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Most of this book is about the relationships between siblings as children and how that affects your later relationships with others. How you relate to your siblings as adults is one of those later relationships. Chapter 17 goes into greater detail about how to use your current relationship with siblings as a resource in your own growth. For now, it’s only necessary to mention that it’s not unusual for childhood patterns to continue well into adulthood.

If your parents obviously favored one of their children over the others, that child may be resented and disliked by the others even as an adult. Some siblings continue fighting for the favor of their parents all their lives — even after the parents have died.

If you and a sibling were close together in age, you were more likely to have conflicts than if further apart in years, and those conflicts probably still exist. It may not have been possible to admit those conflicts openly or to deal with them as a child, so they may be hidden, yet still control the way you relate.

Siblings with a greater age gap between them often have fewer, but more openly acknowledged conflicts. Being more aware of the conflicts usually enables those siblings to deal with them and get over them. You are more likely to have fewer conflicts and a closer relationship with a sibling much older or much younger than you.

As you and your siblings get older and more settled and established in your own lives, the minor rivalries and competition from childhood are likely to recede. As older, more relaxed adults you may be able to enjoy sharing your memories and telling the different versions of your growing-up stories.

By learning about the pressures and difficulties facing each of you in your birth order positions, you can better understand why you reacted to each other as you did in childhood. When you see that your “privileged” older sister was undergoing her own sufferings from all the pressure on her, you may feel less angry about the way she bossed you around. When you see that your “spoiled” younger sister felt helpless and inadequate in relation to you, you may feel less resentful of her “easy life.”