History of Sibling Relationships and Roles Over the Twentieth Century

Sibling relationships have always been a large part of how families function. Throughout centuries of American history, children had different roles to help provide and support their families. In American families, sibling relationships have been the center of family structures and have helped build successful family relationships. Specifically, during the twentieth century, the roles of siblings, their responsibilities, and conflicts caused within changing family structures has shifted in drastic ways. The beginning of the twentieth century brought new industrial movements and societal views that changed family structures and expectations on children. Sibling relationships and responsibilities changed immensely due to these historical events. In response to these changes, family dynamics and expectations shifted to create new conflicts between siblings, such as sibling rivalry, which had not previously existed. Over the span of the twentieth century, the importance and value of roles between siblings changed due to changes in society’s environments, family structures, dynamics between families, shifts in children’s expectations, sibling responsibilities, roles, and new conflicts parents had to learn to combat. It can be argued that in the twentieth century as cultural changes became reflected in family dynamics, the role of the sibling became less important and valued with the focus away from duties in the home to independence of the individual. Siblings once had household duties and responsibilities to look after each other, but shifting expectations over this century turned siblings into separate individuals who wanted separate things and had less responsibility towards each other. Though others could argue that sibling relationships were important for the survival of the family and remained dependent on each other, the cultural shift brought about the competitive focus on the individual. Only towards the end of the century did a trend of a re-emergence of emotional bonding between siblings reappear. 

In the end of the nineteenth century, Americans experienced a declining birthrate and interest in the birth order of kids as parent’s education increased and more families moved to urban life. An 1890 Parental Families of American survey stated that family dynamics changed due to, “the educational level of American parents increased at an accelerating rate from 1890 . . . and the proportion growing up on farms decreased steadily”. This was due to the changing needs for familial support and roles children started to play in the family due to the environment in which they lived. In the late 1800s, there was a large impact in interests and strategies for birth order because resources were reserved for the eldest child. A 1874 study, “concluded that the overrepresentation of firstborns . . . was due to the rights and responsibilities conferred on them by laws and mores around primogeniture”. More rights were given to firstborn children, which impacted sibling’s relationships between each other and individual adjustments in response to differences in privileges. As a result of birth order and special treatments lawfully given, “siblings [could] have direct effects on one another’s development when they serve as social partners, role models . . . such as by serving as building blocks of the family structure, holding a favored family niche, or diluting family resources”. In a quickly shifting society of changing rules of children’s roles, sibling relationships started to become slightly impacted with the emergence of favored siblings, children who still supported the family, and increase in resources needed for families to provide for their children. Experts offered advice for parents of siblings because “starting in the 1830s, they advised parents on how to address sloth, boasting, precocious sexuality, and carelessness, but included nothing about sibling jealousy”. The issues that appeared in the turn of the twentieth century had not been seen in the 1800s and were caused by the societal shifts and family restructuring.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, urbanization and the continuation of the Industrial Revolution brought more families to live in city environments. Due to the changing of community, “As the child’s value shifted from economic to emotional, the gains of nineteenth-century reform encouraged many to anticipate further improvements in welfare and education”(5). There was an immediate societal shift in how to view children and their responsibilities. It became more important to focus on children’s emotional wellbeing, which created more individual expression of feelings between siblings and parents. From a community where siblings each had a role to depend on one another and work to provide for their family to an environment that provided space for attention and individual expression, siblings had to learn to share resources and attention. Establishment of the National Child Labor Committee and state legislations that prioritized education for children shifted the nation’s view of the needs for children, affecting sibling relationships. By 1910 a historian states, “. . . agencies in America targeted various other aspects of child welfare, from educating parents (particularly women) on hygiene and child-rearing, to raising the age for compulsory schooling, instituting school nutrition programs, and recognizing child rights”(6). These were important changes in society because they began to give children more freedom and more time with their siblings. The early 1900s brought about more problems caused by low mortality rates for newborns, financial struggles, and marital problems, which affected sibling dynamics. In the beginning of the twentieth century, “the United States had the highest divorce rate . . . and one child in ten lived in a single-parent home. Hundreds of thousands of children spent part of their childhood in orphanages, not because their parents were dead, but because their mother and father could not support them”(7). Under these conditions, siblings got split up or abandoned, which left them struggling emotionally and physically to adapt. Children’s roles within their family changed in confusing ways and they often lost their support system with the changing issues of the economy. In fact, “Between 35 and 40 percent of all children lost a parent or a sibling before they reached their twenties”(8).

In the early 1920s, the end of World War I brought about new home ownerships and more structured families and advocates for child labor. Most proponents argued that no one had the right to stop children who wanted to work to support their families, which caused conflicts between elder and younger siblings. Simultaneously, the larger extent of society faced the “acceptance of the idea of the economically worthless child [that] went hand-in-hand with a growing tendency to conceive of children as emotionally priceless”(9). This was a big change for siblings' roles and relationships because the eldest sibling no longer needed to serve as a working role model for their younger siblings. The majority of American society advocated “that the child should be given ‘greater freedom from parental control, greater latitude in expressing their feelings, and increased interaction of adolescents with peers’ ”(10). Instead, there was a shift for oldest siblings to become caretakers of their younger siblings, but larger freedom of individual expression. Family structure shifted from the idea of “The Victorian household in which the husband reigned supreme [and] gave way to a more democratic ideal, which scholars refer to as ‘the companionate family’ "(11). The idea of a companionate family was a “type of marriage [that] embraced a modern egalitarian idea, where couples controlled their fertility and rejected patriarchal family models, envisioning marriage as an equal partnership committed to the fulfillment of each individual’s emotional and sexual needs”(12). In this new idea of the family, the main purpose of having children was for growing emotional bonds and attachment, which increased the love and care that was solely devoted to their children. Family dynamics became closer, while siblings received motherly attention constantly and started to create differences between siblings, such as chances for competition. The next impactful historical event in 1929 that affected the stability of families “was tested by the Great Depression, as unemployment and lower wages forced Americans to delay marriage and having children”(13). As a result of the financial struggle, “Many children took part-time jobs and many wives supplemented the family income”(14). Responsibilities of children once again changed, which deeply impacted sibling relationships because in order to live, older siblings had to take care of the younger siblings while parents went to work.

This time period brought about the first signs of sibling rivalry and jealousy due to the lessened emphasis of siblings as role models and financial supporters of the family. Sibling jealousy was a concept termed in the 1920s that reportedly began due to the “changing family size, which heightened actual sibling rivalry over previous levels; expert reassessments of early childhood; and a growing desire to produce smooth, conflict-free personalities as part of a more managerial, service-oriented economy”(15). Siblings faced tensions within the family size, desire for more attention and favoritism, while presenting parents with hardships of learning how to handle these children in an emotionally-oriented society. The 1920s and 1930s brought about large issues within the family life and community that included, “The decline in the birth rate, the disappearance of adults other than parents from the normal household, and emphasis on intense maternal affection [that] may well have created more childish anxiety about the arrival of a new sibling than had been common before”(16). Due to the changes in society’s norms for children’s roles and the increased demand from parents to provide, the fight for attention and jealousy caused from this conflict often brought more issues for each child as an individual and with adding a new child to the family. These outside circumstances caused “a real change in emotional relations among siblings, as children bonded together less; new emotional tensions in family life that could alter wider parental perceptions of children; a growing desire among adults to shun jealousy as a childish emotion”(17). All of these consequences of the shifts in a new decade of family structures, child labor laws, and changing values of children’s purposes all caused rifts and challenges within families, making siblings have a hard time adjusting.

The 1930s brought about new financial difficulties as families could no longer afford their own houses and struggled with providing resources for their children. Along with these financial challenges, “a lack of money and space required households to include extended family members, encouraging intimacy and giving children numerous adult caretakers at home”(18). Though parents were required to work and spend more time outside of the house, children benefited from other family members moving in together and spending time with them. Siblings were forced to be brought closer together in the midst of rivalries when competing for adult attention. Parents were unsure of how to raise their kids, divide attention, and deal with the conflicts of sibling jealousy towards each other. Instead of siblings finding kinship in each other, the tendency was to separate as much as possible to the point that “decreased parental supervision was already causing anxiety about moral development”(19). Financial deficits and new living arrangements changed family dynamics and caused grave parental frustration and confusion for how to combat this jealousy.

During the decade of the 1930s, experts began offering tips for how parents could combat jealous tactics. Parents worried even more because jealous actions between siblings would negatively impact individual personality traits. Families with young children who were jealous of each other worried jealousy would cause, “physical injury as well as lasting unpleasantness [that] might result from uncurbed jealousy, and as a problem for the adult personality if jealousy were allowed to fester”(20). Not only did siblings face dislike towards each other, but parents began to worry about their children’s relationships with each other, as individuals, and affected personalities that turned violent. In fact, “Large numbers of American parents, by the 1930s, dutifully listed their concern about sibling rivalry as one of their chief worries”(21). With the confusion and irritation of the drama and difficulty caused from siblings, parents tried to help diffuse tensions using strategies to lessen jealousy. However experts explained, “Unless the parents recognize that jealousy will normally appear, and are prepared for it, strong feelings of hostility often develop which continue to make life miserable for both [rivalrous] children over many years”(22). Because parents had to leave to work often, they were often unprepared for dealing with these issues and started giving up on their children, causing lifelong rivalry and unhealthy reliance between siblings.

After the start of World War II in 1939, most fathers were sent to fight in the front line, leaving their children behind without a father figure and their wives without a partner to raise the children. Mothers had to work and spend more time away from their children who already suffered from fighting for attention, so “character-shaping influences increasingly came from outside the home and left children unattended”(23). During the mid-1940s, birth rates spiked where the concept of the ideal child became a central focus of society. This concept places more pressure on children and emphasizes the way they treat their siblings. Conflicts continued to rise over favoritism and attention, while parents tried to find peaceful ways for siblings to get along. In 1945, influential figures like Dr. Spock wrote articles on suggestions for how mothers could combat jealousy and raise babies with “mechanisms that allow for a full measure of empathy, tenderness, and responsibility toward their children”(24). After World War II, there was a surplus of money where parents could spoil their children with material items and shower them with more love and attention. 

Entering into the 1950s, American families shifted once more to the idea of an All-American Nuclear family. This modernized family structure “put an emphasis on the family unit and marriage . . . [had] younger marriages, more kids, and fewer divorces . . . and the birth rate doubled”(25). Families had more money after the war and could afford to move into houses in suburban neighborhoods. This structure allowed for an intimate environment, influencing togetherness, and “the family became a ‘haven in a heartless world,’” as well as “an alternative world of satisfaction and intimacy for adults and children that had experienced the ravages of wartime”(26). The ideals of closer family brought about an acceptance among siblings for their happier and peaceful lives. After facing the hardships of war, families focused more on taking a greater part in their children’s lives, causing siblings to develop friendships with each other. There was an increase of parents socializing their children with each other so that they would grow life-long bonds with their siblings and flourish in adulthood. Children were seen as the center of the family and “became emotional rather than economic assets for the first time”(27). Siblings began to look after each other in this interconnected environment.

Leave It To Beaver (Lost Episode) "Beaver's Savings Bond" (Time Clip 2:45)

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, there was a larger focus on education and rise of anxieties for correct parental techniques. Children had more freedom of expression and eldest siblings had more power in a family dynamic where experts caused doubts in parents. One American parent remembered that “‘children need to be able to freely express their feelings’. In 1969, when Willie and I became parents, we believed that . . . our first child ruled our family with his habit of freely and loudly expressing his feelings whenever we failed to obey him”(28). Parents were not prepared for their children having so much power within the families, and struggled with separating older and younger siblings from ordering each other around. They turned to experts who “caused parents to question their own child-rearing techniques''(29). Parents became overprotective, trying to combat their child’s overpowering natures by trying to shelter them as much as possible. Siblings were more likely to fight back against parents, forming alliances between each other in a “century marked by frequent outbursts of panic that children were being abducted and molested by strangers”(30). This was also a time in history where married women began working in offices and joining the workforce with full-time jobs, spending time away from their kids, giving more time for siblings to band together or fight each other.

From 1980 to the end of the twentieth century, there was an acute rise in poverty and decreases in federal funding for families, which caused deaths of millions of children affected by disease. A New York Times survey from 1982 found that, “The survey concluded that there were 29.3 million people living in poverty in 1980, up from 26 million in 1979”(31). As families struggled to support their children, siblings experienced arguments amongst each other, but also developed a common ground by learning from each other. By the end of the twentieth century, “Siblings’ extensive contact and companionship during childhood and adolescence—increasingly outside the direct supervision of parents or other adults—provides ample opportunity for them to shape one another’s behavior and socio-emotional development and adjustment”(32). Siblings began to affect each other directly while adults and guardians spent more hours working and away from their kids. Siblings found common ground and raised each other in the absence of their parents, creating a common value of friendship among siblings. While forced to spend more time together due to the family roles, “Through their conflicts, for example, siblings can develop skills in perspective taking, emotion understanding, negotiation, persuasion, and problem solving”(33). Parents slowly took less of a role in helping guide their children, compared to how older and younger siblings built each other’s qualities and influenced their morals.

The twentieth century was an impactful century of large changes for family structures, economic and political changes, and changing values that caused different roles within family dynamics and sibling relationships. These changes directly affected children and taught them how to survive the constantly changing environments. From necessary sibling bonds and chores to siblings often growing apart for reasons of jealousy and fighting for attention, the role of close siblings as family providers became less valued as siblings found their independent identities separate from each other. The value and role of sibling relationships distanced, competed, and finally became closer with the newfound freedom of individual expression and a chance at a sociable childhood. Historical changes throughout twentieth century America oversaw dramatic shifts in which parents and siblings struggled to deal. This proves that the importance of sibling relationships had a more crucial purpose of work and looking out for each other at the beginning of the century, but shifted to a reinvented relationship of competitive rivals who held distant bonds and focused on a separate sense of self.

Footnotes

1. James A. Davis,“The Parental Families of Americans in Birth Cohorts 1890—1955: A Categorical, Linear Equation Model Estimated from the NORC General Social Survey.” JSTOR: Vol. 9, No. 4 (Dec., 1981), pp. 395-453 (59 pages). 

2. Susan M McHale, Kimberly A Updegraff, and Shawn D Whiteman, “Sibling Relationships and Influences in Childhood and Adolescence.” Journal of Marriage and the Family. U.S. National Library of Medicine, October 1, 2012. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956653/.

3.  McHale, Updegraff, Whiteman, “Sibling Relationships and Influences in Childhood and Adolescence.”

4.  Livia Gershon, “The Invention of Sibling Rivalry - Jstor Daily.” JSTOR Daily Politics and History, September 20, 2019. https://daily.jstor.org/the-invention-of-sibling-rivalry/.

5.  David Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.” Historical essays: The Twentieth-Century child. Accessed March 21, 2023. https://www.representingchildhood.pitt.edu/twentycent_child.htm. 

6.  Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

7.  S. Mintz and S. McNeil, “Does the American Family Have a History? Family Images and Realities.” Digital History, 2018. https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/topic_display.cfm?tcid=74#:~:text=It%20was%20only%20in%20the,not%20in%20the%20libertine%20sixties.

8.  Mintz and McNeil, “Does the American Family Have a History? Family Images and Realities.”

9. Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

10.  Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

11.  Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

12. Emma Lucier-Keller, “Modern Marriage of the Twentieth Century: A Companionate Union.” Jane Addams Papers Project, December 13, 2018. https://janeaddams.ramapo.edu/2018/12/modern-marriage-of-the-twentieth-century-a-companionate-union/. 

13.  Clare M Stocker, Megan Gilligan, Eric T Klopack, Katherine J Conger, Richard P Lanthier, Tricia K Neppl, Catherine Walker O'Neal, and K A S Wickrama, “Sibling Relationships in Older Adulthood: Links with Loneliness and Well-Being.” Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43). U.S. National Library of Medicine, March 2020. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012710/.

14.  Stocker, Gilligan, Klopack, Conger, Lanthier, Neppl, O’Neal, Wickrama, “Sibling Relationships in Older Adulthood: Links with Loneliness and Well-Being.”

15.  Peter N Stearns, “The Rise of Sibling Jealousy in the Twentieth Century.” Symbolic Interaction 13, no. 1 (1990): 83–101. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.1990.13.1.83.

16.  P.N. Stearns, “Sibling Rivalry.” Sibling Rivalry - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. Encyclopedia of Human Behavior, 2012. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/sibling-rivalry. 

17.  Stearns, “The Rise of Sibling Jealousy in the Twentieth Century.”

18. Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

19. Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

20.  Stearns, “The Rise of Sibling Jealousy in the Twentieth Century.”

21. Stearns, “Sibling Rivalry.”

22. Stearns, “Sibling Rivalry.”

23. Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

24. Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

25.  Stocker, Gilligan, Klopack, Conger, Lanthier, Neppl, O’Neal, Wickrama, “Sibling Relationships in Older Adulthood: Links with Loneliness and Well-Being.”

26.  Stocker, Gilligan, Klopack, Conger, Lanthier, Neppl, O’Neal, Wickrama, “Sibling Relationships in Older Adulthood: Links with Loneliness and Well-Being.”

27.  Stocker, Gilligan, Klopack, Conger, Lanthier, Neppl, O’Neal, Wickrama, “Sibling Relationships in Older Adulthood: Links with Loneliness and Well-Being.”

28. John Rosemond, “Parenting: Child-Rearing Experts of '60s Spoiled Two Generations.” Arkansas Online, March 25, 2009. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2009/mar/25/parenting-child-rearing-experts-60s-spoil-20090325/. 

29. Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

30. Holzemer, “The Twentieth-Century Child.”

31.  A.P, “Census Bureau Reports 1980 Poverty Statistics.” The New York Times. The New York Times, August 22, 1982. https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/22/us/census-bureau-reports-1980-poverty-statistics.html.

32.  McHale, Updegraff, Whiteman, “Sibling Relationships and Influences in Childhood and Adolescence.”

33.  McHale, Updegraff, Whiteman, “Sibling Relationships and Influences in Childhood and Adolescence.”

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