Bernard Axelrad Scholarship Fund

As I grow older (and hopefully wiser) and reflect on matters, I realize that I have more questions and fewer answers.

Recently, I made a telephone call to a distant relative in New York whom I hadn't seen in years. We had grown up together in the same old tenement and on the streets of the Lower East Side, I was well acquainted with the early hard years that he and his three siblings endured. His father worked in the same sweatshop as my father for the same puny wages, but there were four children in his family to two in mine, so their lot in life was even more difficult than ours.

I was saddened by one of his comments.

I remembered them as a close-knit family in frequent contact with one another. (How could you help it with six people living in a one-bedroom flat?)

By dint of considerable effort, perseverance and ability, each of the four children has attained a goodly degree of affluence, in contrast to their earlier poverty.

When I inquired about his two brothers and sister, my relative-friend Bill remarked rather testilly that he does not see them frequently. I did not pursue the matter much further as I gathered from the tone of his curt response that the former close-knit family structure had stretched fairly thin. I couldn't keep from commenting on how intimate the four of them had been. Bill, as if in explanation of the distance that had developed among them, countered, "We were raised to be competitive."

I was surprised and perturbed. Perhaps their parents fostered competitiveness as a means of survival and upward mobility in a tough world, but certainly didn't intend to create rivalry and strife among their own children

It brought to mind that this was nothing new. In the very earliest Bible stories we encounter several incidents of sibling conflict. In the first chapter of Genesis, soon after the creation of the world and the advent of Adam and Eve, came children Cain and Abel. Cain, tiller of the soil, slew his brother Abel, keeper of the sheep, presumably jealous because the Lord had more regard for Abel's offerings than Cain's.

A little further on in Genesis we come across Sarah asking Abraham to send his son Ishmael away so her son Isaac would be Abraham's sole heir.

Then we read about Jacob and Esau vying for their father Isaac's favor and blessing. Isaac was partial to Esau and Rebekah favored Jacob. After Jacob had by subterfuge obtained Isaac's blessing, which had been promised to the first-born Esau, Jacob fled and Esau vowed to kill his brother after the death of their father. Yet in Genesis we encounter Joseph and the antagonism of his brethren. Joseph was the obvious choice of his father Jacob. The brothers were both envious of Joseph's favored position and enraged by the vanity and arrogance he displayed in telling them of his dream that someday he would rule over them. When Joseph went out in the fields to join his brothers, they conspired to slay him. With the interventions of, first, Reuben, who beseeched his brethren to shed no blood but to cast Joseph into a pit to die there without food and water, and then of Judah, Joseph was removed from the pit and sold to a caravan of traders on their way to Egypt.

So Bill's plaint of having been raised to compete with his siblings was not all that unusual — although foreign in my personal life. Why this discord occurs so frequently among brothers and sisters I don't know; but, I'm intrigued by both the prevalence and the ramifications of the phenomenon from ancient time on.

To what extent is sibling strife due to parental behavior? In some of the Biblical incidents it can be traced to one or the other parent's undisguised partiality toward a particular child. It can be generated unwittingly, also, by parents deliberately or even unintentionally drawing comparisons among their children. In most instances the consequences are neither foreseen nor intended by the parent. These are the more predictable origins of sibling rivalry.

What about the instances in which parents are even-handed in dealing with their children and yet it exists?

If it's the natural outgrowth of instinctual competitive feelings, why does it have to be an inter-sibling thing since there's a big world out there in which to compete? And even if it exists in youngsters, why does it persist into the mature years?

Is it the inevitable outcome when children are close in age? Hardly, because there are numerous families in which such sibling conflict is absent.

Is it found less frequently when siblings are farther apart in age? I don't know.

I view the family unit as fundamental in our society and perceive it as the principal supportive entity in a rather unfriendly world. Perhaps I am particularly sensitive in the matter because I miss having a brother or sister. It leaves a void that neither a spouse nor children can adequately fill.

In my personal life, though very competitive I was quite protective of my brother who was six years younger. I reveled in his achievements even when they surpassed mine.

With the rearing of my own children I tried to avoid engendering any rivalry among them by dealing with their individual needs in impartial if not necessarily equal or uniform fashion.

Sibling rivalry and its prevalence baffles me, and I have few answers.

Perhaps my readers can supply some enlightenment on the subject?