You thought it was bad enough when your children squabbled as young kids. But what if things only get worse when they grow up?
While the sibling relationship may for many be a source of closeness and comfort, these bonds – if they were ever there at all – can fray and disintegrate. Geoffrey Greif, sociology professor at Maryland University and co-author of Adult Sibling Relationships, found in his 2016 research that two-thirds of siblings stated they were “very close and a very good friend to at least one of their siblings” and almost half said a sibling was one of their best friends. Yet others expressed challenges with trust and closeness, and “disagreements in caring for a parent, estate planning, and inclusion in major family events”. Then, there are siblings who don’t have any contact at all. As painful and distressing as it might be for them, their parents can often suffer too, caught in the wreckage.
Nick James is a family therapist at The Soke mental health clinic in London. “I get calls from parents who are distraught about this,” he says, “saying they’re at their wit’s end, because their grown-up children don’t get on. It raises a really fascinating question: what does parenting adult children look like? It’s very, very difficult. There’s no guidebook because the children have launched.”
Nina*, 69, from Suffolk, has two adult sons who have fallen out for the last four years to the point that they can barely be in the same room together. They’re 41 and 44, one lives in a village near to Nina in Suffolk, the other in London. Both sons have wives and children. “My sons got on as children,” she says. “Sure, they were a bit competitive and they’d have arguments, but they were good friends then, and into their twenties.” Things went wrong when the brothers went into business together. “There was a big argument over money, one of the boys felt betrayed, lots of misunderstandings. Things got so bitter between them. It breaks my heart, it really does.”
Nina, who says she tries not to get involved, or play peacekeeper anymore, usually does one holiday or weekend trip in the UK a year with each of them. Both sons are good to her, and she feels close to them, but the estrangement means things are complicated with big events. “I’m already dreading Christmas this year, I really am,” she says. “I try to alternate, or I will do Christmas Day with one, and Boxing Day with the other. One of my sons goes skiing a lot so when they do that at Christmas, I’m actually relieved because the politics of it all are easier. It’s very stressful, because I don’t want to get things wrong and make anything worse.”
Nina, whose husband died before the estrangement, says she feels shame about her family being split down the middle. “I’m very lucky to have my children and my grandchildren, but I do feel sad and worried about it. My friends tell me it’s not my fault, but it’s hard to remember that when the two people you love most in the world just won’t have a thing to do with each other.”
James finds that mothers, in particular, feel that their children’s rifts are a personal failing. “They tend to judge their parenting work based on the wholeness of the family,” he says, “and they often feel responsible for being the glue around that. When the glue becomes unstuck, all of this can feel very out of their control – because, of course, it largely is. They’re caught in a tussle between ‘What do I do?’ and ‘Am I accidentally siding with one over the other?’ It also gets so hard because mothers are more often than not in charge of logistics around Christmas, family holidays, and so feel forced into a role of diplomat. How can they keep everybody happy? How do they keep the show on the road?”
Sibling fall-outs like this can affect any kind of family. Nina’s sons are at war over money, while King Charles’s sons don’t speak because Harry shared private family details in his memoir Spare, and it is said that William remains deeply hurt and resistant to reconciliation. “The King is head of a huge historical institution,” says James, “yet it must be gravely disturbing for him to witness the state of the relationship between his boys.”
Sometimes, though, things can – against all odds – get better. Joan*, a retired teacher from Devon, says that two of her three children didn’t speak for two years, when they were in their late twenties and early thirties. “I felt awfully bad for my middle child,” she says. “Nothing catastrophic happened, but they never really got on – they were chalk and cheese, even as children”. On a summer trip, tensions peaked. Joan’s daughter declared she wanted nothing more to do with her brother – and stuck to it for some time. “My daughter is wonderful,” says Joan, “but she has always been rather unpredictable and turbulent. My son can be very high-achieving, but also direct and abrasive with it. He doesn’t have much sympathy for his sister, and thinks she had an easier ride in childhood.” Joan says the silence between her children was incredibly upsetting for her and her husband. “We agreed we’d stay out of it,” she says, “because my great fear was we’d end up in a rift with one of the children myself.”
What broke the ice was a series of family events. Joan’s oldest had a baby, and her youngest wanted to know her nephew, and some months later, Joan’s husband had a stroke. “He recovered alright,” she says, “but we didn’t know how things would turn out, and my children rallied really well. It’s a cliché, isn’t it, but these things can bring people together.” Joan says it’s not as if the siblings would meet up on their own for a chat – “No chance!” – but they tolerate each other and are fine with a big family get-together every so often, and there is some activity on the family WhatsApp.
When your children don’t get on, you might find yourself scrutinising the way you brought them up. James finds this with his clients. “Parents might be lying awake at 2am thinking, ‘What was it I did wrong?’” he says. “The reality is, there will have been favouritism in some ways – one will have been treated with more freedom than the others. Well-worn narratives about each child will exist, about who is the difficult one, or who is the easy one. You’re going to parent each child differently – that is just inevitable.” That is, says James, being human.
How adult siblings get on is, in fact, often not much to do with the parenting at all. “Once life starts rolling and moving on,” says James, “the siblings will have their own dynamics, and they will look at each other’s life choices – partners, jobs, living situations, friends – and develop their own feelings about that person and their values.” Often, it’s down to different personalities. However much you, as a parent, are invested in that relationship, you’re now outside of it. There are so many reasons why adult kids might fall out. A 1998 study by psychologist Gene Brody in the Annual Review of Psychology showed that especially active and emotionally intense children experience elevated levels of conflict in relationships with their siblings.
While parents are not totally – or at all – to blame for how their children get on, there are a couple of things parents of young kids can bear in mind. “Every couple has it’s ‘repair shop’, as I call it,” says James, “which is how they work things out after a row. Parents can ask themselves, how is conflict dealt with in the family? How does the family repair ruptures? Children pick up on these things, like ‘We don’t go to sleep on an argument,’ or ‘We have to shake hands and agree to disagree.’”
James also finds it can be helpful to be explicit with young children about why may be treating them differently – due to different interests, talents, needs, personalities – and that you love them equally. “Children as they grow up might perceive favouritism at different points – some imagined, some true -and while most of us just accept all that beyond our teens, for some people that stuff still lurks around.” James believes, though, that parents need to “cut themselves some slack” around this, because it isn’t actually very helpful to blame oneself.
For parents of grown up children dealing with a rift right now, the best thing to do, says James, is not to align yourself with one child, and not to get too involved. “Don’t try to fix it,” he says, “ as you don’t actually know what’s going to be helpful from you. Parents in this situation often end up being a pollinating bee, taking some information from one side to pass onto the other, being a go-between. Instead, stay curious about the disagreement, and don’t shy away from it entirely.” Instead, James, says, ask things, but try to keep your prejudices out of it. “This is easier said that done when a parent has spent the night stressing about their children, but it’s worthwhile trying to be calm, unjudgemental, and interested in what your children have to say – that’s the most helpful, positive thing you can do.”
*Names have been changed