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That sibling rivalry was a possible motivating factor for Fanny Hensel to write a piano quartet might explain some similarities between the slow movements of the siblings’ compositions, both of which fall into a ternary ABA form, with a lyrical opening in the major followed by an agitated, contrasting middle section in the minor. Still, the “competition” between the siblings took an incontrovertible turn in 1823 and 1825. As it happened, it was the birthday of Wilhelm Hensel, who had prepared for Fanny's departure by turning to poetry and confiding to her these lachrymose verses. Fanny responded by setting them as a song in a style of slow lament. By composing the song in December 1822, Fanny, in effect, now assumed the poetic persona, just months before Wilhelm's departure for Italy and the beginning of a new five-year separation.

This chapter presents a Palestinian folktale focusing on relationships among siblings. The competition between the brothers is acted out against a family background of polygyny and first-cousin marriage. This tale is one of the best loved and most popular in Palestine, perhaps because it dramatizes a situation which can occur in any family—that concerning an underdog younger (or smaller) brother. Here, however, a child who identifies with Half-a-Halfling would not feel too much guilt, for the siblings are only half brothers—they are not from the same womb and have not sucked from the same breast. The use of polygyny as a narrative idiom serves to palliate the effects of jealousy and hostility among the brothers. The tale, moreover, has all the elements of a hero fantasy, providing a good role model for children: the hero attains his goal by exercising the virtues of courage, truthfulness, and resourcefulness, and, in helping his brothers escape the ghouleh, he demonstrates generosity of spirit by rising above the pettiness of sibling rivalry.

This chapter examines the relationship between parenting and child behavior by focusing on the Quality vs. Quantity Theory. After providing an overview of the Quality vs. Quantity Theory, it describes how parents discriminate between their children and how children react to discrimination by their parents. It then proposes a simple model in which children’s happiness is determined by parental attention. It also considers an asymmetric game, dubbed the Heartstrings Game or the Crying Game, whereby children, especially infants, do not show altruism toward their parents, even as their parents are altruistic toward them. It extends the Heartstrings Game to sibling rivalry and favoritism by parents. Finally, the chapter discusses a theory of child development in which parents trade off parenting today with parenting in the future.

This chapter presents a Palestinian folktale focusing on relationships among siblings. The pattern of rivalry among siblings of the same sex in the tale shows the importance of marriage to a woman. The first concern of the elder sisters is not just for food, but for husbands who can provide it. The teller himself emphasizes their loneliness and isolation before marriage, their struggle for existence, and their hunger. An unmarried woman lacks self-definition, not only because she is without a husband, but also because she will have no children. After marriage, however, the sisters change markedly in character—although, as we might expect, the elder two sisters' jealousy over the superior marriage of the younger does not manifest itself until after the birth of her first child.

In this essay, Barrie Thorne and Arlie Hochschild describe all the ways that academic life resembles life in families, and they argue that, while the office family presents its challenges, we are very lucky to live in one.

This chapter explores the nature of the filial and sibling relationships that prevailed between and among J. S. Bach and his five musical sons: Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Gottfried Bernhard, Johann Christoph Friedrich, and Johann Christian. By examining the often unflattering explicit (and implicit) testimony contained in the surviving epistolary and musical sources, the author seeks to understand how these uniquely privileged, and uniquely challenged, musicians came to terms with their paternal legacy and to determine how, and with what degree of success, they sought to emerge from their father’s artistic shadow.

This chapter discusses one of Burnett’s major achievements and the first of his films to be made under relatively normal Hollywood production circumstances. To Sleep with Anger tells the story of generational and class conflict within a black family in Los Angeles. Retired worker Gabriel and his wife, Susie, are visited by Harry, an old friend from the south, who becomes a houseguest. Soon after Harry’s arrival, strange things begin to happen. Gabriel falls ill, and his youngest son falls under Harry’s bad influence.