Siblings Over History
18th century
- Traditional inheritance practices and marriage customs appear to have fostered sibling rivalry and conflict in early modern Western society.
- During the early colonial period, when high mortality rates and migration patterns frequently disrupted relationships between parents and children in South Carolina, siblings often turned to each other as the most reliable and enduring elements of the family
- Generally, however, eighteenth-century culture and society supported the development of strong and lasting sibling ties. As children and as adults, women deferred to fathers and husbands, but they related to brothers as equals and partners in family life.
- While the bonds between sisters and brothers challenged the prevailing gender norms, those between sisters anchored eighteenth-century female culture, and often represented the central relationships in women's lives. Adult women were frequently called upon to care for or educate younger sisters.
- Sisters close in age cherished lifelong intimacy as "best" friends, and young women found separation from a beloved sister painful and distressing, even when such separation resulted from ostensibly happy events such as courtship and marriage.
- Nineteenth-century sibling relationships in middle-class families reflect the influence of a family culture that stressed the spiritual nature of love; the importance of loving relationships in family life, particularly between mothers and children; and the importance of harmony, cooperation, and affection between siblings
- Intimate, lifelong relationships with sisters continued to play major roles in the lives of individual women, and in the nineteenth-century female world more generally.
- Young women frequently experienced severe emotional anguish when courtship and marriage displaced sibling bonds. Like their eighteenth-century counterparts, older children often took charge of younger siblings, and older sisters became surrogate mothers to younger sisters or stepsisters
- The turn of the twentieth century ushered in a new period in the history of sibling relationships. Although the birthrate in America had been declining since the first decade of the nineteenth century, small sibling sets of two or three only became common in the middle class around 1890, while rural and working class families tended to remain larger
- Furthermore, by the 1950s it was no longer common for children to assist in caring for younger siblings. Yet new conditions–more blended families and half-siblings, for example–could be conducive to sibling rivalry.
- While women began to work outside of the household, sisters were more likely to bond over taking the role of their mother in the home
- Sibling relationships are an immense part of everyday life
- Siblings are known as the "best friends."
- Sisters are known to be there for one another emotionally and form an everlasting bond even if they are separated geographically
- Studies show a positive correlation between sisters and happiness