Sibling relationships can be close, fraught, and most often, complex. In her new book, The New York Times Magazine writer Susan Dominus sought to understand how our brothers and sisters can influence our future by joining families with successful streaks in our region and around the country.
WSHU's Eda Uzunlar sat down with her to learn more about household bonds in The Family Dynamic: A Journey into the Mystery of Sibling Success, available May 6.
WSHU: When we bring up success, upbringing comes up all the time. But when we think about our upbringing, it's almost always what the parents do for the kids. There are other characters in that history, too – siblings. They have a lot to do with this as well. Can you tell me about how siblings can impact our success?
SD: Yeah, one of the things that I often say is that I think we overestimate parents' effect on kids' lives. It's not that parents don't matter, of course they do, but probably the individual parenting choices that we make and agonize over at the end of the day, they probably don't have as much of an effect on the outcomes in children's lives as we think. And I think that we underestimate the effects that siblings can have on each other. Part of that is that I think siblings are more likely sometimes to take advice from each other than from a parent, especially teenagers, when you can be making some really fateful decisions about your future. But also, I think siblings sometimes know each other better than the parents understand the kids, and they also can see the future in a way that your parents can't.
WSHU: This interest didn't just come up when you had your kids. It's a long-standing fascination for you. How did this become so important when you were a kid?
SD: It's a little bit hard to explain, but I've always been that person who, when I read a biography, really only wants to read about childhood. What created that person? Because my parents were wonderful. They were supportive. They sent me to college. My mom took me to the library once a week. They were present. But the emphasis was never, you know, you could do anything. And when I got to college, I met kids who I knew thought they could do anything, and I even went to summer camp, you know, with kids whose aunts and uncles had clearly done really innovative things. And I just always wondered what was going on around the dinner table in the houses where kids were becoming playwrights or reinventing how finance worked. You know, I say in some ways it's a book about high-achieving families, but I also think it's really about families that encourage their kids to dream big, to think they could make a big difference, to think they could create great art. There's a little bit of chutzpah, you know, or ego or optimism, you could say, that I was always drawn to and interested in and curious about.
WSHU: This is not a how-to guide to creating the perfect kid. So much of this book is these narratives of you alongside these families in their own personal homes. And I think when a lot of people think about success, they also think about happiness and how those two are not the same. But I want to ask, when you're with these families and spend time with them, what did happiness look like and how did it feel?
SD: Well, it's funny because I think, I mean, you'll not be surprised to hear that happiness for a lot of these families is just like everybody else. I mean, it's more like what it didn't look like, and that was surprising to me. I think in the Groff family, for example, there was not a lot of energy that was sort of in public gatherings if Sarah True, who's this, you know, Olympic athlete turned Ironman world class competitor, there was not a lot of attention turned to how things felt sort of in a public setting when things didn't go well, but also when she did have a huge triumph, it wasn't as if the family suddenly reoriented their feelings towards her. That's what you realize – that's the beautiful thing about family- that your accomplishments are sort of the least of who you are to your family, and you can't pull one over with your siblings. And obviously it's one of the most healthy things about sibling relationships, is they knew you when, they knew where you came from, and, you know, they're going to love you whether you are at the height of your game and they're going to love you when you really have a downfall.
