I recently arranged to have dinner with my brother and sister. No big occasion. Just a casual pub meal on a normal weeknight. As the eldest, my sister naturally chose the venue. As the youngest, my brother kept us entertained. Me, the middle child, I mostly sat and listened. It was fun. We caught up on news, reminisced, laughed and, true to form, studiously avoided any old hurts.
As Catherine Carr reminds me in this lively and revealing book on the ins and outs of siblinghood, these two people have known me longer than almost anyone on the planet. When my parents pass, no one but them will understand what I mean by ‘guggy’ (a ragged baby blanket that never left my side) nor recall the giddy excitement of spending our sweetie money after Sunday morning swimming. (Dad: ‘20p each; no chewing gum.’)
Yet, oddly, in the 30-plus years since we left home, we’ve barely met up just the three of us. It’s not that we don’t get on. We do. But life is busy, and we live in different places, and we each have our families now, and, well, time passes, distances grow and the bonds forged over fights about who gets what seat in the car gradually begin to dissipate. Counter to what we’re told, and duly tell ourselves, ‘blood ties do not necessarily guarantee intimacy’, Carr sagely notes.
Who’s the Favourite? is not the first book on sibling relationships, but it’s one of the few to interrogate the theme through the prism of siblings themselves. Under Sigmund Freud’s influence, family dynamics tend to be viewed in a vertical dimension – i.e. child-to-parent and vice versa. Carr’s insight is to see the richness that also lies in the horizontal plane. How do the roles we are assigned vis-à-vis our siblings (‘the clown’, ‘the golden child’, ‘the black sheep’) carry over into adulthood? What internal factors in this family subset – the watchful care, the jealous rivalry, the private tensions – persist after siblings have gone their separate ways?
A radio documentary maker and presenter, Carr writes not from the vantage point of a subject expert but rather as a sibling herself. This is infinitely preferable, offering us the opportunity to walk alongside her as she explores a status that 80 per cent of us share and which shapes us inescapably. Not unusually, Carr’s story of siblinghood is far from straightforward. Her parents divorced when she was 11, leaving her and her older sister to grow up with their father, and her much younger sister to be raised by her mother (who, to complicate matters further, lived overseas). Later, four step-siblings would be added to the roster of horizontal relations. Her experience of sisterhood, in short, was ‘knotty’.
This is no overly self-analytical account, however. In fact, with the exception of a few well-placed anecdotes, Carr remains admirably detached from a topic that clearly moves her. Instead, she passes the baton to a wide array of specialists to lay out the latest thinking on inter-sibling relations. Enter terms such as ‘familect’ (language known only within the family), ‘the Cain complex’ (sibling feuding) and ‘parentification’ (taking responsibility for a younger sibling). One of the most powerful ideas is that of ‘deidentification’, whereby children seek to win their parents’ attention by choosing a particular trait or skill as theirs. ‘To be loved for who you are,’ the theory runs, ‘you must be seen as truly distinct from your siblings.’
By the age of 18 we will already have spent 80 per cent of the time we’ll ever spend with our siblings
Carr also embraces the smorgasbord of sibling possibilities, with separate chapters on steps and halves, estrangement and bereavement. Ever attentive to the psychological sensitivities of her subject matter, she is at her empathetic best when discussing growing up with a brother or sister with additional needs. The able-bodied sibling often ends up caught between a rock and a hard place, valued for requiring less than their affected sibling, but having more asked of them. The stomach punch is in the name, ‘glass siblings’ – because their parents ‘see straight through’ them.
According to the wisdom of the internet, by the age of 18 we’ll already have spent 80 per cent of the time we’ll ever spend with our siblings. So, can we later repair any strains or reverse a sense of distance? Carr is confident that we can, but is largely unspecific about how. This is a weakness if you’re hoping for self-help, but a bonus if you’re not. Her primary advice is to ask our siblings about shared childhood memories. Rarely do these coalesce, she theorises. So, by hearing our siblings’ version of events, a space emerges to correct misunderstandings and, if necessary, reframe unwanted or unfair labels carried through into adulthood.
Carr has clearly hit on a highly evocative and curiously under-discussed subject. Just the word ‘sister’ or ‘brother’ touches something deep. The bare mention sparks stories and lets loose confidences (try it and see). All siblings should read this book. But even if they don’t, the title alone will go a long way to achieving its aims. ‘So, sis, which of us really is the favourite?’
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