Consider This from NPR - How Sibling Bonds Shape Our Lives

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Researchers are finding that the impact of relationships with siblings —for better or worse — can be important, and endure well beyond childhood.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In the historic center of Charlestown, West Virginia, is a cozy coffee shop named Sibling Coffee Roasters. Family mementos hang on the brick walls here, and the name, Sibling Coffee Roasters, it's an ode to one of the most cherished relationships of owner Libby Powles. I just remember just thinking, this is the prettiest baby I've ever seen in my life. And just being like, so happy. You know, he's alive and he's healthy and he's cute. She's talking about her brother, Ben Witham. I remember being very close to my sister.

And it's nice to always be reminded that, you know, you have these shared experiences that are constantly pulling you back together. We have a human need to bond. When you have someone besides your parent that you can bond with, your friends are going to come and go. But if your sibling is your friend, they're going to be there forever. And coffee, it's the link that kept Ben and Libby connected when they lived far apart. Ben taught Libby to roast beans in a popcorn popper when she was working overnight as a nurse.

And that was really the big thing that kept us checking in regularly. I just found that coffee, the way that he would describe it, it wasn't just a drink, but it was a relationship. Most people in the U.S. grow up with at least one sibling. Often that means sharing childhood memories, maybe even bedrooms. It's a really natural laboratory. We learn how to interact with others. We learn how to fight and negotiate. That is Sean Whiteman, who studies human development at Utah State University. Now, a growing body of research shows that sibling bonds can shape us for life. Siblings matter. They matter above and beyond our parents.

They matter above and beyond our peers. They matter because siblings are often our very first peers. We might idolize them. We might fight with them. But they teach us how to relate to people in the world. So consider this. Sibling relationships is a relatively new area of research. But one thing is very clear.

Our sibling bonds may shape us more than any other relationship in our lives. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Consider This from NPR. Every Saturday evening inside a blue house in Odessa, Texas, the Almance family gets together to cook dinner, including the family's signature taco recipe. Good smells and laughter fill their kitchen. It is always a good time when the family gets together, but it's much more than that. You see, the Almances are an example of how brothers and sisters learn to stop

fighting and care for each other. For our series, The Science of Siblings, science reporter Michaelene Ducliff traveled to the family's home in West Texas. Several months ago, Kaitlyn Almance graduated from college. She's 22 years old, and as she thinks back to high school and college, she's had the same best friend the entire time. My sister is my best friend in the entire world, and I tell people that all the time. I don't think I could, like, make it, like, day-to-day basis without her. Like, she's the person that I depend on for everything. Caitlyn grew up in Odessa, but she went to college in another town two hours away. Sometimes her sister, who's still in high school, will call up Caitlyn and ask her to borrow her clothes or a pair of boots. And Caitlyn would stop what she's doing and drive four hours.

There was one time that I had like just like a four hour break. That's all I had. And I drove all the way down, like dropped it off in the front door and like took all the way back off to like Alpine. It's because she needed it. She needed it. And, you know, in that moment, she really does need it. Caitlin's love and caring doesn't end with her sister. She feels the same about her little brother.

A few years ago, she seriously considered moving with him to Los Angeles to help support him through school. And I was like, look, Eddie, if that's what you really want to do, I'll get up and I'll pick up my life and I'll move over there. And I'd work. To help him pay for schooling. Yeah, and so he wouldn't have to struggle either. Because I know how hard it was for me to work and go to school at the same time and juggle.

And if he doesn't have to do that, then I wouldn't want him to do that. For the past few decades, scientists have been studying how parents all around the world teach their children to build deep, fulfilling relationships with their siblings. Belinda Campos is a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine. She says that in Latino families like Caitlin's, parents are often doing something very specific. And scientists can even see what it is inside the brains of young adults. In one study, researchers brought college students into the laboratory from two cultural groups. They had European American and Latino participants come in and they had them play a resource game.

During the game, the students had to decide whether or not to help a family member who needed money. Both groups assisted their family members when there was a perceived need. But here's the key. While the participants gave their family money, the researchers studied their brains with an MRI scanner. What happened inside the brains of the Latino participants was quite different than inside European Americans' brains. While giving their family money, the brains of the Latino participants,

the reward centers of the brain, lit up when they were doing so. In fact, their reward centers lit up more when they gave money than when they received money themselves. But that didn't happen with European American students. It makes such a compelling argument that some of us find the act of giving, or because we're socialized to, to be like really rewarding. Now, the reward center of our brains helps us feel pleasure and joy. Mariana Rojas is a behavioral economist at Mexico's Technology Institute.

He says many studies, including his own, show that Latino parents often teach their children not so much that they have to help their siblings, but to actually want to help their siblings. And they do that by teaching them that helping brings you joy. It's about enjoyment and relations that provide happiness. In other words, helping your sister, bringing her a pair of boots, isn't so much a huge burden or obligation, but a major source of joy in your life. It gives children what I call relational wealth.

This relational wealth has massive repercussions for Latin American communities. Rojas' research finds it's the major reason why people in these communities tend to score very high on surveys about happiness. Latin Americans perform outstandingly while their happiness is very high. That's across all economic levels. Funniest story of my life. Back in Odessa, the sun has just set over the dry West Texas prairie. It's around dinner time, and the Almance family is doing what they do almost every day. They're gathered around the kitchen island. There's Caitlin's grandmother, her parents, an aunt and an uncle. They're telling stories about trips they've taken all together and reliving all the

fun. That's Caitlin's mom, Sydney. I asked her, how do you teach children to find joy in helping their siblings? It's the modeling, right? Modeling. And what Sydney models is the joy she gets from the relationships she has with her own brothers and sisters. I guess it's a close, close bond. Even after some of her siblings left Odessa, she still loves to talk to them on the phone. You know, 6.30 in the morning on my way to work, I'm talking to them already. But it's every single day. And her daughter, Caitlin, not only notices these calls, she even joins them.

My mom's older sister, they're in a different time zone than we are. So they have to wake up an hour earlier than their day would start just so that we could have that daily dose before we get to work. Perhaps most importantly, Caitlin says, is the family enjoys being together. Multiple generations of brothers and sisters all having fun together. This is like your everyday people and they have such like an everyday impact on my life rather than like us like searching each other up on Facebook. Like that doesn't exist. Like we all know each other. And now Caitlin is going to add the next generation of siblings. She's expecting

her first child this summer, and she's already talking about having a second baby. This one isn't even out yet. I'm like, let's hurry up and make the other one. Why? Because she wants her baby to have a sibling right away. Just like imagining my kid growing up without that, there's probably nothing worse than that.

That would be like the biggest sin I could ever imagine. That was reporting from science reporter Michaelene Ducliffe. Earlier in the episode, you also heard reporting from NPR's Yuki Noguchi. This episode was produced by Janaki Mehta with audio engineering by Robert Rodriguez. It was edited by Jeanette Woods, Amina Khan, and Rebecca Davis. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. For more stories from NPR's Science of Siblings series, visit npr.org slash siblings. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.