Children’s sibling relationships and gendered practices: talk, activity and dealing with change

Abstract

This article addresses children’s sibling relationships as a site of social learning involving the (re)production of femininity and masculinity, drawing on in‐depth qualitative interviews with children aged 8–12. We begin by noting the lack of focus on gender in the majority of previous work on siblings. After introducing our own study, we look at the ways in which children understood their siblings in relation to themselves, highlighting points of closeness and division, and pointing to class distinctions around individuality and collectivity. We then explore how ‘talk’ and ‘activity’ are key gendered features of children’s relationships with their sisters and brothers, revealing versions of femininity and masculinity, and interplays of power. Finally, we consider how these gendered features of sibling practices have implications for children’s ability to deal with change in relationships with their sisters and brothers, especially living apart from each other, and we return to class as a feature of their understandings.

Notes

1. The Sibling relationships in middle childhood: children’s views project was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and we are grateful to them for their support. See Edwards et al. (2005) for the full report.

2. The nationally representative sample of 1112 parents were interviewed as part of a module of the NOP Parentbus survey commissioned for the Resources in parenting: access to capitals project being carried out under the Families and Social Capital ESRC Research Group at London South Bank University. See www.lsbu.ac.uk/families for further details.

3. ‘Full’ refers to siblings who have the same biological parents, ‘half’ refers to siblings who share one biological parent, and ‘step’ refers to siblings who are not biologically related through their parents but who share a biological parent in a partner relationship.

4. Jake has a ‘2’ after his name because he was the second child to choose that pseudonym for himself.