To begin with, I have to let everyone know that I am an only child so I’ll never know what it’s like to have brothers or sisters; however, I do have an outsider’s view of sibling relationships! It’s actually really weird that I am an only child because my mom is the one of seven children, and my dad is the one of five. They often tell me they wanted more children before they had me. I guess I was a handful!
From what I have seen from my friends with siblings and even within my own family, it seems like the oldest child is usually meant to be the exemplary child, and the children born after the first are meant to follow in the older one’s footsteps. I am not saying that this happens in every family, but I have definitely noticed younger siblings compared to their older siblings in areas such as school and sports. I have also noticed that the youngest children are considered the “babies” and are often favored by the parents as much as the oldest child or even more. This is definitely the case on my father’s side of the family. My dad is the only boy and also the oldest child. My aunts often refer to him as the favorite along with their youngest sister while they, on the other hand, feel lost in the mix as middle children. A few of my aunts have also admitted to feeling like they were competing for the attention of their parents. This is the point where I’m not sure how sibling relationships work. Why do siblings feel like favorites exist within a family? Is it possible to love children equally? Also, do you believe that sibling rivalry exists within every sibling relationship to a certain extent?
I can't wait to read your replies! I hope everyone has a good rest of the week! :)
12 comments:
Yay!!! I’m the first one to reply!
I think siblings who feel like favorites are the ones that, in fact, find more favor with their parents because of how they act. From personal experience (I have an older brother, by a year and ten months) I think I am the more favored child so to speak, but if only because I can be less of a hassle. For example, inspiring me to get good grades in school was never a problem as it was for my brother (Matthew). Matthew had the attitude that if he thought it wasn’t worth his time, he didn’t do the work, hence not getting great grades in the classes he thought were, for lack of a better term, BS, whether it be his view of the teacher or the work they assigned, he just didn’t do the work. Also, he decided to ‘take a break’ from college this year to work on his own business, which, I’m not going to lie, he has some pretty genius ideas, but as far as a worrying point for my parents, he’s definitely not the one they can just not have to worry about on those points. On the other hand, I’m the child who always strived for the good grades no matter my thoughts on the teacher or the ridiculousness of the assignment. For this reason, I cause my parents infinitely less stress, making me, from my point of view, the favored child. Then, when I went to Panama, my Mom worried like no other. Holy cow…the first letter she sent me? I worried for her sanity and mental state over worry for me. Then, now, when I’m moving into the dorms, both my parents are feeling that “our little girl is moving out” type of thing. My Dad was pretty much in denial that my last night wasn’t really my last night at home. Having said this I think favored children has a lot to do with the way they get along with their parents and how they relate to their siblings as a stress factor. Hence I was always their “perfect little girl” I’m always seen in a favored light to them compared to Matthew who has always been a bit of a stress factor.
Onto the next note, I don’t think my parents love Matthew any less or me any more because of my more ‘perfect child syndrome’ I suppose you could call it. They love him for all the reasons that he is who he is, and they love me for all the reasons that make me who I am, for all the good and all the bad, and for the time being while he figures out his life (he hasn’t moved out) and I figure out mine (my major is undecided) they continue to support us. I’m sure in the future they will talk to him about what his future holds if he’s not going to school, and to me about what decision I’ll make for my future but I think they love us both equally in their own way. Then again I’ve always read about parents telling some kids that they were always their favorite, but this isn’t the same as love, for a parent’s love for their children is unconditional and can’t be measured in quantities of more or less, at least I don’t think in my family. (You never know though, if you looked into my Mom and Dad’s secret most inner thoughts, even I might be surprised).
Apparently my whole post was a bit large...
...here's the rest...
...As far as sibling rivalry goes, I think it is there to an extent in every sibling relationship because, as I said before, my parents probably compare my easy schooling days to Matthew’s more pulling out of hair school days and this probably showed when they gloated to their friends about my good grades, but then again this didn’t make Matthew strive any further to up his grades, he has always done his own thing. But I know Matthew and I certainly got into a certain amount of pretty heated spats as younger children and I don’t know if I would call it sibling rivalry, but it was definitely a disagreement between blood. I also think gender has a lot to do with sibling rivalry. I know one of my friends feels like she is always compared to her older sister (sever year difference) when it comes to the word perfection. She believes her sister has the perfect fairy tale ending with her husband and little girl, but I think she also has that biased opinion of being the sibling. So in this sense, sibling rivalry definitely always exists to some extent, whether it is more subtle or more pronounced I think it is unavoidable.
In terms of being the favorite for siblings, I agree with Meagan in that the favoritism is usually based on the way the children act. I have an older sister who is very smart, but she doesn't work until her full potential most of the time because she does just what she has to do to get by. I, on the other hand, work really hard in everything that I do because I want to succeed in everything. My parents tend to favor my commitment because I put a lot of effort into everything, and they tend to be frustrated with my sister who does not work up to her full potential most of the time even though she is fully capable. Then on the other hand, my sister has found her niche in medicine and is currently in paramedic school. My parents are so proud of her ability to jump into that world of blood and guts and achieve great things, while I couldn't see myself doing that. Therefore, I think my parents love us both equally no matter what, but I tend to get along with them better because I am more responsible. Just because I get along better with my parents does not mean they love me any more or her any less. Yes, I think sibling rivalry exists in every sibling relationship to an extent because one is always going to be better at something than the other, and at some point it will cause tension. But I think as siblings mature and go their own separate ways, sibling rivalry should (hopefully!) decrease. :)
People are naturally competitive and who can hope for more of an opportunity to make yourself feel better and just better period than competing against someone close to you in age and living with you? I have two sisters, one is thirteen years older me, so I never really had anything to do with her, but I had always noticed that my other older sister, Zoe, did her best to be better than me. It never really mattered to me because I was born with a natural easiness toward almost everything either of us tried together. And it can go both ways. I compete with her on a more subtle level. She, however, not me, the baby, has always been the "favorite." In my family, hard work is prized much more over raw talent and she worked and is working harder than anyone I know. I love my sister, but sometimes I can get so jealous of her work ethic and everything she has, that I just have to realize that no matter what I do, I will not live in her shadow. My eldest sister is a lawyer and Zoe is in school to be a doctor and I would be happy to be a photographer or a linguist.
It really helps that none of us live together anymore. Once we stopped having to share a bathroom, an office and family time with mom and dad.
Well, I personally know about the whole sibling rivalry thing. I'm my mom's only child but she married my step dad when I was about seven and he has two sons who are older then me. The whole thing would start when I was little. The step brother closer to my age would make me cry by using my hair brush to scratch his armpits. Yeah disgusting. When I was in the 8th grade, my step dad decided he wanted to adopt me which I was exstatic about. My step brothers however, told him that if he would actually go through with it then they would disown him. Yeah real mature right? They told him they disapproved because of the fact that it would be putting me "on the same level as them". Needless to say we're not BFF s lol!
Anyways I don't really feel it was me they were so threatened by. I think it started out that they didn't like my mom and felt that the only way to get to her was through me.
But just like you guys have said it is about the way a child acts and how much stress they give the parents. I myself have always gotten decent grades, and have never in my opinion been much of a hassle on my parents. We're not going to go into how they acted at my age. But also, their circumstances were different. They always thought their parents were going to get back together... or thats what they wished for.
Well, thats my lil story on this topic.
Well, I'm the oldest in my family and i have one younger brother. However, he is 8years younger than me. I feel that this makes it really hard to compare the two of us. We each do our own thing, and we also require different levels of attention. For the most part, my parents pay more attention to my brother, but not because they don't care but because i'm away in college. Senior year, when I was getting ready for college my parents were trying to focus on me, but my brother still got the attention he needed. However, i have noticed that younger siblings do try to live up to their older siblings, or be like them. I was always into soccer and other sports from a very young age. When my brother was finally old enough he went right into soccer, only because i was not because he had a passion for it like i did. Slowly, he's beginning to realize that it's not really his thing, and he's beginning to do stuff that he likes. For the most part, we don't try to compete with each other. I do however think that might be because of the age difference. If we were closer in age i feel that we would be way more competitive haha seeing as how i'm a very competitive person to begin with. Overall, I would say that sibling rivalries really depend on the family.
I'm the oldest in my family but I only have a younger brother (who is actually only two years younger than me so I definitely have a lot to say about sibling rivalry). I definitely understand where the stereotypes about "oldest child" and "younger child" come from since my brother and I are pretty much poster children for both. When I was growing up and all through highschool my parents always put a ridiculous amount of pressure on me to be a "good kid" and get good grades - I remember my sophmore year I went to bed in tears for a month because my dad was giving me so much grief for getting a C in my math class. Lo and behold two years later, my brother's getting an F in that same class and my dad didn't say a word to him about it. =/ My brother's always had it a lot easier than I have and to be perfectly honest I do resent him for it. Fundamentally, I think this is why we don't get a long at all - that and the fact that he's always trying to upstage me by joining the same clubs I was in and playing the same sports and even working at the same place where I am. So yeah, sibling rivalry is definitely not anything new to me. My parents also baby my brother, which I'm not sure is a good thing - my mom still helps him do all of his school projects even though I started doing mine on my own by middle school.
I really do think that it is possible to love children equally but parents will always show signs of favoritism in the child whom they can relate to better - I was always very independent growing up and I never really had a lot to do with my parents mainly because I found out from an early age that talking to them would only lead to a full on freak out about a little thing and them trying to control every aspect of my life. My brother on the other hand works a little too hard to be interested in the same things as my mom.
I can't really say that sibling rivalry is present in every sibling relationship just because each sibling relates to the other differently and I'm sure each has their own talents.
In some cases, I don't believe that favorites exist only to siblings, but that some parents do favorite. One of my mom's friend straight up and told me and my sisters and at the time I was shocked, but now that I think about it, it makes sense in a way. His 'favorite' was his baby, at the time she was a tiny girl you could throw around and loved being a little girl, his other child, a son, was handicapped. He was smart, good-looking, and an athlete but he was stuck in a wheelchair. So here is where I say, a family is just another relationship. It is just people interacting with people, most likely in a different way because they are family and they are almost forever. So of course, a parent can love their children equally, but probably not in the sense we wish. A parent may love this aspect in one and something different in the other. So siblings really shouldn't start rivals for this reason because everyone is different.
I feel like I can relate to this topic being that I have two older sisters. It seems to me that as time goes by, the sibling ideologies began to fade. I can't remember the last time someone referred to me as "the favorite". Come to think of it, I don't think they ever have. I also didn't face a lot of teacher comparison. I am so different from both of my sisters that we are seldom compared.
I think the idea of favoritism sprouts up whenever one sibling gets something the other sibling wants. I also think that rivalry is only apparent on occasion, especially in the earlier years of childhood. I haven't felt competitive in any way towards either of my sisters in years.
To wrap it up, I think that eventually siblings come to learn that they are all so different that no form of comparison is needed and that they should just be thankful for what they have-each other.
I agree with Taylor in that we all have a natural competitive quality to us. I think that sibling rivalry exists especially with more children in the family. I am the oldest in my family. I have been expected to set the example for my two younger siblings. It used to somewhat boggle me that they couldn't just learn things on their own, almost like why do I have to show you what to do? I never had that so I guess it's just difficult for me to understand why I have to set the standard, but as I got older and matured it felt good to be almost admired particularly by my little brother who is also 8 years younger than I am. I was class president and salutatorian, my sister is number one in her class as well as the vice president, and my brother always says he's going to combine us and be valedictorian and class president. It makes me so proud that he is ambitious at such a young age and that I helped to inspire that. However there were times when sibling rivalry has caused some fights. My mom always says I love you equally, but differently. This is true but sometimes when I was her "big girl" but my sister was her "baby girl" and my brother was her "baby boy" I wanted to be her baby to. They've always seen me as the big girl which has been beneficial to me, but I couldn't always see that. My sister and brother are somewhat babied and that has had a negative impact on our relationships at times, but as we are all growing up it has become less. It's interesting to look at the subject of siblings from a psychological point of view. I was in a lecture from a college psychology professor last year and it is crazy the personality traits and thoughts held by categorized "oldest," "middle," and "youngest" children and how similar they are depending on the status within the children of the family. My sister also took the class the year after I did and we both could relate to the categories we belong to.
I am also an only child actually so i completely understand the perplexities of watching families with multiple children! Siblings seem to have a relationship to which their is no substitute; they are both constantly united by their bond as siblings, as well as constantly using the other sibling's existence to their advantage, which frankly makes so sense to me. To be honest the only experience I've had that comes to mind after reading this post is an experience I had while being in a sorority in Boston. My second year at Northeastern University and my second year as a proud member of Sigma Delta Tau ( UNM doesnt have this sorority as a random side note haha), I went through the recruitment process or 'Rush' as it's technically called, on the other side, as a recruiter rather than a recruitee. Well once all was said and done and we had our new pledge class, it was time to pick our little sisters (for those of you unfamiliar with greek life terminology, getting a little sister or becoming a big sister is kind of like a mentor type thing, your 'big' is an older girl in the chapter who sort of helps guide you through life). As we had an abormally large pledge class, I incidentally ended up with twins ( 2 little sisters within the pledge class). Now at certain points within the pledging period I gave my littles presents as a congratulatory thing, and as I was shopping, it dawned on me how difficult it is to get presents for 2 people who mean equally much to you, and who both are completely different people! I mean I couldn't get 2 of the same thing because they were such different girls, and I couldn't get one girl a present that was more expensive than the other girls, and yet I wanted both of them to love what I had given them without having the other one wish they had gotten what the other girl had. It was surprisingly difficult as lame as it is to say! Anywho, long story short, I sort of came to a realization that that must be what it is like for parents on say Christmas, or birthdays; to have to constantly make an attempt to give equal attention, equal gifts, equal love must truly be difficult as a parent as to try to avoid sibling rivalry.
Surprisingly, I haven't experienced much sibling rivalry. I have two older brothers who all went to the same schools as I, but luckily we are all interested in different topics and were, therefore, involved in different clubs throughout middle and high school. We also had different teachers for the most part, so I never got much of that "Oh, you must be Brian's sister"--probably also because we have a larger age difference. I just turned 18 and my brothers are 23 and 26; maybe the memories from my brothers had faded by the time I filtered through their old teachers.
Anyway, like I mentioned before, the fact that all three of us are interested in different things has really helped prevent rivalry. My oldest brother played football in high school, my middle brother played guitar, and I mostly did drama and soccer. This way, we were all able to excel in our particular areas without having to compete with each other. I never thought about it before, but I think it's really great that we are lucky enough to have different interests, but still have similarities and get along.
One thing that has begun to set us apart as we grow older is our relationship to our mom. Since my dad passed away we all kind of search for that parental love and affection, but my mom can also be...challenging (I mean that in the best way possible). You might think that with an eight year difference between me and my oldest brother, we might have trouble getting along, but we have very similar personalities. We are both a bit more outgoing and wild, while my middle brother Colin is much, much more introverted. Because of this, he never argues with my mom, which has caused me and Brian to believe that he is our mom's "favorite." I haven't yet decided whether we are joking about that or not, but I think we are.
I think that it is absolutely possible to love children equally. As others have mentioned, I think that each child is merely loved for their specific talents, personalities, and ideas, so that each children is given the same amount of love, but perhaps for different reasons. I hope that makes sense...
It was really interesting to read everyone's responses. Great topic!
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