How do siblings shape our character? | DW Documentary

Ready? ! Holding on tight.

Relying on each other. The Weisheit siblings are high-wire acrobats. In this family, brothers and sisters have been working together for generations.

When we‘re up there, it‘s special that we‘re brothers and sisters. Because I entrust my life to my whole family. Close confidants or rivals.

Our siblings can serve as a mirror, for us. They give you an image of what you’re like. You’re constantly together for hours even years.

For many, a sibling relationship is the longest of their lives. A strong tie that hasn’t been widely studied. We often underestimate the importance of sibling relationships.

A vital bond shapes the days of these two sisters. Indeed: their very lives depend on how well they work together. Jasmin and Natalia Weisheit are high-wire acrobats.

Together, they perform at dizzying heights. If someone has a bad day or is a little off, or a gust of wind comes: Of course, you don't know how the other person will react. But there’s a deep trust there, anyway.

And there’s no doubting it. Rehearsal for the first performance of the year. Natalia: Up!

The artists from Gotha belong to Germany’s most famous high wire troupe. André: Go! The brothers André and Peter Mario lead the troupe.

It’s a family business. André: Stop! If you know each other well, from a young age, and have a common goal, then it's a huge advantage to know each other super well.

Because if we lift anything together, we do it in cooperation, in physical cooperation. We are one body, with two heads. A close sibling relationship that’s been passed down for six generations.

I can't get down. Sibling bonds: For many, they are part of everyday life. As of 2022, there are almost 14 million children living in Germany.

More than three quarters of them have at least one brother or sister. Every fourth child grows up without a sibling. The proportion of ‘only-children’ is relatively constant.

Since 2015, it has fallen slightly: to a current 23%. A lifelong balancing act. In sibling relationships, rivalry alternates with affection.

But how do siblings shape our lives, our selves? That’s the subject studied by Swiss psychologist Jürg Frick. He himself has an older sister.

Siblings: Frick calls them a "training camp for personality. " You train other relationship patterns with siblings, also other emotional patterns, because it's more on a similar level, on a more horizontal level. With relationships between parents and children, it's more of a vertical relationship.

So siblings also give you a lot of opportunities to develop social, emotional, moral skills. These are then influences that naturally continue into adulthood and ultimately even, under certain circumstances, until death. At the Zurich University of Teacher Education, the psychologist researches the emotions involved in sibling relationships.

The spectrum is wide. But five feelings are found again and again: Intimacy, in terms of emotional closeness. Congeniality: a friendly, supportive relationship between equals.

Loyalty. Indifference. And hostility.

A recent study from Israel shows: Sisters forge particularly close relationships. There are greater conflicts among brothers. And the smaller the age gap between siblings, the more they see each other as rivals.

These are patterns which, interestingly enough, occur in all cultures and times. One can read this in many earlier writings. So of course: quarreling, fighting, comparing, competing.

Which, by the way, is not all bad. Through rivalry and comparison, one develops oneself further. Rivalry as driver of personal development.

In moderation, this seems to benefit siblings. There are siblings who are so extremely jealous of each other, feel so slighted by the parents, always presented as third-rate, that they attack the sibling massively. In the worst case, they can even kill.

Fortunately, this rarely happens. Or, the much more frequent variant,is that children go through life and always have the feeling they have been shortchanged, they have been disadvantaged. Rivals for love.

For resources. For their own rank within the family. Does birth order shape personality?

Is there any truth to all the cliches? For example: the oldest children are the responsible ones. Is that right?

The firstborn are more conscientious, compared to their siblings. But if you say: how conscientious are people for their age? Then the effect disappears.

It has nothing to do with sibling position but is purely an effect of age. And the middle ones? Do sandwich kids really get the short end of the stick?

There is always a big prejudice against sandwich children: they are so disadvantaged, they are squeezed between the older and the younger children, and they suffer as a result. And we think that this disadvantage can certainly exist, but we don't think that it has any effect on the personality of the children. Finally, the youngest.

The ‘baby of the family’ : spoiled and rebellious? With the lastborn, we don't really find evidence in our studies that they are particularly rebellious or stand out in any other way. It could be, of course, that they are rebelling in some form, and we just can't find a way to measure that.

By scientific standards, the sibling constellation has less influence on personality than previously assumed. This is the conclusion of a new, large-scale study by Julia Rohrer. The psychologist grew up with her cousin and has a younger half-sister.

Falsehoods, myths and clichés about siblings persist and have sometimes been reinforced by science. In fact, there are sometimes individual studies that confirm these stereotypes. However, the literature is extremely chaotic.

That is, for almost every study, there’s another study with the opposite finding. One big difference in the old studies is that the researchers handed out questionnaires to psychology students. And with that, if you try very hard, you get maybe 100 people together.

That's not a lot if you really want to look at small differences in the mean. To find these small differences, scientists need huge data sets. Researchers at the University of Leipzig have now reevaluated long-term studies from Germany, Great Britain and the US.

They collected data from more than 20,000 adults. The numbers speak for themselves: Firstborn, middle or the youngest siblings are just not always all the same. Only in intelligence does a pattern emerge: IQ points drop slightly from the first to the last child.

Why? Science has several answers to this question. There are some promising findings.

For example, the suggestion that this is really about the first-born child simply getting more attention, more encouragement from the parents, more active stimulation, and so on. Another idea that might explain this difference is that the older children are taking on a mentoring role for the younger children. I see this with my older one: she tries to explain things to her little brother.

That doesn’t really help him he’s only eight months old. But you see that the older one has to think about what and how she’ll explain things. Being a role model.

Learning from each other. In many ways, siblings benefit from each other. But a recent behavioral economics study from Denmark has now revealed: For women who grew up with younger brothers, it doesn't pay.

They earn up to 400 euros less a year than women with younger sisters. And they choose lower-paid jobs in education and care more often. Perhaps the difference in income is related to the gender roles they learned, as brothers and sisters?

One mechanism, for which there is empirical evidence, is that there is actually a division of labor within the family. So at the moment when there are girls and boys in the family, you sometimes have to decide: Who is looking after whom, who is helping whom, who is involved in which activity? And what happens, when both sexes are present, is that the girl perhaps accompanies the mother, and helps the mother in the kitchen, and the boy tends to do activities with the father.

Identifying patterns. Overcoming ingrained sibling roles. Science can help.

So can awareness. Sabine Walper grew up as an only child. She has six half-siblings.

The professor of education heads the German Youth Institute in Munich. She studies the dark side of sibling relationships. Arguments, violence and bullying - in schoolyards and on social media is well researched.

Among brothers and sisters, however, it’s long been a blind spot. The fact that very similar phenomena also occur among siblings was not, for a long time, really focused on. The physical fights, especially among young children, and also teasing, bullying, blaming the other for something they didn't do, accusations.

The whole range of ugliness that can exist in relationships. Estimates vary widely: 15 to 50% of children suffer because they are bullied or abused by their siblings. Often with lifelong consequences.

The researchers at the German Youth Institute have been advising policymakers and administrators for decades. They also worked on the German government's "Family Report. “ New family models are getting more attention: Half siblings, step siblings and patchwork families.

But what has long been part of everyday life is difficult to grasp, scientifically. Sibling relationships are often particularly complex in stepfamilies. Where there is only sporadic contact, there is of course not much chance for them to really grow together.

However, children often experience the relationship with new siblings as an enrichment. It has to be said that children are often less complicated than parents. Children are affected by divorce and separation.

About one in ten families in Germany is a patchwork family. New life partners, with children from previous relationships are sometimes joined by new children from the new relationship. Hugo, Moritz and Paulina are patchwork siblings.

In the beginning, things weren’t as easygoing as they are today. I didn't like him. I didn't like her either.

I knew . . .

I always forgot his name. I still forget his age. For me, it was a bit weird because I had to make friends with someone new.

I was honestly a bit afraid of you. We pretty much hated each other. Some days were like, “No, not him again!

” Some days, to avoid seeing him, I wouldn’t even get up! Biological siblings probably experience some of the same feelings, at that age. Two-year-old Hugo is the joint child of patchwork parents Natalie Papesch and Sven Lucka.

The older children are both Hugo’s half-siblings seven and nine years older, respectively. And worlds apart, in terms of child development. Step-siblings Paulina and Moritz didn't move in together until they were elementary school age.

For the whole family, a high-stakes experiment. At first I wondered: Will it really work? Because for Moritz, of course, it was a big change.

He wasn’t at all interested in girls anyway. And then suddenly a stepsister. But you just have to throw them in at the deep end and see what happens.

And it took a long time. But, yes, it's actually working quite well now. Since Hugo arrived, we’re even more of a family a now.

It took a lot of patience and compassion. Living together did the rest: Today, the patchwork siblings are a team. Even if reality doesn’t always match expectations.

When you're an only child, you don't know what it's like to have a sibling. I've always wanted a sibling, but didn't know what was coming He's what I’ve got, now. I didn't expect it From strangers to siblings.

It wasn’t a given that these two would form a close bond. Data from the German ‘Family Report’ shows: Step-siblings may have fewer conflicts, but they also often have less to do with each other. Research shows for both childhood and adulthood that stepsiblings often have a somewhat less close bond.

But when families do a lot of things together, children tend to have fewer problems, as a rule. And there are also fewer problems between siblings. Therefore, parents are also the architects of the sibling relationship.

Architects, or, in this case: Coaches. Natalia Weisheit and her brother Max train the next generation of artists: Five-year-old Ruby and her brothers Charly and Lenny practice splits, then work on strength and endurance. And headstands.

Natalia's children train two to three times a week. Altogether, "Weisheit siblings" have been living and working together for over 120 years. Now you put your legs out.

Don't twist sideways like that. The roles within the family are always changing: Max used to be the baby of the family. Then he became an uncle.

We’ve got a completely different way of dealing with each other, now that there are little ones. Before, I was the little one. Now I'm old enough to tell the kids what to do.

So in a way, I grew up when Natalia had children. I would entrust my children to any of my siblings without hesitation and without fear that they would mess up their education or treat them unfairly. See how your brother does it.

Watch. Stretch your feet! Comparing.

Competing. Measuring one's own skills against those of others. All of this is part of everyday life for the Weisheit siblings.

But the brothers and sisters don't want to be bitter rivals. Not even the youngest ones. The little one sometimes wants to be just like the big one.

And the big one also needs reassurance that he is the bigger one. But they look after each other very well, even if they often argue. And they also make sure that no one gets a raw deal.

The children see how we adults treat each other. And they realized that we are siblings, too. Maybe that's where a lot of it comes from.

What the high-wire acrobat says about her experiences is confirmed by new research: Sibling relationships play an essential role in identity formation. Brothers and sisters serve as people we can project onto, and as role models. Just as important: Siblings make it easier to differentiate ourselves.

You can try things out on them, for a lifetime and they will still be your sibling. You can do a lot with Charly and with siblings in general. And that's why I run after Charly most of the time which he finds annoying.

It's the same with me: Yes, it’d be boring with no siblings, who would you do things with? Because our parents rarely have time. In a family business, it can be difficult to separate private and professional matters.

And if business goes badly, it affects everyone. Today: an emergency meeting. Bookings have been spotty.

After the Corona years, festivals and art shows are only slowly getting going again. And there‘s something else troubling the siblings: Max, Natalia and Jasmin have another brother, who left the high wire troupe a few weeks ago. Many things about this life were too much for him.

And then, as he got older, it became more and more difficult for him to do what he did. And on the whole it didn't surprise me that much. At that moment it did.

But when I thought about it afterwards, I think it was the best decision he could have made. And that's why I'm not so sad about it. Well, it's very, very difficult for me.

It's basically like a separation. A piece breaks away and it is not easy for me. It's going to be hard for the whole year.

But that's just the way it is. I wish for my brother’s happiness. And everything else must just come with time.

In the course of their lives, siblings are sometimes more, sometimes less close. Psychologists talk about a U-curve: Great closeness in childhood, distance in puberty. The distance is greatest when the focus is on career, partnership and one’s own children.

In old age, the sibling bond often becomes closer again. Behavioral patterns created by sibling relationships can affect all areas of life. But they often go unnoticed.

To counter this, Jürg Frick advises school psychologists, in his practice. He also offers trainings for teachers. Understanding sibling dynamics can improve teaching and learning, he says.

In the classroom or, later in life, in the office, could taking brothers and sisters into account help solve conflicts? I think this is still a neglected issue. People often don't have time, or they're in the middle of school psychology assessments, for example.

Then they just take a quick look: How are things at school, how are things with the parents? And if you don't pay attention, the siblings are not in there. And in many cases, siblings can play an important role.

So if you don't take that into account, that's malpractice, in my view. If brothers and sisters really do have such a strong influence what does that mean for children who grow up without siblings? Are the cliches about the only-child true?

Are they really, selfish, spoiled even antisocial? We don't find any systematic personality differences. There are studies that even find slight advantages.

That the ‘only-child’ has a slightly better academic performance, to begin with anyway; slightly higher self-esteem, but no elevated narcissism. It is often said that an only-child is at a physical disadvantage. In fact, it has often been confirmed that children who grow up with siblings are healthier.

And an only-child has a higher risk of being overweight. Presumably, that’s just a greater lack of exercise. For running and romping, these two will probably always have a companion.

The twin girls are just 25 hours old. They were born here at Tübingen‘s University Hospital, by Caesarean section. The father is glad that his daughters and their mother are all doing well.

And that his twins can look forward to a lifelong sibling relationship. He’s a little jealous, in fact. I'm an only-child and that's how I grew up and was raised.

But I also felt a bit alone. You'll never be alone with a twin, you'll always have someone to play with or help you in school. Just always having someone by your side is very, very valuable.

And I hope it stays that way for life. And I think that twins also have a special relationship. Regular siblings and fraternal twins share about 50% of their DNA.

The genetic blueprint of identical twins, on the other hand, is almost exactly the same. Researchers in Tübingen want to take advantage of this and are studying twins, to better understand common diseases. Which health problems are already anchored in the genes and which are generated by external influences?

The researchers are pursuing a classic question: Nature or nurture? The interesting thing is that the twins in the womb already have a very similar environment. Then they will live in a similar family environment later on and have a similar diet.

So it is very exciting to see how the children develop. For example, if they are identical, they have everything in common. Then the question is, of course: Are there still differences?

Forever connected. Twins are special. .

. . .

. and rare. In 2021, out of just under 800,000 births in Germany, only around 13,000 pairs of twins were born.

A share of just about 1. 7%. Today, twin brothers Christopher and Sebastian Herrmann are putting themselves at the service of science with Andreas Stengel.

The physician has two younger brothers and heads the "Twin Health" research project at University Hospital in Tübingen. Several studies from different disciplines converge here, all relating to "twin health. “ The project has established the only large-scale twin cohort with a medical focus in Germany.

Nearly 1,000 pairs of twins participate. A specialist in psychosomatic medicine wants to find out which factors can lead to eating disorders. Or to problems like irritable bowel syndrome.

The brothers take a stress test with EKG measurements for this purpose. They are separated, so they don’t influence one other. Good, then get started!

We have almost identical genes here. But since these identical twins no longer live together, we have different environmental factors. So, we have standardized this one factor, so to speak.

But we can examine the environmental factor separately. And we don't have to relate it only to diseases, but we can also find out the environmental factors that play a role in health. This is something that is very important and that we can possibly also apply to non-twins.

Non-twins meaning: all of us. If the influence of genes or the environment on various diseases is clarified, everyone could benefit from more effective drugs and therapies. Andreas Stengel aims to present his initial results by the end of 2023.

For the brothers, the study is an occasion to consider what separates them apart from the ten kilometers that lie between their homes. He tends to be the calmer one, me not quite so. But other than that, we're pretty similar.

As a twin, you‘re not individual. So you’re always, often only perceived as a twin. That's sometimes maybe also negative But otherwise, in school, and so on.

I think we've had more advantages than disadvantages. These twins, Clara and Sophie Hamann, share a plus in life: above-average athleticism. When it comes to physical fitness, there are some things we can influence ourselves, while others are genetically predisposed.

Like a person‘s maximum oxygen uptake during athletic exertion. This characteristic for endurance performance is strongly predetermined by genes. There are other fitness variables, but they are not as well studied as, for example, the lactate threshold.

It is assumed that the influence of genetics is somewhat less, which means that I can more clearly influence this through training. At the lactate threshold, the muscles begin to overacidify. They tire and burn.

Among other things, sports physicians record when this point is reached: for Clara and Sophie Hamann, probably later than for others. Both sisters played competitive sports until recently. We each had our sports and competitions but were never direct competitors.

I think, in general, as twins you don't think like that. We were also together in school, in the same class, and even there, where it is about grades: not at all. Then, you were happy for the other, or suffered with the other.

But we didn’t have a competitive mentality. Coincidence? Or conscious decision?

Clara excelled in rhythmic gymnastics. Sophie in the heptathlon. This spared the sisters direct competition, at least in the sports arena.

After all, many pairs of twins can't avoid comparison. A very important point: I am not only person XY, but I am, first of all, a twin. That certainly has positive as well as less favorable aspects.

And that can also lead to things like competitiveness, that is: What can I do better than the other? Wanting to be better than the other. That can spur you on.

Drve you to a peak performance. Like Robert Harting and his younger brother Christoph: in close succession, each won an Olympic gold medal in the discus. But the sporting competition was too much for the brothers.

Years of radio silence followed. The Eschbach family, in Berlin. Polly is three years older than her 14-year-old brothers Leif and Bent.

The siblings get along well. But the fraternal twins' bond is particularly close. The twins are like cats and dogs sometimes.

So, for one thing, they somehow can't do without each other. They fall asleep in the same bed quite often and are quite close. But they also manage to provoke each other constantly.

A home visit with. . .

Lena Weigel. The social scientist has two older sisters. Researchers like her have been visiting the family for nearly a decade to conduct interviews or take saliva samples for genetic analysis.

The three siblings and their parents are part of the "Twin Life" study. The long-term study aims to decipher the reasons for social inequality. Which has a stronger influence: genes or the environment?

And how do these factors evolve over time? Our DNA doesn't change during our lifetime, but you can think of it like a light switch: An environmental stimulus happens and a gene activity is turned on or off. And that can also cause change.

And with the help of the saliva samples that we have obtained, we can also address such questions in the future. Each twin answers questions individually. The sociologist wants to learn as much as possible about the twins' lives.

Sometimes I can’t sleep because problems of problems at school. One Two Education and career. Integration and participation.

The questions aim to clarify which factors influence social inequality. Two Two One Four One Two Four Three Two Such interviews are conducted once a year. Nationwide, with some 2,000 families.

The twins have pretty clear ideas about how they are different: My brother can't dance at all, and I can't play soccer very well. In terms of school, I'm not so good at math, but my brother is very good at math. Can such differences be traced back to genes?

Initial findings do indeed show that educational success depends not only on the parental home, but also on predisposition. Some things are more strongly genetically determined. For example, it has been discovered that cognitive abilities are strongly genetically determined.

That doesn't mean: you have this gene and that's how it's going to be. Other things that we call soft skills like self-esteem, how brave you are can be more strongly conditioned by the environment. In addition to identical and fraternal twins, the study also looks at parents and siblings.

When it comes to deciphering the mechanisms of social inequality, every perspective is important. I think the relationship with my brothers is very mixed. We all have our own private lives, so it's more like a shared flat: we see each other, we know each other, we do things together, but it's more like: everyone does their own thing.

Sibling relationships. You can't choose them. Or can you?

Modern medicine makes possible what was long unthinkable: a child is selected from the Petri dish in order to serve as a genetic match for an older brother or sister. After all, the new baby is being created to save the sick sibling’s life. They’re called rescue brothers and sisters.

Jamie Whitaker, now 20, from England, is one such rescue sibling. Stem cells from his umbilical cord‘s blood were able to cure his seriously ill brother Charlie. There's nothing really bad about it.

It's just: you are being able to help someone who is in your family. And obviously you will do it. No matter what it is.

The child, I mean me and Charlie, we're still happy together. He's better. There's no real downsides to it.

When Jamie was born, Charlie was four years old. The family still keeps in touch with the doctor who helped save Charlie’s life. For parents Michelle and Jayson, the doctor is a hero.

Others consider Mohamed Taranissi one of the most controversial figures in artificial insemination and preimplantation diagnostics. But what would have been the alternative? Charlie suffered from severe chronic anemia.

Untreated, it would be fatal. They said: Your child will probably die, before he is 14. And you can have no more children because you are probably carriers of this disorder.

So that, you know, that's quite a big impact on your life when you are 28, 26 and it's your first child. So, it was, it was hard, very hard. And it still makes me cry 21 years later.

They needed to find a stem cell donor for terminally ill Charlie. But they couldn’t find one. The Whitakers wanted to have another child anyway, they say.

This time, however, it had to be healthy - and a donor match. That's how Jamie came into this world - after a genetic test, by artificial insemination. Of course, it is a very, very specific process to wish for a sibling to cure another child.

At the moment, the procedure with rescue siblings is not permitted in Germany for medical-ethical reasons. I don't think we know that much about the long-term consequences yet. As far as feelings of guilt or gratitude are concerned, things like that, which of course play a big role.

The brothers say that, for them, there’s no question of ethical concerns or being a burden. Charlie and Jamie focus on how lucky they are to have each other. They like to joke about their relationship.

It‘s one of our favourite jokes: like, Oh, I helped you out. You got to help me out with this. Or just along those lines.

So say if you need picking up somewhere in the car. Oh, don't forget, you owe me one. And it’s just, it comes continually to be our running joke.

Charlie and Jamie seem comfortable, when it comes to dealing with their story. For siblings of chronically ill children, this isn’t always the case. New studies speak of "shadow children.

" They often fade into the background. And pale next to the sick child. There are children who suffer a lot.

And there are also children who, for example, and this is not so uncommon- dream that they will also become ill. Or they imagine: I'm dying now, and then my parents will see how much they will miss me. Or they hurt themselves and hope to get attention with this injury.

Parents of sick children have to be especially sensitive, when it comes to healthy siblings. Shadow children can often benefit from being able to help out in some way, from being involved a little bit and not just standing on the sidelines. That's important for children's overall development: to have the feeling that they can make a contribution.

Charlie Whitaker owes nothing less than his life to his brother. An extraordinary bond which hopefully never becomes a burden. A great day for the acrobatic Weisheit family.

Dear guests, in a moment you will experience the high wire troupe “Weisheit Siblings” from Gotha, in Thuringia. Dortmund: The first appearance of the season. And the first big show after the Corona pandemic.

They have been training every day for weeks. The tension is palpable. As always, it's not just about your own safety.

That's what many people can't understand, what I know: I trust my whole family with my life. So when my brother builds a trapeze, I have to trust that he's doing it right. That everything is safe and secure.

Until now, it’s been windy and rainy. Just before the show starts, the sun breaks through. The weather is on their side.

And then. . .

The double death loop! Quick hand signals, clear communications. One look.

Everyone knows what to do. Ready? Ready!

With no one else could the Weisheit siblings imagine such flights of fancy. 40 meters above the ground. So what is the artists' recipe for success?

Maybe it's one of those things: that you feel comfortable and safe, you understand each other without any words. That one look is enough, and you know everything is fine.