The fact of the matter is that sibling rivalry is caused by a great many different things. No one factor, such as gender, can really guarantee that there will be sibling rivalry, or can fully prevent sibling rivalry. Sibling rivalry is just as likely to occur among brothers as it is among sisters, for example. The things that cause sibling rivalry ultimately have much less to do with gender than with other factors that can affect siblings of any gender combination.

Having said that, gender does play a role in the severity and nature of sibling rivalry, if not in its frequency. For example, the rivalry that sisters experience can tend to be more intense than the sibling rivalry that brothers may experience. At the same time, sibling rivalry among brothers is more likely to lead to a physical altercation of some sort than it is among sisters.

On the average, sibling rivalry is less likely to occur between a brother and a sister than it is between siblings of the same gender. There may be many reasons for this, most of which actually have little to do with gender itself. For example, a brother and a sister are less likely to share a bedroom than two brothers or two sisters are. In addition, a brother and a sister are less likely to compete for friends than sisters of the same gender are. Ultimately, these things have little to do with the siblings’ gender, but rather with outside circumstances.

There is some research to suggest, however, that among adults there may actually be a difference in sibling rivalry occurring among brothers and sibling rivalry occurring among sisters. Sisters, some of the research suggests, are more likely to have long-term rivalries beyond the childhood years, while brothers more often than not confine their sibling rivalry to their younger days. Still, these studies are not conclusive, and they recognize that there are a great many other causes of sibling rivalry, even among adult siblings, other than gender.

Posted in Parenting

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