The Facts About Sibling Estrangement

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While the hands-down winner of the most powerful mythologies associated with a familial role remains that of the mother, a close second is most certainly that of the sibling relationship. In part, because the sibling relationship has the potential to be the longest-lasting relationship of an individual’s life, sibling connections have long been mythologized as being central to not just a person’s identity but to their well-being.

If you question that, just think about the many years devoted to pitying the “poor” only child and their deprived situation, which, as it happens, turns out not to be true—thank you very much.

So strong is the cultural belief in the importance of sibling ties that we have turned sibling fractiousness and aggression into a “normal” occurrence and relabeled it “sibling rivalry,” in defiance of not just the Biblical cautionary tale of Cain and Abel but current psychological research, especially that of Dr. Jonathan Caspi.

That vision of happy siblings gathered around the holiday table á la Norman Rockwell remains the image to which the culture hews, despite what research—and many personal experiences—show. It’s worth noting that I have a sibling, nine years younger than I, from whom I have been estranged for many years. Historically, my estrangement from him was a function of my permanent estrangement from our mother, our sole surviving parent, but I can’t really say that we would not have ended up estranged anyway. That observation reflects what I have learned from others in the course of writing my books; we had too little in common except a set of shared parents, one of whom died when he was six and didn’t even remember. That parent, our father, was a formative influence in my life.

Humans are tribal by nature, and our belief in blood ties doubtless stretches back to the very beginning, as attested to by the oldest literature. Yet that literature also makes clear that blood ties do not guarantee likeness, agreement, or even alliance. Seen through the lens of DNA, a more modern version of blood ties, we share somewhere between 37 and 61 percent of our DNA with a sibling. By the way, even identical twins don’t necessarily share 100 percent of their DNA, which shows you that laypeople shouldn’t pay attention to Internet news that we share 50 percent of our DNA with bananas. Just making a point here as an English major.

But, of course, sibling relationships aren’t just about DNA. They are about shared experiences and experiences that aren’t shared even while growing up in the same family. They are about shared interests and interests that are hugely different, as well as other points of contiguity and distance.

What Research Reveals About Adult Sibling Relationships and Estrangement

While the research on sibling ties in childhood and adolescence is robust, including reams of information on the effect of parental favoritism, there’s nothing comparable when it comes to adult sibling relationships. A 2020 review of existing research by Megan Gilligan, Clara M. Stocker, and Katherine Jewsbury Conger noted that “generally” older adults reported having close relationships with siblings as well as maintaining contact, especially through social media. There are no percentages adduced to clarify the word “generally,” by the way. Some of the studies—such as those on continued contact between and among siblings after their parents have died—are contradictory, but it does appear that parents do play a role in keeping the fires of kinship burning, so their deaths may affect the siblings’ relationship.

Some of what we know about sibling estrangement comes from Lucy Blake’s 2022 study, which was based on an online survey; it’s important to note that the respondents were recruited from a pool of people who had already been part of Stand Alone, a community devoted to those who have experienced estrangement. Additionally, 88 percent of the participants were women. The most common reason cited for estrangement was a ripple effect from being estranged from a parent; that makes sense to me and also confirms my own anecdotal research about conflicting family narratives. The other most common reason given—no surprise here—was parental favoritism, both in childhood and adulthood; this, too, rings very true.

Perhaps the most important observation in this study isn’t about sibling estrangement but that the levels of connection between and among siblings varied far more than cultural tropes—or the “generally” statement adduced by the Gilligan study—would have us believe. Some respondents said they’d never felt close to their siblings or didn’t ‘know” them; others pointed to differing views, including politics.

A recent German study published by Karsten Hank and Anja Steinbach sheds a bit more light on the prevalence of sibling estrangement. The study was drawn from specific parts of the population, those born from 1971-1973, 1981-83, and 1991-1993, of a nationally representative survey conducted over the course of six years; the participants thus ranged in age from early 50s to early 40s to early 30s. The size of the respondent pool was over 10,000 sibling pairs.

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The researchers hoped not just to discover the rate of estrangement but whether sibling estrangement was more likely among certain groups (same-sex siblings, full-blood siblings vs. half-siblings, and the like). The working definition of “estrangement” was lack of contact or lack of emotional closeness.

While 75.5 percent of sibling pairs did not experience estrangement, 28.1 percent of respondents reported at least one period of estrangement from a sibling, and 14 percent reported multiple periods of estrangement. (It should be said that a pattern of cycling in and out of estrangement has been reported in adult child-parent estrangement, so this is to be expected.) Additionally, the researchers write, “Not only did older respondents in our sample report being estranged from siblings more often than younger ones, but we observed significant positive associations of disruptive family events (parental separation/divorce or death) and previous estrangement with the likelihood of being estranged in current interviews.”

Some Anecdotal Evidence Worth Considering

I’m personally not surprised that sibling estrangement is more common in older adults, in part because so many of these estrangements are a by-product or ripple effect of adult child-parental estrangement, and since the publication of my book, Daughter Detox, my own work has provided lots of anecdotal evidence that the recognition of parental mistreatment and abuse which propels estrangement comes relatively late in life. While some people recognize it in their 40s, the preponderance of women (and men) are in their 50s and older when they consider parental estrangement seriously or finally stop cycling through a pattern of estrangement and reconciliation. It then follows that sibling estrangement would, in fact, occur more with older adults.

We still don’t know the full extent of the prevalence of sibling estrangement, but it’s clear that it’s neither rare nor uncommon.

For more on sibling estrangement and why reconciliation is elusive, go here.

Copyright © 2023 by Peg Streep

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