Opinion
A silver lining as virus smooths over conflicts
When I was a toddler I fed my baby sister a stone. The stone was never found, despite a frantic search by my mother – did my sister eat it or did it fall from her pram to the lawn? We’ll never know, but for the spoiled and bossy two-year-old whose nose was firmly out of joint at the new arrival, it was a case of begin as you intend to go on.
A University of Cambridge study of 500 British families has so far found two-thirds reporting stronger sibling relationships and the potential for some good to come of this.Credit:Stocksy
For most of our young lives, until I left home at 17, my only sister and I existed in a state of unarmed conflict. Apparently sisters are supposed to be best friends, but we didn’t get that memo. More than half a century later, my sister, a gold medal grudge-bearer, accuses me of bullying her during our childhood – and I probably did.
It’s a cliche to say that time is the great healer, but as the years have gone by, we’ve become closer. And although we’ve not seen each other since early February, that’s never been more so than during this pandemic. Both single and living alone more than two hours drive apart, we have been each other’s greatest support. We are in daily touch, often several times in a day, sharing not only our horror at what is unfolding in our state and across the world, but the minutiae of our lives.
In an interview with Oprah.com about her book You Were Always Mom's Favorite! Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives, bestselling US author Deborah Tannen, who has two sisters, described the relationship between female siblings as “a built-in power struggle” and potentially fraught. She said: “Sisters, to me, are fascinating because it is a unique connection of the coming together of connection and competition.”
Even the title resonates – my sister has mentioned that she suspects one of our grandmothers favoured me. Our perception of who had it easier during our teenage years also differs; I say I had already fought the battles for her, while she, left alone in our rural home with our kind but strict parents while she finished high school, says my departure focused all their attention on her.
A review of the literature on sibling relationships in childhood and adolescence published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in 2012 found them shaped by individual, family, and “extrafamilial forces”.
In our adolescence, those forces included our dislike of the village and the school to which we had been transplanted by our parents when they moved farms in our early teenage years. With polar opposite personalities, rather than uniting in our unhappiness, we took it out on each other.
Now, the extrafamilial devastation being wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the threat to us magnified by our age brings new perspective. Youthful hurts and disagreements may not be forgotten, but in this new and frightening world their significance is diminished.
Already, there is significant research about the COVID-19 pandemic, its social destruction and impact on family well-being and dynamics. A University of Cambridge study of 500 British families has so far found two-thirds reporting stronger sibling relationships and the potential for some good to come of this. Media here and overseas have reported on the upending of sibling relationships by this new reality. Psychologist Sally-Anne McCormack told The Age some siblings are seeing their relationships evolve positively because being in isolation can make people more willing to listen, reflect and compromise.
Psychologist Sarah Eckel, writing in Psychology Today, describes how childhood dynamics can become toxic resentment, with about five per cent of Americans completely estranged from a sibling. Luckily, it never came to that for my sister and me. Rather, we fell into that category labelled “the rest” – that is, not highly supportive with frequent contact, but not negative either.
Research also shows that over time, relationships with siblings change – and sometimes it takes a personal tragedy. Luckily, that’s not the case here, but there is a tragedy unfolding, one that’s difficult to shoulder alone. It helps to share the excitement of my sister’s new cat, to share books, to separately watch Jamie’s lockdown cookery show then try the recipes and compare photographs, to be together apart.
Sue Green is a Melbourne journalist and writer.