ABSTRACT
Some peculiar preoccupations characterize sibling research in the United States and Western Europe. Western views of siblings are limited—one might even say scientifically ethnocentric—because the preoccupations of Western sibling research are by and large the preoccupations of Western society: achievement; status and hierarchy; conformity and dependency; intelligence; rivalry and competition. Now siblings are indeed rivalrous; they often compete fiercely with each other, and age and ordinal position are important for understanding sibling relationships. But these are far from the only important topics. A cross-cultural view suggests a number of aspects seldom considered. Siblings conjointly perform important, responsible domestic tasks and chores essential to the subsistence and survival of the family; they are involved in cooperative child rearing; in defense, warfare, and protection; in arranging marriages and providing marriage payments. Siblings in most of the world strongly influence much of the life course of their brothers and sisters by what they do. They share life crisis and rite of passage ceremonies essential to their cultural and social identity; they take on ritual and ceremonial responsibilities for each other essential to community spiritual ideals. The sibling group in most societies around the world participates jointly throughout the life span in activities essential to survival, reproduction, and the transmission of cultural and social values.
