Why We Break Up With Our Siblings

Jonda Cynecki hasn't seen her twin sister Wanda in 13 years and doesn't hold out much hope that she ever will. Their last contact came at a family gathering in Ohio for Christmas, after which Wanda returned to her home in Key West, Fla. Then she disappeared. She didn't call, didn't write and couldn't be reached. When her parents died several years later, her siblings had to use intermediaries to get through to her. She called to borrow money about a year ago. Since then, the only sign she's still alive is that no one has heard anything to the contrary. And yet Jonda, 54, a school librarian, says wistfully of Wanda, "There isn't a day that goes by that something doesn't remind me of her."

Usually that something is doing the laundry. Whenever Jonda goes down to her basement to wash clothes, she sees, tucked under the stairs, an old tandem stroller. Her father crafted it from spare parts, painted it white and wrapped rubber around its wooden wheels. Jonda won't get rid of the stroller, even though it provokes sorrow and anger toward the sister who walked out on her family. What Jonda doesn't know--and might never know--is why.

Estrangement from siblings is a powerful ache not only for Jonda but for millions of other Americans as well--especially during the year-end holidays, when the absence of relatives is most poignant. Many of the 77 million baby boomers, now well into middle age, live farther from their brothers and sisters than did previous generations. And with each passing year, they face more of the life passages that often trigger splits with siblings, particularly arguments over the care of elderly parents or over their estates. At the same time, boomers have more divorces and fewer children and are less tethered to neighbors than were their parents and grandparents, so they are more in need of strong relationships with sisters and brothers--the most-enduring ties many of us have in our lives. Eighty-five percent of adult Americans have at least one sibling, yet an estimated 3% to 10% have completely severed contact with a brother or sister.

Such absolute estrangements may not be the norm, but experts who study family relationships believe they are on the rise. Psychologist Carol Netzer, author of Cutoffs: How Family Members Who Sever Relationships Can Reconnect, thinks that today's broader cultural freedoms have made it easier for people to say goodbye to traditions and to relatives. "The nuclear family is not as tight as it once was," she says. Some rifts reflect larger trends. The Woodstock generation, Netzer explains, was full of young people leaving their families to lose themselves in drugs or join religious groups, political movements and communes. "Often, when that ripple in the culture passes," says Netzer, "people go back to their families." Terry Hargrave, family therapist and author of Families and Forgiveness, believes that while the psychological self-help movement has been largely positive, "it teaches the individual that 'you're the most important thing; family is not.'"