My sisters and I had the same parents but were raised apart. It taught me there’s more to siblings than meets the eye

After my parents split up, my older sister and I lived with our dad while the youngest stayed with our mum. It became an experiment in nature v nurture - and had a profound effect on our relationships

T

here is a paradox at the heart of sibling relationships and it is this: that children raised in the same family are for ever bound by shared experiences, yet have different childhoods. The paradox is partly (and most commonly) explained by the topic of birth order theory – the idea that your position in the family shapes your personality and potential. Oldest children, for example, are born into an adult world, full of grown-up language and behaviour. Governed by anxious, inexperienced but still fresh parents, they bask in the glow of undivided attention. Their infancy will be markedly different to that of their little brother or sister who will be born into a family. These second-born children have a toddler as their role model/ally/nemesis, no new clothes, and they also have to share their parents’ attention. These parents are a little less fresh and little more savvy. By the time any subsequent children come along, parents are at their most relaxed and most exhausted. Youngest children get away with a lot (spoken as a true middle sibling).