Large Sibling Age Gap

What do you think would be the effect of having a sibling that's seven years older/younger than you? I had some theories...

1. I think the older sibling wouldn't swear much as an adult, having to watch her language in high school because her brother was in elementary school.
2. Though most people would say she'd probably act more mature growing up, I think there is a good chance that she'd have acted less mature, feeling like her and her brother were of equal status and should be treated as such.
3. However, as an adult, she act like a nagging parent sometimes ("Watch your mouth" "Do your homework") stuff like that.
Am I somewhere on base? I'm not sure how it would effect the younger sibling. Also, do you think they could form a close friendship despite the age gap?

But Don't Forget Knuckles O'Shaughnessy!

I'm close with my brother despite him being fifteen years older than me and moving out when I was about five, since he visits often.

He did not swear a lot around me while we were growing up, though this might have been because I'm his sister and he also tended to spend a limited amount of time with me. But he doesn't act like a parent either, though this might be because he already had a child and moved out by the time I was about seven years old.

Other than that, we act like a normal big brother and little sister who happen to have a larger age gap than usual.

edited 25th Jan '12 3:16:17 PM by Leradny

I don't know about the equal status thing.

I have a seven years younger sister, and I always felt like a bit of an honorary parent when she was a kid. Obviously I didn't have anything near the workload of actual parents, but I did quite a lot of babysitting her, reading to her, comforting her when she was hurt etc.. It made me a pretty standard responsible older sibling.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

In my family, my brother and I are one year apart, and then there's a six year gap until my sister. This results in... a lot of tagging along and saying "But the other kids can do it, why can't I?" Also some unpleasant 'ganging up on' sort of effects.

As a result my little sister stayed up way later than she probably should have and watched a whole bunch of movies and tv shows that would probably have been considered too old for her. This didn't cause her to swear more, just to have odd tastes.

Be not afraid...

I'm 7 years older than my sister. But due to having no interest in being fashionable, slouching, and some fault of genetics, there have been times when people thought she was the older sister or at least that our age gap is not actually that large.

We get along, but she kind of irritates me sometimes and the only shared interest is probably androgynous-looking Asian boy bands and nail polish. I don't bother doing anything parental-ish. I have little to no mothering/guardian-instinct towards anything. My parents remark that she studies the hardest. She seems a bit frivolous sometimes since she's the only one who worries about hot guys, who's popular, and currently has decided that she wants to marry a hot Vietnamese guy. She's kind of bossy, picky, and mercurial. She worries about public image the most. We always joke about the best punishment for her would be showing up as school being as embarrassing as possible.

I swear kind of inconsistently, though my sister says I'm the most likely to accidentally swear in front of children. Though I don't really drop f-bombs and mostly only use damn, hell, and crap.

I'm a middle child and both my parents are the eldest and first-marrying of both their families so I have a crud-ton of younger cousins. Because I'm an art major and the most privy to cartoons, I'm considered interesting to kids. But they seem to collectively know that I'm the most hilariously emotional person because kids know I'm the one who is the most hilarious to irritate on-sight.

edited 25th Jan '12 5:10:36 PM by Kaxen

I went out with a guy who was slap-dab in the middle of an octo-sibling combo. From what I saw, the older ones did seem more mature than most their age (probably due to having baby-sitting duty shoved on them quite early).

However, the oldest compartmentalised their life a great deal. Swore like a trooper with friends, but never near the sibs.

The baby of the group was very babyish, as you'd expect. Yet, at the same time was one of the most outwardly confident people you'll ever meet (along with the second-youngest). The older ones might back them up at the drop of a hat, but also put pressure on them to do well so they wouldn't be a bother to look after, I guess.

Nothing makes you pull up your socks like the fear of siblings hitting your weak points when you start drooping. Especially if they changed your nappies and know almost every last thing.

EDIT: I guess it's the case that parents think they know their kids best. But, in reality, siblings know each other inside and out. No matter what they think or feel about each other.

edited 25th Jan '12 5:29:27 PM by Euodiachloris

I have a brother who is eight years younger than me. I'm getting along with him very well.

Then again, the fact that I'm extremely immature helps.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

There's a 9.5-year gap between me and my youngest brother. My parents give him a disproportionate amount of attention, as expected, but something particularly note-worthy is that my parents get annoyed at me for not giving him a disproportionate amount of time with everything we're forced to share. As an example, my 2 brothers and I used to share a single Nintendo DS. My baby brother was prone to pressing random buttons and deleting out save files, overwriting them with his ones that were near the beginning of every game. So we supervised him to both make sure he doesn't do that, and to make sure he got the same amount of time as the rest of us. My parents did not take kindly to this, so my father smashed the DS into pieces by throwing it on the ground, Nintendium be damned.

On top of this, I must claim that the OP's first assertion is incorrect. My younger brother*

and I swear whenever we want (though it's not very often because we don't anyway), not caring if my baby brother is in the room. Also, my parents get annoyed at me when I try to act as a nagging parent. Making him put away things he's finished using is apparently very, very evil of me.

I agree with that poster's edit. My parents see my baby brother as a saint, but he's violent and tries to block me when I go to report his actions.

edited 25th Jan '12 6:34:04 PM by burnpsy

A friend of mine from high school had a two-year-old baby sister when he was a freshman, which I suppose is about a 12-year gap. He was certainly very pseudo-parent-ish to her. Nor did he swear around her, but then again he didn't really swear much anyway.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

14-year age gap to my youngest sibling. Said youngest sibling is nine years younger than the next youngest.

What I noticed is that she tends to act older than she really is. Not in terms of maturity, but intelligence and understanding (she's certainly more knowledgeable than I was when I was a little kid). Might have to do something with growing up with access to the Internet, but I believe a considerable part of it is the simple fact that, being surrounded by adults, became accustomed to acting like one.

And yes, it's possible to be close. In our culture, it's almost impossible to not be close to your siblings.

I have a half-sister that's 9 years older and a half-brother that's 10 years older. To be honest I don't really remember them from my childhood, and they moved out when I was about 8, but I bet my brother swore quite a lot. He's always been immature and expects to be taken care of, while my sister is definitely the bossy, assertive type, and I'm a typical lazy nerd. We all get along pretty well most of the time although I wouldn't say we're close. Not sure how much if anything any of that has to do with age gaps, though.

edited 26th Jan '12 6:50:57 AM by Kesteven

gloamingbrood.tumblr.com MSPA: The Superpower Lottery

Some families are more distant. I've another friend who has something like a 14-year gap between his only other sibling and him (his brother is the older). In fact, I'm not actually sure how big the gap actually is, but it is about that large. They barely know each other. They never speak to each other. They don't even know each other enough to actively hate each other. Or love. It's totally weird from my understanding of the term 'family'.

This is maybe not all that surprising when you realise that the baby brother was only about 4 when Big Bro went to uni and then moved out. You could view them as singleton siblings, even, given they've barely spent any time being brought up together.

Mind you, the whole family seems to have communication issues. They've lost touch with practically any extended connections they have. (In my opinion, even the nuclear family just seems to have shared the same house, as they all live in totally different worlds.)

Seven years isn't what I'd consider to be an especially large gap. My sister and I are six years apart, and I'd say we're normal siblings for the most part. Sometimes we like each other, sometimes we hate each other. Sometimes I had to look out for her, and do things like walk her home from school, but that's about it.

Really, I think it depends on the family. My grandpa has a 17-year age gap between him and his little sister. Now that's a big gap.

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

I'm 10 years older than my sister. We both say it's like my parents had two only children; between the age gap and well-off parents, we never really had to share anything. We were at different life stages until very recently.

That said, I don't think seven years is quite enough to push the older sibling into premature nagging-parenthood. And I certainly don't recall toning down my language around her.

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

I'm 11 years older than my sister, and my brother is 16 years older than her. While my sister has probably grown up pretty average, it has made me and my brother feel a bit more... stressed, you could say? Our childhood pretty much ended as soon as she was born and we've been doing a lot of the work to raise her. We've become more aware of our surroundings, you could say, but we were also raised in a very poor environment and it's only getting worse. The setting is greatly going to affect how siblings are raised, with or without a huge age gap.

I'm pretty sure the concept of Law having limits was a translation error. -Wanderlustwarrior

My Brother is 16 years older than me, my sister 14 years. As my brother is quite the family guy, he looked after me a lot, played with me, when my parents didn`t have time. It is save to say, that I had a very sheltered childhood and it made me less independent, than I would have been, when I would`ve had to entertain myself more often.

My sister on the other hand was just going to puberty and would only start to care for me, when I was about 6, so I also learned living with improved my understanding of the needs for privacy towards my parents as well as other adults in an early age. A I was getting older my sister and I grew closer and she influenced my taste in music/ movies/ clothes etc. quite a bit, because if you`re siblings` are much older you tend to look up to them and sometimes they will become your idols.

Also my vocabulary was quite outstanding, because of some of my "playmates" being much older than me.

Having more people to chauffeur them around could spoil a child or make it less independent/ organized (because it wouldn`t have to rely on public transport).

Also, depending on how young the cild is, it could cause quite the drama if the older sibling decides to move out. Living with someone from whom you were never seperated more than a few days, who suddenly decides that he wants to go away and only stop by for a visitat the weekend, can be EXTREMELY distressing for a child. (Is it because of me? Does he not like me? Who will play with me now, before bedtime? What if he does NOT visit? etc.) If the difference is only 7 years, this probably will not play a big role for you, but if the older sibling does have to leave, you can get moving scenes from this

edited 2nd Feb '12 9:17:12 AM by LayLay

There's nearly a ten year gap (nine years, ten months) between me and my little brother. I was always the honorary parent to him, especially once my mom and his dad got divorced. My grandparents would even call me "Mommy Jr". I watched him a lot, and I admit I do nag at him. He's also mildly autistic so especially once he was diagnosed I coddled him a bit. Not so much now. But once he got older, we got more sibling-like, I think. He hasn't been listening to whatever I say like he used to. We bicker more now, but we usually forgive each other five minutes later. And we play a lot of the same video games, watch a lot of the same cartoons so he's fun to be around. That last part's probably because I'm not particularly mature.

I rarely swear aloud in the first place, besides the occasional silly euphemism, so there's nothing I really need to tone down in front of him.

edited 1st Feb '12 2:48:25 PM by ozaiangels

My step son is 8 and 10 years older than my kids. It lead to hero worship.

Also think about the age of the parents - they will have a different out look on life by the time the youngest is born.

Do the job in front of you.

I'm almost nine years older than my brother. Points 1 and 3 are pretty much true, but my brother and I aren't on equal status, I'm somewhere in between a third parent and a sister to him.

edited 8th Feb '12 8:30:22 AM by ladygem

Okay, this is nice and all, but what about people having siblings who are like thirty years older than them? I feel like there would be lots of hijinx to ensue as people constantly mistook the older brother or sister for a parent, and to an extent, they could possibly act as a third parent as well.

I'm an only child, by the way, so I'm not entirely sure how exactly this would play out.

Beginning when I was about 30, people have mistaken my father and me for brothers, since I take after him so much. Same height, same build, same facial features (thanks a lot, Dad...) It can make for some awkward moments when meeting new people.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.

My dad was the youngest of ten; the age difference between him and his oldest sibling (a sister) was just over 20 years, with the others coming at roughly 2-year intervals. I don't recall any stories of hijinks between him and his older sibs — they were adults or nearly adult when he was an infant.

Where the age difference did affect things was in the relationship between him and his first cousins, who were closer to his age, and further down the line between my sister and I and our cousins — my first cousins were all adults when I was a child; the cousins who were close to my own age were my first cousins once-removed — my first cousins' children.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I've known a few people with that big (or greater) an age gap between themselves and their siblings. The thing that struck me the most was how much the younger kids minded the older sibling, who they seemed to view as a third authority along with their parents. My older brother is only two years older than me, and I'd've told him where to go if he tried to tell me to do half the stuff these folks did with their much-younger siblings.

That's a very good point, ~robbery. The dynamic between Dad and his oldest sisters was very child-parent in some ways.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.