How to Handle Adult Siblings Fighting

Key Takeaways

• Research shows that parental favoritism can cause lasting mental health issues in children.
• Focus on finding supportive people to give you love and acceptance you might not get from family.

Sibling rivalry isn’t always outgrown in childhood. In some cases, it only intensifies as time passes. While people often think of sibling rivalry as a childhood phenomenon, adult siblings fighting is a common phenomenon in which adult siblings struggle to get along, argue, or are even estranged from one another.

Sibling rivalry is characterized by competitiveness, conflict, and jealousy among siblings. It can involve biological siblings, but it can also include stepsiblings, adopted siblings, and foster siblings. While common in childhood, it often affects adult sibling relationships as well.

If you feel strain in your relationship with your family because your parents favor another sibling or another sibling’s family, you may be surprised to find that you’re not alone. While most parents love their adult children, it’s surprisingly common for a parent to be closer to, or more supportive of, particular adult offspring over others, sparking sibling rivalry.

This article discusses why sibling rivalry happens and some strategies you can use to cope with the stress of adult siblings fighting.

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Signs of Sibling Rivalry in Adults

Some signs of sibling rivalry in adults include:

• Jealousy
• Competition, showing off, and bragging
• Trying to get attention from the parent
• Trying to get parents to take their side in an argument
• Not treating adult siblings as adults or equals
• Viewing the other sibling as an enemy
• Interfering with the other sibling’s life or relationships
• Attempting to undermine other siblings or make them feel inadequate

Sibling rivalry in adulthood can take many forms and may range from subtle to much more overt behavior. In some cases, adult siblings fighting can create conflict within the family and lead to the breakdown of relationships.

Research on Sibling Rivalry

Research has shown that parenting plays a significant role in contributing to adult sibling rivalry. While parents may strive to remain unbiased when it comes to their kids, favoritism is actually very common.

Research has found:

• Favoritism affects mental health. Other research shows that parental favoritism negatively affects the mental health of all of the children in the family, either by creating resentment in the less-favored children, stress from high parental expectations for the favored child, strained sibling relationships, and other negative consequences.
• Parents often feel closer to one child. A study from Cornell University included interviews from 275 mothers in their 60s and 70s and their 671 offspring. Among those participants, 70% of the mothers could specify a child to whom they felt closest. Interestingly, only 15% of interviewed offspring felt that there was equal treatment by their mothers.
• The impact of this favoritism can be lasting. Research suggests that the effects of perceived parental favoritism can last through life.

Recap

So if you feel that you’re less favored by your parents and that pain is affecting you in adulthood, you’re not alone. Adult children often report perceived favoritism, and parents themselves report feeling closer to one child than others.

Reasons for Adult Sibling Rivalry

Sibling relationships are complex and influenced by a variety of factors including genetics, life events, gender, parental relationships, and experiences outside of the family.

Parental favoritism is often cited as an explanation for adult siblings fighting. It’s also common for people to feel that a sibling is or ‘has always been’ favored by a parent, even if this may not be recognized or acknowledged by the rest of the family.

While it hurts to be the less favored ‘child’, it’s human nature for some people to be drawn together for various reasons, such as:

• Geographical proximity: Your sister who lives closer to your mom may understandably spend more time with her.
• Shared personality features: Your dad and brother think the same way, and thus understand each other more easily.
• Other factors within or beyond your control: Perhaps your worldview doesn’t match your parents’ as closely as that of one of your siblings, and they resent it, consciously or unconsciously.

Research shows that parents are more ambivalent toward children who are not married, less educated, and share fewer of their values. 

While this can be human nature, it stings more when coming from a parent, as we think of our parents as people who are supposed to love and support us unconditionally, and we may still see them as a little greater than human (a viewpoint leftover from childhood).

Coping With Adult Siblings Fighting

Whatever the reason, if you find that one or more parents are favoring another sibling over you, either by having a closer relationship with your sister’s kids, bragging more about your brother’s accomplishments, paying more attention to your sister, or always taking your brother’s side in a disagreement, it can make for a stressful family gathering with raw feelings that can be easily hurt.

Research has shown that parental favoritism and sibling rivalry are linked to increased symptoms of anxiety, depression, hostility, and loneliness.

Adult siblings fighting can take a toll not just on the individuals involved, but also on the entire family unit. If you are struggling to cope, here are some tips that can help reduce conflict and manage feelings of stress caused by sibling rivalry.

Don’t Take It Personally

Understand that your parent may not ‘love’ the other sibling more, they just feel closer or more invested in their lives, for whatever reason. They may not even be aware of it, and most likely not doing it to hurt your feelings.

If they are actively trying to hurt you as ‘punishment’ for not being more the person they’d like you to be, perhaps it’s best that you’re not closer.

Find Support Elsewhere in Your Life

Find supportive people in your life to provide the love, acceptance, and approval you may not get from your parents as much as you’d like. While we may not be born into families of people who think like us and share our values, there are many people in the world that can provide the support that our family members may be unable to give. 

Don’t Perpetuate Sibling Rivalry

Don’t compete with your siblings, and don’t blame them for being favored. Even if they’re going out of their way to remain the favorite, you can’t blame them for wanting their parent’s love and approval. Just accept that your relationship with your parents is yours and try to keep it separate from sibling relationships.

Accept the Reality of the Situation

You’ll also feel better if you accept that you may not get as much support and approval from parents as you want, and that’s okay. If you don’t come at them from a place of need, you will actually have more personal power.

It may be difficult to get into this frame of thought, but you’ll feel better after you do. Start by noticing all that you do get from them, and valuing that. Also, you can notice everything that you get from other areas of your life, and realize that your family of origin is only one part of your life, and it doesn’t have to be the most important part.

Invest In Your Own Family

Finally, if you have a committed relationship or family of your own, you can focus on providing that which you’d like to be getting from your family of origin. Focus on what you share with them, and on what you can provide to yourself in your own life, and you’ll be better able to accept familial quirks.

Get Additional Support If Needed

Given that there can be lasting negative effects of parental favoritism and sibling rivalry that last into adulthood if you feel significant stress from this situation and you feel you need extra support in managing this stress, don’t be afraid to reach out to a professional. 

There are many qualified therapists who deal with family-of-origin issues like these, and they can help quite a bit with the stress. You can also adopt general stress management habits to lessen the overall stress load and make it easier to cope.

Talk to your doctor if you feel like you need help coping with relationship stress or consult a mental health professional in your area.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

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By Elizabeth Scott, PhD

Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

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