Sibling Rivalry

THE ORIGINS OF SIBLING RIVALRY
By "sibling rivalry" we mean the antagonism or hostility between brothers and/or sisters which manifests itself in circumstances such as in the common children's family fights (which begin with a pulling of the sibling's hair or with the unwillingness to share a prized toy, and which try the patience of parents all over the world) to much more serious cases such as the permanent enmity between adult siblings. A similar competition exists between siblings in human families. However, here the scarce resources are the TIME, ATTENTION, LOVE and APPROVAL that the parents can give to each of their children. Looking at this situation in very simple terms, if the parents have only a certain limited amount of exclusive (one-on-one) time to give to ALL their children, it is easy to see that if there is only ONE child in that family, ALL of the parents' available time will be for the only child; if there are TWO children in the family, each child can ha...