The Importance Of Siblings As We Grow Older

Like she said, "Here I have your total attention. You aren't running off to fix food or clean up the kitchen or straighten the living room. You aren't being interrupted by your kids." It bugs her a little when I can be heard clattering dishes in the background while we talk on the phone. As a woman with no children, although she loves kids, she nevertheless often has a little trouble understanding all the distractions I deal with.

What is probably more miraculous is that we are two sisters who could hardly be more different in many areas, yet we still like and love each other. I am very grateful.

One woman says she enjoys her three adult sisters and brother because "We're all so weird and usually the only times we can be our weirdest is around each other. We have a blast. I think we get along because we don't hold grudges. You can't really hold grudges if you want to stay close."

What happens when adult siblings don't get along? One man says that he and his twin brother are very different from their other brother who is cool toward them. "He is the millionaire, I am the peasant. He is extremely conservative. We get along mainly by not discussing such matters. We only talk about hobbies and grandchildren."

Our relationships as adult siblings are influenced by many factors, including parental treatment, birth order, genetics, gender, life experiences, and ethnic/generational patterns, notes Jane Mersky Leder author of Brothers and Sisters: How They Shape Our Lives. Leder says that while few adult siblings have taken the drastic and unfortunate step of severing ties completely, about one third describe their relationship as distant or contentious. Typically in our society, sisters are the "kin keepers" says Leder, while brothers are often more conflicted.

Someone has pointed out that the sibling relationship is usually the longest of any human relationship: we know our parents for perhaps 50-70 years, our spouses (if we are lucky) for 40-60 years, but our siblings (if we are born close together) we may know for 80-90 years. While friends come and go, siblings are always there.

This connection becomes even more important as we age, and many adult children find themselves reconnecting with their siblings when Mom or Dad gets sick, needs extra care, or dies. This has certainly been true in our family. "Because siblings share memories and a sense of family identity, people with siblings report higher life satisfaction and lower rates of depression in old age," says a bulletin on "Aging" from the Ohio State University Extension service.

Now that my children are young adults, I like it when I see signs of their continuing bonds as sisters. They each live in different towns right now, and they don't e-mail each other or talk as often as I would like, but I found it intriguing that when one sister wanted to bring her new boyfriend home to meet us and have dinner, she wanted her older sister to come home, too- partially to help conversation and also as a "buffer" in this new relationship. When a third sister was having stress as a freshman at college, another took the time to call and talk her through the situation.

Since the earliest days of the Bible, siblings have been trying (and failing) to get along. The holiday season is a time when most of us make an attempt to get together, even when relationships have been conflicted. Unfortunately, those past relationships make family holiday gatherings strained, and sometimes there is outright arguing. We'll look next time at how to identify problems and issues that are bothering us and how we can get along.

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Contributed by Melodie Davis from her weekly columnANOTHER WAY (http://www.thirdway.com/aw/).For information on using Another Way in a local newspaper, contact:ANOTHER WAY, 1251 Virginia Ave., Harrisonburg, VA 22801-2497; or call1-800-999-3534; fax at 540-434-5556; or email me at:Melodie@mennomedia.org