In January, the parenting website Fatherly published an article titled “Brother, Sister, Rival, Friend: How Siblings Shape One Another’s Lives.” The article quotes a variety of experts and studies to describe ways in which our sibling relationships can impact us positively or negatively. After pointing out the research demonstrates that “having siblings profoundly affects people” but that these effects are “often negligible from a statistical standpoint,” the author makes this statement: “One quirk of the sibling bond is that it leads to a disproportionate amount of strong positive and strong negative relationships.”1 Most of us who have a sibling would agree “there are…few influences more meaningful than a brother or sister.”1
