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My Brother’s Keeper: From Sibling Violence to Brotherly Love

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As recently as the 19th century, Western societies lived by an unspoken pact: what happened in the family stayed in the family. Scandal, and even violence, was nobody else’s business and was best hidden from the public so that the illusion of wholesome, happy and healthy family relationships could be maintained.
Gradually, however, cracks began to appear in society’s veneer, and the image of the modern flourishing family gave way to a more nuanced portrait. First, seemingly isolated incidents of child abuse intruded on public awareness, prompting the establishment of a society for child protection in America by 1875, and a similar society in Britain by 1884. The exposure of marital violence was less forthcoming despite the efforts of early women’s movements. Nearly a century passed before the first shelter for battered women opened in England and its founder, Erin Pizzey, published Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear (1974), which would spread awareness of domestic violence across Europe. The next year, British geriatric physician G.R. Burston described a phenomenon he called “granny battering,” corresponding to what American practitioners had been calling “battered old person syndrome.”
But there was yet another skeleton to be discovered in the family closet. In 1980 a groundbreaking study, known as the National Family Violence Survey, would be published in the United States under the title Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family; it would reveal that—of all forms of family violence—the most prevalent was that which occurs between siblings.
This discovery remains well worth looking into, because despite reductions in birth rates throughout much of the world, the majority of children have brothers and sisters. Even in China, single-child policies have not been widely implemented outside urban areas. And rather than being immune to sibling violence, single children may suffer indirect but significant effects, since those who are violent toward siblings also tend to be violent toward dating partners and peers.
But what is sibling violence? Don’t all children quarrel and even fight occasionally? Isn’t it an overreaction to classify aggressive behavior between siblings as violence? Where is the line between “normal” sibling conflict and abusive behavior, and how and when should parents intervene?
Oddly enough, despite the surprising finding of the National Family Violence Survey, these questions went largely unconsidered for some time by researchers in their understandable zeal to study forms of domestic violence that had already been accepted as social problems. Sibling violence was easily shrugged off as little more than an exaggerated form of sibling rivalry, a concept that in some circles is considered “Darwinian common sense.” Sibling aggression, bullying and even murder, after all, are certainly not unusual in nature, where in some species the wild young compete to the death for the sole right to the survival resources provided by their parents. Thus the terms “sibling” and “rivalry” were nearly inseparable for decades, particularly in Western cultures, forming the basis of perhaps the most popular view of the sibling relationship.
Interestingly, the first crime described in the Bible is fratricide: a jealous Cain kills his more successful brother, Abel, and when asked his whereabouts, Cain disdainfully responds, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” Clearly he thinks not.
Later in the same book, Genesis, a younger brother (Jacob) cheats his older brother (Esau) out of his inheritance, and a few short chapters farther on, Jacob’s older sons throw their paternally favored brother, Joseph, into a pit and conspire to kill him. In a twist that hints at the complexity possible in sibling relationships, one of the brothers, Reuben, hatches a private plan to return and save Joseph, but he is unable to intervene before the others sell the boy into slavery. Joseph ultimately repays his brothers with kindness, saving their lives in the face of drought and almost certain starvation. But it is the early rivalry between them that tends to be remembered, reinforcing commonly held stereotypes about the nature of sibling relationships.
At the other extreme, the relationship between twins has enjoyed a far more benign reputation. Stories abound of seemingly telepathic twins whose bonds—spiritual and physical—were forged in the womb, who enjoy a harmonious mind meld of the kind that is assumed to be forever beyond the reach of ordinary siblings not fortunate enough to be endowed with a real-life mirror image.
The reality, of course, is that twins can be plagued by competitive and even violent relationships just as singletons can enjoy warm, supportive bonds. But it was perhaps not until Stephen P. Bank and Michael D. Kahn published the 1982 edition of The Sibling Bond, a collection of their research into the complexities of sibling interactions, that these polarized stereotypes were seriously challenged by researchers. Further, Bank and Kahn’s contention that parents are not actually a child’s only significant influence inspired later researchers to explore the rich variety of emotional, developmental and other needs that sibling relationships can fulfill, leading many to regard brothers and sisters as potentially important attachment figures—different from parents, but no less influential. As we will see, the findings of these studies in terms of the influence of sibling relationships on personality development and even resilience raise serious questions about whether and how far parents should tolerate conflict and aggression between their children.
The same body of research also underscores that it isn’t enough for parents to discourage negative interactions between siblings. Just because children don’t lash out at one another overtly doesn’t mean they feel warmly toward one another—and it’s the degree of warmth in a sibling relationship rather than the mere absence of negativity that predicts children’s behavioral, emotional and social adjustment. This isn’t to say that children who feel warmth toward one another will never experience conflict, of course; the goal for parents is to help children increase their ability to resolve conflict reasonably quickly and restore an atmosphere of active support. This may require parents to change their expectations: instead of brushing off hitting, name-calling and shunning as harmless behaviors, parents ideally would make it clear that they expect their children to treat each other with warmth and affection, and would reward such behavior when it occurs spontaneously.
Obviously it is in a parent’s best interest to aim for this: few parents take pleasure in presiding over constant squabbling. More important, it’s in the children’s best interest too. Sibling relationships are likely to be the most enduring they will have in their lifetime. Like our parents, siblings are party to our early experiences, but barring unnatural death, they are likely to remain part of our lives much longer, outliving parents by 20 years or more. In addition, if siblings share both parents with us, we will typically have about 50 percent of our DNA in common. That means they are genetically more like us than anyone else on earth other than our parents. Considering that these relationships can contribute tremendously to the stores of resilience that will help carry us through the adverse events that are an inevitable part of life, it makes sense to ensure that they are as supportive and nurturing as possible. Fortunately, research suggests that even though there will always be some elements outside their control, parents are capable of exerting a powerful influence over whether their children will develop positive or negative relationships, either of which can have a lasting effect on the child’s worldview and corresponding mental health persisting long into adulthood.

The Key to Happy Relationships? It’s Not All About Communication

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If couples were paying any attention during the past few decades, they should be able to recite the one critical ingredient for a healthy relationship — communication. But the latest study shows that other skills may be almost as important for keeping couples happy.
While expressing your needs and feelings in a positive way to your significant other is a good foundation for resolving conflicts and building a healthy relationship, these skills may not be as strong a predictor of couples’ happiness as experts once thought.
In an Internet-based study involving 2,201 participants referred by couples counselors, scientists decided to test, head to head, seven “relationship competencies” that previous researchers and marital therapists found to be important in promoting happiness in romantic relationships. The idea was to rank the skills in order of importance to start building data on which aspects of relationships are most important to keeping them healthy. In addition to communication and conflict resolution, the researchers tested for sex or romance, stress management, life skills, knowledge of partners and self-management to see which ones were the best predictors of relationship satisfaction. Couples were asked questions that tested their competency in all of these areas and then queried about how satisfied they were with their relationships. The researchers correlated each partner’s strengths and weaknesses in each area with the person’ relationship satisfaction.
Not surprisingly, those who reported communicating more effectively showed the highest satisfaction with their relationships. But the next two factors — which were also the only other ones with strong links to couple happiness — were knowledge of partner (which included everything from knowing their pizza-topping preferences to their hopes and dreams) and life skills (being able to hold a job, manage money, etc.).
Couples counselors, however, rarely address these two areas, as the focus on strengthening relationships has been on improving communication to reduce destructive behavior and to build support and comfort for each other. “For the last 25 years,” says Tom Bradbury, a veteran couples researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, “the prevailing attitude has been that relationships need to meet our emotional needs.” To be successful, however, he’s also found that relationships need to function in more practical, and perhaps mundane ways as well.
And learning more about your partner, says the study’s lead author Robert Epstein, a professor of psychology at the University of the South Pacific, in Fiji, could be relatively easy if people (men especially, since they scored worse in this area) took the trouble to find out, remember and put to use such relatively simple information as the names of their partner’s relatives and the dates of birthdays and anniversaries. Even more important, Epstein says, is knowing such critical things as whether your partner wants children. While his study did not separate trivial from such profound knowledge, he says that the two are strongly linked.
While other marriage researchers agree that forgetting things like birthdays or food preferences can be annoying and detrimental to a relationship, they believe the importance of life skills that was revealed in the study is telling.
“It’s an old idea, really,” says Bradbury. “In 1900 a woman or man would think, ‘My partner must be able to provide for me.’ ‘She must be able to help me plant and dig up the crops.’” If the couple had this foundation, they’d consider themselves lucky if they also got their emotional needs met. In Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, historian Stephanie Coontz traces the gradual erosion of this old idea of marriage back about 200 years in Western society as cultural expectations about marriage changed from one rooted in kinship, property and utility to one in which people were expected to get nearly all of their emotional needs met by one person.
For today’s couples interested in improving their relationships, say the study’s authors, therapists might consider going back to the basics and incorporating more practical social skills into their discussions. And that may include referring those who lack these skills to money managers or career coaches. “Communication skills are necessary,” says Lisa Neff, couples researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, “but they’re not sufficient when couples are under stress.”
It’s important for couples to know how the outside world — whether they can get a job, whether their kids can play outside safely or go to a good school — will affect their relationship even if they have good life skills and good communication skills. Strong relationships, says Bradbury, recognizes how pressures outside of home and the relationship can influence, and even break down good communication skills.
“Outside,” Bradbury says, “there is a real world that impinges on us.” To deal with it takes not only communication, but also an understanding that even the strongest communication networks among partners can falter and when they’re under these intense external pressure. The strategy he suggests for couples he counsels is to join forces rather than turn away from each other. “It’s not you against each other; it’s you against the world,” he says.