Sibling Rivalry in Adulthood: How Sisters and Brothers Can Stop Conflict From Driving Them Apart
Marianne Walsh and her sister, Megan Putman, keep track of whose kids their mother babysits more. They also compete with each other over parenting styles (Ms. Walsh is strict, Ms. Putman is laid back) and their weight.
Even after siblings grow up, rivalry and one-upmanship continue to crop up, Elizabeth Bernstein reports on Lunch Break. Photo: Getty Images.
“My kids play more instruments, so I am winning in piano,” says Ms. Walsh, 38, the younger of the two by 13 months. “But she won the skinny Olympics.”
Adult sibling rivalry. Experts say it remains one of the most harmful and least addressed issues in a family. We know it when we see it. Often, we deeply regret it. But we have no idea what to do about it.
Ms. Walsh and Ms. Putman have been competitive since childhood—about clothes, about boyfriends, about grades. Ms. Walsh remembers how in grammar school her sister wrote an essay about their grandfather and won a writing award. She recited it at a school assembly with her grandpa standing nearby, beaming. Ms. Walsh, seething, vowed to win the award the next year and did.
Ms. Putman married first. Ms. Walsh, single at the time, clearly recalls the phone call when her sister told her she was pregnant. “I was excited because this was the first grandchild. Then I got off the phone and cried for two hours,” says Ms. Walsh.
Ms. Putman, 39 and a stay-at-home-mom in Bolingbrook, Ill., remembers that she too felt jealous—of her sister’s frequent travel and promotions in her marketing career. “The way my parents would go on and on about her really made me feel ‘less than,’ ” Ms. Putman says.
Ms. Walsh eventually married, had a son and named him Jack. Seven weeks later, Ms. Putman gave birth to a son and named him Jack. The discussion? “That was always my boy name.” “I never heard you say that.”
Sibling rivalry is a normal aspect of childhood, experts say. Our siblings are our first rivals. They competed with us for the love and attention of the people we needed most, our parents, and it is understandable that we occasionally felt threatened. Much of what is written about sibling rivalry focuses on its effects during childhood.
But our sibling relationships are often the longest of our lives, lasting 80 years or more. Several research studies indicate that up to 45% of adults have a rivalrous or distant relationship with a sibling.