How does the presence or absence of siblings shape your identity?

It's such a broad set of variables, that anything can happen. If you have healthy or unhealthy sibling relationships it can either fuck you up severely or make you a very well rounded individual.

Me personally, I have four sisters and the answer is that they had a very negative affect on my personal and social development. Not just my siblings themselves but how we were all taught (or not taught) how to behave to each other by our parents.

 

I think it definitely has some sort of bearing on what sort of person you become. My sister is six years older than me and although we fought like cats and dogs growing up, past the age of 18 on my part we seemed to see eye to eye and continue to this day to confide in one another. She is 6 years my senior and also a scorpio, may explain the sparks while we were growing up. I would say my sister taught me to respect women as equals, as well as giving me a good model on good and bad dating relationships as she went through that whole process well before I did. She also directed me to take the hundred and some odd question personality test that told me I was an INFJ. Remove my sister and I may not have ever joined this forum.

 

Eh, I am happy to say my sisters no longer have any bearing on my life. Good riddance. My life growing up would have been both peaceful and positive without them.

 

i have a sense of humor because of my brother
i'm emotionally detached to some degree because of my sister.
they've contributed a LOT to who i am.

 

I think its important to have siblings. Only children always get all the attention from their parents and get all spoiled and stuck up.

Maybe I'm just saying this cause I love my little sister. She's like my best friend. She's two years younger than I am and sure we used to fight when we went to the same daycare and stuff, but now that we have our own seperate social lives we get along so well. I love her. I would hate being an only child too

 

I was the oldest of three boys who where each 13 months apart. Needless to say we were pretty close, which does not mean that we got along all the time. Mom says we never asked to take friends on trips; we did a good job keeping each other company. My middle brother and I fought all the time. Our personalities did not mesh well when we were younger. We get along just fine now though.

I suppose being the oldest of the siblings gave me more of a "protector" type of personality. I also think I would probably have done more musically if my middle brother weren't such a good musician. He was also into acting. I have a great interest in both of these now, but at the time shyed away from those things since they were "his thing". I wanted my own identity I suppose.

I think I would have been ok without them, as I have always made my own entertainment (reading), but I'm not so sure about them. Still, I'm glad they were there!

 

Questingpost, I kind of had a feeling you were an oldest.
I am the oldest of 4 kids, with 2 younger sister and a younger brother. My closest sibling is my sister, who is 18 months younger than me. We rarely argue, and usually agree to disagree on any conflicts. She's very dramatic and emotional, and sometimes hard to please, but she has such a strong spirit, and inspires me to live out my ambitions. My brother is 7 years younger than me, so there's quite a big gap. He's drastically different (possibly even the opposite) of me. He is very loud and energetic, easily influenced, and very athletic. He taught me how to get along with extraverts, and built my patience with sensing types! My youngest sister is 2 years younger than him, but they hardly ever get along. I think this has helped me to solve conflict more easily, even though the constant arguing is very draining. My youngest sister is who I have the most problems with. She likes to push boundaries and has little self control, so she's always getting into trouble. It really tests my patience sometimes. On the bright side, she's very creative, and extremely independent.

I have a friend that's an only child, and though she's not spoiled, she wishes she had a sibling like my sister who I get along with so well. My sister and I were always a team, and got eachother through everything for as long as we can remember.

Being the oldest, especially now that I'm 17 and my youngest sister is still only 8, I have a sense of responsibility that most people my age don't need to worry about. I almost feel like I'm prepared for parenthood, since having to take care of them for so long has caused me to learn a lot about taking responsibility for the people you care about, and self-sacrifice.

 

Res, this is a sweet thread topic, and I do have an opinion on this which i will get to later. But first, I can't actually respond to your message because you have messaging disabled, so I will just say it here:

Having a video to go off of would give me what I need for a most accurate read.

 

It does give you more of a sense of responsibility. Parents do put more on the older ones, especially in larger families. I know I do on my oldest. But I don't think that's all bad if you don't overburden them and expect them to do YOUR job. And actually all my kids are very good at helping out the one(s) that are younger. They follow the older ones examples I suppose.

I think if you are any good at all with human nature, you can usually spot who is an oldest, a middle, or an only child. It seems to mold people a lot. The one thing I really dislike now is that people are having small families (1-2 kids) and those kids not only are getting too spoiled, but I think they are really missing out on a family dynamic that is good for them as people. They can learn a lot about interacting with others that is now put off until much later. This leads to other problems as peoples personalities are much more set by the time they leave the nest.

 

My two younger brothers probably mostly affected me by way of enforcing "fairness" in my family. Nothing could be done by my parents that gave more benefit to one and not the others. It's still a big part of me, I try to look out for all participating parties. I also think "fairness" is very important.

 

I feel the same way. My sister and I were the only 2 for quite a while, and the two 'surprise' kids were a real wake up call. I think we would have been pretty spoiled if there were only 2 of us, since families with 2 kids seem to expect to get what they want more and be more self centred. It wasn't until my brother was born that I realized how selfish I really was.

 

My theory on this is that each siblings will begin to fill certain roles, which creates a nitch factor among siblings.

This relates to the siblings personality types because how their cogntive functions develop depend on how much validation they are getting from their environment when they use them. For instance, if one child is an ENTJ, and one younger is an ISFP. This could stunt the growth of the ISFP's Ni and Te, because of the fact that the ENTJ child is taking up the Te and Ni nitch, and also invalidating the ISFP's weaker use of Ni and Te, which discourages them from using it in the future.

There is a similar problem that is faced when two sibling have the exact same personality type. The older of the two will outshine the younger one early on, and take most of the validation for using their top two functions well, which causes the younger sibling to lose confidence in using their own top two functions, since they are not shining with them as brightly as the older. This can cause detrimental effects on the psyche of a person, because it is their dominant function that make them feel the most heroic in their use and validation of it.

I'd also like to use myself as an example, I'm an INTP, and I have an ENTP older brother. He learned to shine with his Ne and Ti at a very early age, and while that is great for him, it put a standard of Ne usage that was out of my league. Whenever I would express my Ne around my brother, he would usually give me a "No, that's lame" kind of response, so for a very long time I didn't express my Ne, because I had a certain insecurity over how it would be accepted. I actually ended up focusing on my Si and developing it pretty strongly, which later ended up as my weapon against him, because that was the one thing I could do better than him, and get validation for. I didn't really get back in touch with my Ne until I carved out my own support system of friends that I could find myself with.

 

Nope.

 

I don't like having a small family

I don't like being an only child. People always tell me that I'm lucky because I get the attention the blah bla hblah and everything but in my head I'm like IF ONLY YOU KNOW.

I WOULD LOVE to have family dinners, reunions and stuff like that. I WISH I had like 4 siblings!!!!!! that would be fun.

I guess I'm stuck with being forever jealous of the people who have big families.

One of the things that I want to have is the love, comfort and happiness that a family can give. I'd imagine being a sister to my siblings and sharing stories and all that. I'll never have the chance to feel the love of a sibling. It's so sad

I guess it has an effect.. a big effect. You'll kind of have to learn things on your own and discover it on your own especially when you're not close to your parents and everything.

Oh and...... When I grow older, I wouldn't have someone to be really comfortable with whenever I have problems or just want to hang out and stuff. I have friends but I think it's so much different when you're with siblings.

I guess it's unfortunate not to have any sibling at all because there's nothing you can do to have a real sibling. I guess the feeling of having a sibling is a feeling I've never felt and I know I can't do anything about it but really........ I think it made a big impact on why I act like this and like that.

I don't know... being an only child, I never had all the attention. I don't think it's about the attention and everything. It's like...... it intensified my feeling of being alone. I feel so isolated and just alone. Because I don't have anyone to turn to (I can't really relate to my parents).

If only I had siblings............