involvement in the 2015 Rugby World Cup appears to confirm <a href="https://www.sportscoachuk.org/sites/default/files/Participant-Development-Lit-Review.pdf">research that</a> family influences a players’ introduction and experience of the sport in a variety of ways – from taking up the game to sibling rivalry driving performance. Being an England fan I was already aware of the two sets of brothers in the England squad – Billy and Mako Vunipola and the brothers Ben and Tom Youngs (whose father <a href="http://www.afp.com/en/news/rugby-world-cup-overflows-brotherly-love">Nick was a former England scrum-half</a>).</p>
<p>Then there is Scotland and <a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-09-18/rugby-world-cup-2015-scotland-team-guide">the Gray brothers, Jonny and Richie</a>. Interestingly it was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/international/scotland/11214717/Scotland-v-Argentina-Brothers-Richie-and-Jonny-Gray-to-start-together-for-first-time-at-Murrayfield.html">Jonny</a>, the younger sibling, who first took up rugby, sparking Richie to then follow suit. </p>
<p>The Ireland squad features brothers <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/rugby-world-cup/11872980/Schmidt-goes-for-power-in-opener-against-Canada.html">Dave and Rob Kearney</a>. Rob has said that his passion for rugby was strongly <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/rugger-brothers-the-sporting-ambitions-of-the-kearney-boys-1.1625839">influenced by his father</a>’s love of the sport though he also <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/rob-kearney-leadership-meditation-and-family-1.2179513">acknowledged the important role of mothers in today’s game</a> – if his mum didn’t want him playing the game he wouldn’t be doing it.</p>
<p>What all these sets of brothers have in common is their closeness and the bond between them, as well as a healthy element of sibling rivalry. Dave Kearney <a href="http://www.irishmirror.ie/sport/rugby-union/dave-kearney-reveals-how-brother-6498492">explains this relationship</a>: “If there’s someone with you it’s easier. It’s competitive too. You’re working hard against each other and trying to get the best out of each other. It was good having someone you can work with and push on.”</p>
<p>New Zealand has a long history of brotherly participation with <a href="http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/news/92723">43 sets of brothers</a> having played for the All Blacks at different times. However for those brothers lining up alongside each other this figure drops to nine. This year Ben and Owen Franks make up the fraternal component of the 2015 squad. Once again <a href="http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/news/92723">it was their father</a> who was instrumental in their rugby career, training the duo from a young age. Like the Kearney brothers, sibling competition also plays a key part and <a href="http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/news/92723">Owen revealed</a> that: “Ben would try to bait me into fighting him because I was so much weaker and smaller but as I got older I could start to compete a little bit more.”</p>
<p>Canada also join the brotherly club with the inclusion of <a href="http://www.punditarena.com/rugby/gspillane/brothers-arms-rugby-world-cups-family-affair/">Phil and Jamie MacKenzie</a> as do the Springboks featuring <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/sport/rugby/2015/09/06/The-brothers-Du-Plessis-are-truly-rare-breed">Jannie Du Plessis and Bismarck Du Plessis</a>. The Du Plessis brothers have spoken openly about their strong relationship and bond and even made their <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/international/southafrica/8407169/Jannie-and-Bismarck-du-Plessis-humble-God-fearing-and-ferocious-meet-sports-original-brothers-in-arms.html">Springboks debut</a> together in the same game. Their closeness is magnified by their working, living and playing together and their <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/international/southafrica/8407169/Jannie-and-Bismarck-du-Plessis-humble-God-fearing-and-ferocious-meet-sports-original-brothers-in-arms.html">unified goal</a> of playing in a World Cup final watched by their father.</p>
<h2>Potential record breakers</h2>
<p>At the top of the list is Samoa, which is fielding three brothers: George, Tusi and Ken Pisi, in the same squad. If all three appear on the pitch at the same time they will create <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/international/72399925/rugby-world-cup-2015-family-history-beckons-as-samoa-names-team">Rugby World Cup history</a>. <a href="http://www.afp.com/en/news/rugby-world-cup-overflows-brotherly-love">George explained his feelings of brotherly love</a>: “When Ken was small, Tusi and I used him for tackling practice … Later, whenever we were on opposite sides in a game, I had this extra-special feeling of just wanting to smash him.”</p>
<p>Samoa are no strangers to family ties and the Tuilagi brothers Henry, Freddie, Anitelea and Sanele have all played internationally for <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-32757633">Samoa</a> and brother <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-32757633">Manu</a> played for England. Brother Alesana Tuilagi, a winger in the Samoan 2015 squad would therefore also contribute to the history books if he makes his Rugby World Cup debut.</p>
<p>The family connections continue still beyond brothers, with other family links in the competition including Ireland’s Luke Fitzgerald whose father Des played for Ireland, Welsh back Ross Moriarty who is following in the footsteps of his father and uncle who both played internationally for Wales, and the England player Owen Farrell whose father Andy, a former England player, is also part of the England coaching staff. Rugby, it seems, truly is a family affair.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Pinchbeck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research shows that family has an important role in getting children to play sport and nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the Rugby World Cup.Jessica Pinchbeck, Lecturer in Sport and Fitness, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/440712015-07-06T08:39:10Z2015-07-06T08:39:10ZWhat makes siblings from the same family so different? Parents<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87236/original/image-20150702-11318-13nshd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Siblings often turn out to be very different from each other. Ever wondered why?
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A colleague related the following story: while running errands with her 11- and 7-year-old daughters, a back seat battle began to rage. My colleague’s attempts to defuse the situation only led to a shouting match about who was to blame for the skirmish. Finally the 11-year-old proclaimed to her sister, “You started it the day you were born and took away Mom’s love!”</p>
<p>This pair of sisters fight frequently, and from their mother’s perspective, part of the reason is that the two have little in common. As it turns out, their situation is not unique. </p>
<p>Despite the fact that siblings are, on average, 50% genetically similar, are often raised in the same home by the same parents, attend the same schools and have many other shared experiences, siblings are often only as <a href="http://www.primal-page.com/separate.htm">similar</a> to each other as they are to children who are growing up across town or even across the country. </p>
<p>So, what is it that makes two siblings from the same family so different?</p>
<h2>What makes the difference?</h2>
<p>As researchers of sibling and family relationships, we knew that at least one answer to this question comes from theory and data showing that, at least in some families, siblings <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1128728?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">try to be different</a> from one another, and seek to establish a unique identity and position in their family. </p>
<p>From a child’s perspective, if an older brother excels at school, it may be easier to attract her parents’ attention and praise by becoming a star athlete than by competing with her brother to get the best grades. In this way, even small differences between siblings can become substantial differences over time. </p>
<p>But parents may also play a role. For instance, when parents notice differences between their children, children may pick up on parents’ perceptions and beliefs about those differences. This, in turn, can increase sibling differences. </p>
<p>We wanted to test these ideas to see what makes siblings different. So, we used data from first- and second-born teenage siblings from 388 two-parent families to examine sibling differences in school performance. </p>
<p>We asked mothers and fathers to report on whether they thought the two siblings differed in their academic abilities, and if so, which sibling was more capable. We also collected school grades from both siblings’ report cards.</p>
<h2>Preference for the firstborn</h2>
<p>Our <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/fam/29/3/469/">analyses</a> showed some interesting results: parents tended to believe that the older sibling was better in school. This was even when older siblings did not actually receive better grades, on average. </p>
<p>This may be a product of parents having greater expectations for firstborns or that, at any given time, the older sibling is undertaking more advanced school work. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87052/original/image-20150701-27147-c43qmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87052/original/image-20150701-27147-c43qmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87052/original/image-20150701-27147-c43qmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87052/original/image-20150701-27147-c43qmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87052/original/image-20150701-27147-c43qmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87052/original/image-20150701-27147-c43qmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87052/original/image-20150701-27147-c43qmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Parents’ beliefs shape how siblings will perform in school.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rdecom/8519245742/in/photolist-dYPmXh-dYHEh8-dYPh3U-pHqCTo-pHqD3b-7tt1mA-ea6RyE-dYPi9A-o91nVE-fdfjd-5WGPh5-dYPgWE-dYHBvg-dYPjP5-dYHBD6-8rq6cu-9cAuPJ-dLdet4-cGibjw-8rq6eQ-8rq6uE-8rq6mC-8rmY8R-Nm6cD-5wjrSD-8RQ5s2-q2igde-pK8Dqf-q2sLgv-8rq6CA-6X2kA9-2NusNu-9R7yV6-9LnMng-9LnPX8-d8zmvo-89L1AS-9Lqzaw-7FMk5p-8TutGd-5Qb61T-479rcX-bdYYLt-5woLbJ-5woKJ3-5wjs38-5woLYq-5woLNU-5wjrdn-5woKNQ">US Army RDECOM</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was, however, an exception to this pattern: in families with older brothers and younger sisters, parents rated the younger sibling as being more capable. In fact, in those families, younger sisters received better grades than their older brothers.</p>
<p>Our findings also showed that it was not sibling differences in school grades that predicted parents’ ratings of their children’s abilities. Rather, parents’ beliefs about differences in their children’s abilities predicted later sibling differences in school grades.</p>
<p>In other words, when parents believed one child was more capable than the other, that child’s school grades improved more over time than their sibling’s. </p>
<h2>Sustaining beliefs</h2>
<p>Although we expected that children’s school grades and parents’ beliefs about their children’s relative abilities would be mutually influential, it turned out that parents’ beliefs did not change much over their children’s teenage years.</p>
<p>Instead, sibling differences in school grades did change, and were predicted by parents’ beliefs. In this way, parents’ beliefs about differences between their children may encourage the development of actual sibling difference.</p>
<p>The above comment by an 11-year-old highlights that children are sensitive to their place and value in the family – relative to those of their siblings. Parents may strive to show their love for their children, but they also should be aware that small differences in how they treat their children can have large effects – including on their children’s development and adjustment, and also on the sibling relationship. </p>
<p>Indeed, some research suggests that sibling conflict arises when children <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23765197">try to be different</a> from their siblings. </p>
<p>My colleague may be correct that her daughters fight frequently because they have nothing in common. But their conflicts may also be motivated by her daughters’ perception that their differences started on the day her sister was born “and took away Mom’s love.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan M McHale receives funding from:
The research described in this report was funded by
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development,
R01-HD32336, Susan M. McHale & Ann C. Crouter, Co-Principal Investigators</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Jensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Parents tend to have greater expectations of their firstborns. But, it’s different when the younger sibling is a girl. What impact does it have on their grades?Alex Jensen, Assistant Professor of Human Development, Brigham Young UniversitySusan M McHale, Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/372222015-04-06T20:08:55Z2015-04-06T20:08:55ZThe Gallaghers, the Stefanovics and the Rineharts: what’s behind sibling rivalries?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71574/original/image-20150210-24697-qiq4rv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Like those that can’t live without their siblings, there are those like music's Gallagher brothers who can't stand the sight of one another.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">freschwill</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How we get along as siblings is a deeply personal issue and profoundly affects our lives as individuals. It’s an issue that crosses cultures and economies, levels of class and fame. </p>
<p>This point was reinforced to me when I did an interview on the <a href="http://www.jump-in.com.au/show/today/videos/3802139811001/">Today Show</a> about the importance of sibling conflict. Co-host Karl Stefanovic torpedoed in at the end and dismissed everything I was saying as nonsense. He made it clear that his lifelong domination of his younger brother, Peter, is perfectly normal and acceptable. If anything he seemed to be very proud of it.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, Peter is also a successful journalist, but has nowhere near the popularity – and likely the <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/aussie-tvs-rich-list/story-e6freol3-1111118958464">pay packet</a> – of his brother.</p>
<p>What is striking is the paradox of sibling relationships. People will often tell you that the bond they have with their sibling or siblings is incredibly special. It’s unlike any other relationship they have. It is sacred, special and highly functional. After all, where would the aviation world be without the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers">Wright brothers</a>, the music world without the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_family">Jacksons</a> or politics without the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_family">Kennedys</a>?</p>
<p>However, it’s not hard to spot plenty of examples of where sibling rivalry and conflict is the source of lifelong, deep-seated hostility and anger. Like those that can’t live without their brother or sister, there are those like music’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/noel-with-it-liam-gallagher-admits-he-doesnt-have-brother-noels-phone-number-following-feud-8672639.html">Gallagher brothers</a>, who can’t stand the sight of one another and never want to see each other again.</p>
<p>As mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s kids will tell you, sibling relationships can tear families apart. They can also be <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/gina-rinehart-accused-of-billiondollar-betrayal-by-her-children-john-hancock-and-bianca-rinehart/story-fni0cx12-1227129311143?nk=b50b477d195177f19ea8307638ddcef5">very costly</a>.</p>
<p>So why is this? Why do some sibling relationships go so well, and yet others so badly? But more importantly, does it actually even matter whether you love or hate your brother or sister? The short answer: yes. And it probably matters far more than we think.</p>
<h2>A look at the sibling relationship</h2>
<p>The sibling relationship is the longest relationship we have. It typically lasts longer than our relationship with our parents, our romantic partner, children, friends and work colleagues. In developed, Western countries, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956653/">around 80%</a> of people have a sibling.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71666/original/image-20150211-24687-1vjcsia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71666/original/image-20150211-24687-1vjcsia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71666/original/image-20150211-24687-1vjcsia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71666/original/image-20150211-24687-1vjcsia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71666/original/image-20150211-24687-1vjcsia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71666/original/image-20150211-24687-1vjcsia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71666/original/image-20150211-24687-1vjcsia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71666/original/image-20150211-24687-1vjcsia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From the earliest age, our siblings teach us the basics about life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An example of the power and importance of the sibling relationship is found in a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2293786">study</a> that showed the strongest predictor of well-being at age 65 among male Harvard alumni was the quality of their sibling relationships during college.</p>
<p>The sibling relationship is best understood as the training ground for life. From the earliest age, our siblings teach us the basics about life: how to share; how to take turns; how to love and nurture; how to reason and solve problems; how to negotiate; how to cope with disappointment; how to get back up after being defeated.</p>
<p>But the influence of siblings goes well beyond learning how to wait for your older brother to finish his turn on the computer before you can have a go. Siblings have a significant impact on <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.1">key developmental milestones</a> including the acquisition of interpersonal skills, cognitive development and sensitivity, emotional development and adjustment, social understanding, sharing and social skills, and socio-cognitive reasoning skills.</p>
<h2>Blood is thicker than water – or is it?</h2>
<p>Argy bargy between siblings is normal. There’s no shortage of scientific evidence, let alone public opinion, which converges on the relevance and importance of a bit of rough and tumble play and healthy competition between siblings.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11130613">Constructive sibling conflict</a> is important developmentally and can help children learn important skills, like how to be assertive without being aggressive. The question worth asking here is what – if any – problems are associated with elevated conflict between siblings.</p>
<p>Sibling relationships marked by elevated levels of hostility and conflict are associated with a number of potentially <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.1">very serious consequences</a> including delinquent behaviour, behavioural problems in adolescence, and the development of some serious mental health and behavioural <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/09/02/peds.2014-0832">problems</a> such as depression, anxiety and self-harm. Sibling conflict in adolescence has also been found to correlate with adult <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01926187.2012.698205#.VNiB8C5G5WA">romantic relationship conflict</a>.</p>
<p>Some experts even suggest that sibling conflict should be recognised as the most common form of <a href="http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/28/8/1726.short">bullying</a>.</p>
<p>The onset of sibling conflict has been linked to many <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3127252/">different factors</a>, such as the age gap between siblings, birth order, gender constellation, developmental stage, peer influences, parental marital status and conflict, parent gender, parent behaviour and parental favouritism.</p>
<p>Parents clearly play a significant role.</p>
<h2>The role of parents</h2>
<p>I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/parents-these-days-are-judged-too-harshly-34493">written previously</a> that we should be careful of being too critical of parents. We should be embracing their appetite for knowledge and evidence and using this to everyone’s advantage. The better skilled and equipped parents are, the better off society will be.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71671/original/image-20150211-24682-1c31chy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71671/original/image-20150211-24682-1c31chy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71671/original/image-20150211-24682-1c31chy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71671/original/image-20150211-24682-1c31chy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71671/original/image-20150211-24682-1c31chy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71671/original/image-20150211-24682-1c31chy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71671/original/image-20150211-24682-1c31chy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71671/original/image-20150211-24682-1c31chy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Research supports the view that parents exert a profound effect on their children’s relationships.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p>It is parents who are at the heart of the sibling paradox. Research has <a href="http://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2014/06/parents-see-sibling-fighting-normal">found</a> that although parents are worried about sibling conflict, they see it as perfectly normal. However, it turns out that parents are right in their concerns. Research clearly <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007.00402.x/abstract">supports the view</a> that parents exert a profound effect on their children’s relationships.</p>
<p>For example, one <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10409289.2013.788425#.VNiGsC5G5WA">recent study</a> trained parents to mediate their children’s conflicts and demonstrated how parents’ involvement in conflict behaviours not only led to a reduction in fighting between the children, but that the children were able to replicate the mediation skills they experienced through their parents.</p>
<p><a href="http://ecite.utas.edu.au/84466">Another study</a> of 65 families of predominantly Mexican descent identified that supportive and democratic parenting and positive family expressivity were associated with sibling relationships defined by high warmth and low agonism. This indicates that positive parenting practices may well be implicated in the mechanisms of reducing sibling conflict.</p>
<h2>A final word</h2>
<p>Sibling relationships are dynamic and evolve over a lifetime. Like all relationships we have they can naturally vary in their strength, intensity and quality. However, it is a mistake to conclude that conflict ultimately brings siblings closer together.</p>
<p>The better way to understand the sibling relationship is that it is an ideal platform for children to learn the skills and abilities for them to do well in life. Parents can play an enormously important role in helping their children navigate their relationship and ensuring that their children are on the best possible development trajectory.</p>
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<p><em>You can watch John Pickering and others discussing sibling relationships on the <a href="http://bit.ly/1NKe2ha">April 7 episode</a> of SBS program Insight. If you would like to participate in a brief (30 second) survey on your views on sibling relationships, click <a href="http://psy.uq.edu.au/sbs">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37222/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>
John Pickering is an employee of The University of Queensland (UQ). UQ owns The Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. The University through its technology transfer company, UniQuest Pty Ltd, has licensed Triple P International Pty Ltd to publish and disseminate the program worldwide. Royalties stemming from published Triple P resources are distributed to the University and contributory authors. John Pickering has no authorial connection to Triple P and is not a financial recipient of program dissemination.</span></em></p>How we get along as siblings is a deeply personal issue and profoundly effects our lives as individuals. It’s an issue that crosses cultures and economies, levels of class and fame.John Pickering, Research Manager, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/302782014-08-08T14:43:49Z2014-08-08T14:43:49ZWhen it comes to recognising family, you can’t make a monkey out of a macaque<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55954/original/yp7rrxtn-1407409945.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What's up, bro?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dejeuxx/6752488935">dejeuxx</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Macaque monkeys grow up with their mothers and are often not familiar with their fathers. But they can recognise the paternal side of the family even without ever being introduced to them, according to a study published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.06.058">Current Biology</a>. The researchers suggest that just looking at another monkey is enough to know whether they are related. </p>
<p>“There is some evidence that non-human primates can recognise facial resemblances between two other individuals, just like us,” Dana Pfefferle, lead author and post-doctoral researcher at Duke University, said. “We found that the macaques could detect their own relatives without being familiar with members of that side of the family.”</p>
<p>Polygamy is a common theme in the rhesus macaque world. A female macaque mates with multiple males at the same time, making it difficult to identify the father of the child. Males are also known to change their social groups often, picking different partners in different groups. A child may grow up having never met anyone from the father’s side of its family. Being raised by its mother, the child is mainly surrounded by its maternal relatives.</p>
<p>Pfefferle and her colleagues were studying rhesus macaques living freely on Cayo Santiago, a small island about a kilometre off the south-east coast of Puerto Rico. The island is run and maintained by the Caribbean Primate Research Centre and the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56067/original/hfvgg7j6-1407500481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56067/original/hfvgg7j6-1407500481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56067/original/hfvgg7j6-1407500481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56067/original/hfvgg7j6-1407500481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56067/original/hfvgg7j6-1407500481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56067/original/hfvgg7j6-1407500481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56067/original/hfvgg7j6-1407500481.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dana Pfefferle</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>The monkeys of the island have been studied in their wild habitat for more than 70 years. This is why Pfefferle could be confident about their pedigree tree and be confident that the relationship of each monkey to the others had accurately been mapped. During Pfefferle ‘s work there, she noticed that some monkeys could recognise their paternal half-siblings and interact with them even without being part of the same group. This was intriguing.</p>
<p>To understand what was prompting this recognition, Pfefferle decided to run an experiment. She showed the monkeys facial pictures of two unfamiliar monkeys – one of them their paternal half-sibling and the other unrelated. If both the monkeys shown were of the same gender as the participants, then the participants spent more time staring at the unrelated monkey.</p>
<p>Seeing the pictures of unknown monkeys of the same sex ought to make the participant feel threatened, which would make them spend more time staring at them. So this indicated that the monkeys could make out their half-siblings and spent relatively less time staring at them.</p>
<p>When shown pictures of two monkeys of the opposite gender, however, the participants made no distinction between related or unrelated monkeys. Pfefferle thinks that seeing females brought on mating instincts in males, even if they were related. In the case of females, who also spent the same amount of time looking at the pictures of related and unrelated males, the explanation may be more complex.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55955/original/7ftvpcjf-1407410110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55955/original/7ftvpcjf-1407410110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55955/original/7ftvpcjf-1407410110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55955/original/7ftvpcjf-1407410110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55955/original/7ftvpcjf-1407410110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55955/original/7ftvpcjf-1407410110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55955/original/7ftvpcjf-1407410110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Brother from another mother.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dejeuxx/6752490563">dejeuxx</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Female macaques invest a lot in their babies, starting from pregnancy through to bringing up their young ones. They want to prevent inbreeding and so they prefer to find unrelated males as mates. This should mean that they would evolve the ability to differentiate between related and unrelated males. </p>
<p>But macaque society has a gender bias. Males are ranked higher and could be a threat to them. So when shown pictures of a male, a female could be conflicted between choosing new mates by differentiating between unrelated and related males and keeping an eye out for males just looking for trouble. This causes them to spend equal time staring at images of related and unrelated males.</p>
<p>These kind of studies are usually performed on monkeys kept in captivity. The Cayo monkeys which participated in the study lived by themselves on an uninhabited island. These were untrained monkeys, but they had become habituated with humans – mostly scientists and administrators – and were friendly towards them. </p>
<p>“They were very keen in participating in these visual experiments,” Pfefferle said. “One female kept following us just to have another glance at the pictures.”</p>
<p>It is remarkable that the monkeys were able not only to identify paternal facial features but also compare them with the images they were shown. Pfefferle and her team have found that beyond recognising faces, the monkeys use other cues like identifying their paternal half-siblings’ <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=24225452">calls</a>. “It would be interesting to see how a combination of different cues could affect the monkeys’ ability to recognise paternal kins,” Pfefferle said.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30278/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anwesha Ghosh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Macaque monkeys grow up with their mothers and are often not familiar with their fathers. But they can recognise the paternal side of the family even without ever being introduced to them, according to…Anwesha Ghosh, PhD student in Biology, University of RochesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.