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With siblings, it’s complicated
Growing closer with age Baltimore County resident Iris Ingber, who is 67 and a school nurse, acknowledges that there have been ebbs and flows in her relationships with her two younger brothers, Carl and Lee Oppenheim. “We weren’t close as kids,” she recalled. “We had our arguments.” Though 64-year-old brother Carl, a dentist, observes, “It was just kid stuff…there was no lasting animosity.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF CARL OPPENHEIM
By Carol Sorgen Our relationships with our siblings are, generally speaking, the longest relationships we have. “They are with us throughout life,” said Geoffrey L. Greif (rhymes with “life”). “They’re like a shadow.” Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, has been teaching and practicing family, group and individual therapy for more than 40 years, and is something of an expert on siblings. Apart from having two brothers himself, he also co-authored a book on the topic titled, appropriately enough, Adult Sibling Relationships. His co-author Michael E. Woolley, is an associate professor at the same school and director of research at the Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center. Their book is based on extensive interviews and surveys with 262 people between the ages of 40 and 90 who had at least one living sibling. Through their research, Greif and Woolley have observed that most sibling relationships are, as a rule, a mixture of affection, ambivalence and ambiguity. That means if you think your relationship with your siblings is complicated, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re pretty normal. “Siblings give us sustenance and support,” said Greif, “but they can also cause us great pain.” The authors found that only 8 percent of the people they interviewed said they were never close to their siblings, and only 22 percent said they had always been close. That leaves 70 percent whose relationships are a mixed bag of feelings, whether all at the same time or shifting through the years. And that’s OK, said Greif. “There’s so much pressure for us to have a Norman Rockwell-type of relationship, but mixed feelings are normal. Don’t force it.”
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Siblings Lee Oppenheim, Iris Ingber and Carl Oppenheim have grown closer with age, as they share the responsibility of caring for their 94-year-old father. Relationships between adult siblings can be a complex amalgam of affection, ambivalence and ambiguity, according to experts.
And while they admit that they wouldn’t characterize themselves as “best friends,” their relationships are important to each of them. Distance has some effect on how often the siblings see each other. Lee and his family lived in England for five years and now live in Northern Virginia, where Lee, 66, works for a government agency. Meanwhile, Iris and Carl and their families have remained in Baltimore. As a result, Iris sees Carl more often — every Friday night, in fact, as she continues a tradition her parents began of Friday night Sabbath dinners. The three share responsibility of caring for their 94-year-old father, though both Lee and Carl note that Iris “takes the lead.” “Occasionally I disagree with a decision,” said Lee, “but we always talk about it and work it out.”
For Carl, his relationship with his siblings was fostered by his parents. “My parents taught us to be generous, honest and thoughtful,” he said. “I think of my brother and sister in those terms. They’re good people. They’re people I like to know.” Sisters Freddye Silverman, 66, and Randy Jacobs, 63, have not always been as close as they are now. With a three-year age difference (and a four-grade difference in school), as youngsters the siblings didn’t socialize with each other and had no friends in common. In fact, Silverman would lord her older sister status over Jacobs. “I’d lock her in the bathroom in the basement,” Silverman recalled with a laugh. What the sisters did have in common See SIBLINGS, page 28
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