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    The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us
    The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us
    The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us

    Written by Jeffrey Kluger

    Narrated by Pete Larkin

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Nobody affects us as deeply as our brothers and sisters-not parents, not children, not friends. From the time we-and they-are born, our siblings are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales. They teach us how to resolve conflicts and how not to, how to conduct friendships and when to walk away. Our siblings are the only people we know who truly qualify as partners for life.

    In this groundbreaking book, renowned science writer Jeffrey Kluger explores the complex world of siblings in a way that's equal parts science, psychology, sociology, and memoir. Based heavily on new and emerging research, The Sibling Effect examines birth order, ongoing twin studies, genetic encoding of behavioral traits, how emotional disorders can affect-and be affected by-sibling relationships, and much more.

    With his signature insight and humor, Kluger takes big ideas about siblings and turns them into smart, accessible writing that will help anyone understand the importance of siblings in our lives.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 20, 2011
    ISBN9781452673639
    The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us
    Author

    Jeffrey Kluger

    JEFFREY KLUGER is a senior writer at Time and the author of several books. He and his wife, Alejandra, live in New York.

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    Reviews for The Sibling Effect

    3/5

    6 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I'm surprised that this book has received low ratings, and to date, no reviews. My husband and I loved it, and I just added it to my Favorites collection. We gave copies of it to all three of his brothers, and our three daughters. I liked Kluger's blend of memoir and sociological studies about sibling relationships. Occasionally the chapters seemed over-longish and dragged a bit, but in general, I thought it was very well written. The author's family was dysfunctional, but the bonds between the brothers, and later half-brother and -sister have proven strong and lasting, as has my husband's with his brothers, coming from a very "functional" family. There was much truth, some new ideas, some old affirmations, and excellent anecdotes in this book and we would recommend it highly as a gift to one's siblings. It's a book that's lots of fun to talk about in the family.
    • 2/5
      The Sibling Effect begins with Kluger's personal observations of his relationship with his three brothers, and then Kluger tries to explain what he's observed using the relatively small and often contradictory research available about sibling relationships. The book would have worked better if he'd just picked one or the other, and probably would have worked best if he'd just chosen to make it a memoir and dropped the pretense of science entirely.

      Kluger appears to want to include all of the research he found and then, unwilling to restrict himself to one conclusion, he came to two or more contradictory conclusions. For example, in the chapter that discusses single-child families, within two pages he says first that only children are more socially adept because they spend more time alone than other children and then that only children are more socially adept because they spend almost all of their time with other children because their parents put them in full-time day care early on and later can afford to add hours of daily extracurriculars to their already full school day. So which is it? Do onlies spend lots of time alone, or do they spend hardly any time alone? And which is more socially beneficial, anyway? Or is it possible that for some people, alone time is better and for others, time in groups is better and that's why the research results are contradictory?

      Or maybe what's even more likely is that the researchers (not to mention Kluger himself) have difficulty designing studies and interpreting the results from outside of their own assumptions and biases about family relationships. The section about only children is one example of the class bias present throughout the book. Kluger seems to have difficulty seeing outside of a middle-/upper-middle-class lifestyle in which high-quality day care and a multitude of extracurricular activities are available to children.

      He also has the habit of taking a trait or situation, from postpartum depression to parental favoritism to sibling rivalry, and then attempting to argue that the trait or situation is beneficial from an evolutionary standpoint. Mostly this seems to play out in the idea that parents can minimize their losses/maximize their children's chance of reaching adulthood by funneling more resources to one or two of them and letting the others eke out what they can from the dregs. Humans aren't birds, and I don't think it's a very strong analogy to compare our child-rearing practices to eggs in a nest.

      Even with these irritations, I didn't hate the book. It helped me look at my relationship with my own children and the relationships within my family of origin with an eye for favoritism, which was interesting if not directly helpful. I also found very interesting the equation to calculate the number of one-on-one relationships present in any size family. I would have been interested to read about how sibling relationships change as children are separated from their siblings to enter school.

      I did quite enjoy the parts about Kluger's own family; I would have liked to read more about those relationships. This would have been a stronger, more compelling book if Kluger had made it a memoir, leaving out a good chunk of the research he did and focussing primarily on his own sibling relationships.
    • 4/5
      An interesting look at the relationships between siblings and how these relationships affect how we live. The book made me a bit wistful and longing for a sibling, even though I have a sister. But since we are 12 years apart and only lived in the same house for 6 years, we are really more like two only children, and we never developed the close sibling bonds discussed in this book. An interesting book, although perhaps not the most groundbreaking.
    • 2/5
      I was disappointed in this book. It was pretty simplistic. The author grew up in a family with four boys, so maybe he didn't realize how much gender also plays a role in families and how siblings relate to each other. He had a whole chapter on the effect of birth order on siblings and how they relate to each other and their parents. I felt that by not even acknowledging that gender can also play a role in these kinds of things, he missed a huge opportunity.