Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. Now, we're going to wrap up today's show with a segment about siblings. Often when we think of our oldest pals, we think of someone we met in the first day of kindergarten, or maybe that smiling face from our fourth-grade soccer team, or our high school lab partner, but for many of us, the peers who have known us the longest are people who we don't remember meeting because they are our siblings.

Listeners, we want to hear from you about your sibling relationships. How have they changed through the years? Do you think of your siblings as friends or confidants, or maybe have you drifted apart in adulthood? Have big life changes like raising children or losing a shared loved one changed how you relate to each other, or does it feel the same as ever? What defines your relationships to your siblings, and how have they changed? Call us at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. You can also text us at that number.

Here to talk with us about those relationships is Angela Chen, a journalist who has written about science and culture, and she recently published a piece in The Atlantic entitled, "The Longest Relationships of Our Lives," about sibling relationships, the impact they can have, and how they change in adulthood. Angela, welcome to the show.

Angela Chen: Thank you so much.

Brigid Bergin: Angela, you talked to a number of experts for this piece. What did they have to say about what defines sibling relationships?

Angela Chen: As you mentioned, one of the things, which I think many people didn't really think about, is how sibling relationships are with us for so much of our lives before we meet our partners, often, hopefully, after our parents pass. One thing I found really interesting is that sibling relationships go through these distinct phases. First, you're stuck at home. It's involuntary. Nobody chooses who their siblings are, but then around the time we're adolescents, there it starts to become more voluntary.

That is the beginning of a period that can set up how sibling relationships are for the rest of our lives. There are points later on in life that give us opportunities to break free of the dynamics we had when we were younger and when our sibling relationships were more mediated.

Brigid Bergin: There are lots of early family relationships that can shape our lives, but how do sibling relationships shape us differently than, say, the relationships we have with our parents or friends, or what is it about those relationships in conjunction with them that really can help shape who we are today?

Angela Chen: I think sibling relationships are often overlooked when it comes to the research, but there's been some research suggesting that sibling relationships are more influential than parent relationships and about as influential as peer relationships when it comes to things like drinking or drugs. I think, oftentimes, we don't even think about how are siblings affecting our behavior, but that's one big way. Also, once again, people focus so much more on parent relationships or romantic relationships, but I think that having distant sibling relationships often can impact mental health many years down the line.

Brigid Bergin: Angela, I have to ask, were you prompted to do this reporting or write this essay in part because of your own sibling relationship? Do you have a sibling?

Angela Chen: I do have a sibling. The interesting thing is that in some ways my sibling relationship doesn't fit in with the research and in other ways it does. Most research on siblings is done between a pair of siblings, usually about five years apart. I have a younger sister, and she's seven years apart. When you have a gap that big, I think the relationship changes. I went to college when she was in fifth grade. What are we going to be talking about?

One of the things that's in a lot of the research is that things that can bring siblings together later in life, even if they were pretty distant like my sister and I were, are big life events, including events that have to do with parents. A few years ago, one of my parents became quite ill, and after that, my sister and I, our relationship really changed because for the first time, not only did that give us a thing to talk about, but there was this real sense of if you were talking about the parents, my sister just got it.

I didn't have to explain what this dynamic with my dad meant or that comment from my mom because she'd been there too. That's actually very borne out in all the research, even though my sister and I have a larger age gap.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, I am talking with Angela Chen about her recent article in The Atlantic about sibling relationships, and we want to hear from you about your own siblings. Did you fight as children, and have you found a truce as adults? What brought on that change? Maybe you have a much older sibling who you struggled to see as your peer as you entered adulthood like the story that Angela was just telling. What was that process like?

Call in and tell us about what has defined your relationships with your siblings at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text us at that number or tweet @BrianLehrer. We have a full board of callers. Let's start with Mary in Westchester. Mary, thanks for calling WNYC.

Mary: Hi there. Good morning. How are you all?

Brigid Bergin: Great.

Mary: I have a sister who's a year older than I am, and I think growing up with cousins and each other, we were at odds often. I was the younger one, I was the softer one, I was the one that didn't really stick up for herself, but believe it or not, my sister has always been like my defender, my protector. She's the one who has teeth, so to speak. Recently, I came back from a trip, and that's the first person I went to when I got back from 11 days of being away. Just true to form being the protector, and the supporter, and vice versa, I'm the same way, but a little bit softer, a little bit more neutral kind of thing.

I was able to appreciate her in the fact that we are 58 and 59 years old and we could hash things out, and have a conversation, and things like that. Not always cute, but I can completely appreciate her existence and the fact that she's my gift and I'm her gift, so to speak.

Brigid Bergin: Mary, thank you. That is a lovely, lovely story. We really appreciate your call. Let's go to Willa in Sleepy Hollow. Willa, thanks for calling WNYC.

Willa: Hi, Brigid. I just want to say, first and foremost, you're really inspiring to me. I heard once that you said that you went to CUNY Newmark for journalism and I was like, "Gosh, I'm going to apply, and I'm going next year."

Brigid Bergin: Congratulations. Yay. CUNY Newmark in the house. Woo-hoo.

Willa: [chuckles] I just want to shout out to my brother Lucas. He is three years younger than me. I'm 23 and he's 20 now, which is crazy. We weren't really close. When he was born, apparently, my mom says I was pretty jealous. I didn't want him around. I liked all the attention to myself, but we got really close when he was maybe 13 or 14. I struggled with an eating disorder since I was 14, and my parents, I always felt like, were pretty in denial of it or just didn't really want to acknowledge it, and he did.

He was the only one who I felt really drove me to do better for the first parts of the painful years. I'm in recovery now, and a lot of that has to do with him because I could see how upset and even how scared he was. He didn't really say much about it, but to this day, he's still my support. I can go to him and be like, "I'm feeling a certain way about food, or my body, or something," and he's always like, "You're being dumb." He's always been the person I feel the most comfortable sharing a meal with, so big love to my brother. Thank you.

Brigid Bergin: Willa, thank you so much for your call. I'm so glad you have that relationship and support from your brother, and we are so excited for you going to the CUNY Newmark School next year. Before I bring more callers because as I said, Angela, we have tons of callers who want to talk about their relationships with their siblings, I'm just curious if you have any reaction to what you heard in those first two callers.

Angela Chen: Yes, absolutely. It was interesting to me to hear about siblings that didn't get along well when they were younger, there's jealousy going on, because people say that parents worry a lot about conflict. Are the kids fighting? Are they not getting along? Conflict actually is fine. What's a problem when it comes to siblings eventually becoming closer, whether it's in your teens or some other age, is not being engaged. If you are fighting with each other, at least you're still responding to each other. There's a connection there even if you annoy each other. I think that makes a lot of sense to me.

Brigid Bergin: I want to read a text that we got. "Before entering the foster system due to child safety concerns at 17, five years ago, my brother, 13 at the time, and I would constantly fight. Entering an unfamiliar home together brought us closer than ever and made me protective over him. I could never see myself fighting with him today. I'm also really close to an adopted older brother who serves as a mentor to me, something I didn't have growing up."

That came from Rue in Yorkville. Thanks so much for that text, Rue. Angela, you talked to a lot of different siblings for the story. You mentioned one story about stepsisters, Mimi and Amani?

Angela Chen: Amani.

Brigid Bergin: Thanks. Can you talk about that and what created the distance between them and what's brought them back together?

Angela Chen: Absolutely. In their case, what created the distance was that when they were teens, their best friend died by suicide, and of course, that was a traumatic event that ended up creating grief and distance. What brought them back together is that this year Amani, who is the older one, became pregnant. The way Mimi told it to me was that the pregnancy became a way-- you know you would talk with a pregnancy. It became a way to open the door to other kinds of conversations.

You're talking about these new changes in the horizon, and that's giving you a chance to revisit what happened when you were younger, and it's giving you an opportunity, kind of an excuse to have these more emotional conversations about things that were painful from decades ago.

Brigid Bergin: We're getting some more texts and calls in, Angela. The most recent text, the person writes, "My name is Eid from Brooklyn. My sibling is an older sister who grew up separately from me, different language, country, values, and beliefs, and we didn't come together until adulthood. What I found was, it's difficult to communicate with someone who is so different from you despite sharing the same blood. Culturally, that divide makes it almost impossible to communicate with each other." Did you encounter anything in your reporting and research for this piece about siblings who maybe were separated and how that changed their relationship?

Angela Chen: That wasn't so much the scope. Again, because a lot of the research was on siblings who are raised together, so that is not something I studied as much.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Theresa in Sparta, New Jersey. Theresa, thank you so much for calling.

Theresa: Sure. Thank you. I have eight siblings. [chuckles]

Brigid Bergin: Wow.

Theresa: I am second oldest. What I found is, growing up with that many siblings is kind of Survivor, you form alliances. [chuckles] Over the years though, those alliances, as you've mentioned, when certain of us had life experiences that were similar, then you drift towards that sibling, new alliances were formed and we changed roles, but what I found recently, my mother passed away in May, and when we all went back for the funeral, we fell right back into the roles that we had had.

My oldest sibling had to be in control and was the matriarch, and I was the wild child who was suggesting things for the funeral and the wake that she felt was inappropriate. Unfortunately, it caused a lot of friction and conflict, but we're moving back towards each other again.

Brigid Bergin: Theresa, I'm so sorry about that, but I'm glad that you are moving back together and that you had that support system. Angela, I just want to note and see if you have any thoughts about the fact a lot of the callers that we have calling in right now are people with a lot of siblings. I'm going to take another call in just a moment. June in Morris Plains, New Jersey, she's also one of eight. June, welcome to WNYC.

June: Hi, Brigid. It's nice to meet you. I think you do a great job when you fill in for Brian.

Brigid Bergin: Thank you very much.

June: Yes, one of eight. As a child, the last caller has mentioned about alliances. We definitely formed our alliances, and as we got older, we just drifted away from that. I'm the second oldest, and I was 11 when my twin sisters were born and then 15 when my brother was born. He was the only boy. They are like my children to this day, even though we're all adults over age 50. I see my brother 15 years younger. It's like, "Hi, hun, how are you?" Like, do anything for him. People have always asked--

We live in a town called Morris Plains, New Jersey, which is very small. Everybody knows us because there's so many of us, and I said, "Why do you get along?" For years, my line was, "Well, we've never had any kind of trauma. We've never had anything that would split us apart," but five years ago, I lost my youngest to an overdose. I still get upset when I say that.

Brigid Bergin: I'm so sorry.

June: Plus, my family was there for me. Our dad died last year at 92, and it was so passive and easy. Just to this day, they're my best friends. They're the first people you call when there's a problem. It's been wonderful. I didn't have my first 'till I was 30, so I couldn't have 8.

Brigid Bergin: Sure.

June: I just had my three. Being from a huge family has just always been a gift.

Brigid Bergin: June, thank you for your call. I'm so, again, glad that you have that support system. I'm so sorry for your loss. Wow, Angela, we just have a few seconds left. Any reactions to the calls that you heard so far?

Angela Chen: I just feel like, especially with the larger families, I think it really just emphasizes how important and how steady siblings can be across the relationship. They've known you so long, when things happen, they can be there. It's just lovely to hear all of those stories.

Brigid Bergin: I have to agree, and I would be remiss if I did not shout out to my sibling. Mara Bergin, you are the best. We're going to have to leave it there. My guest has been Angela Chen, a journalist whose piece in The Atlantic was, "The Longest Relationships of Our Lives." Thank you so much for joining me today.

Angela Chen: Thank you so much for having me.

Brigid Bergin: I'm Brigid Bergin, and this is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Tune in again tomorrow.

[music]

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.