How Your Siblings Shape Your Personality
What experts say about their power of influence
One of the few joys in the weeks of recent, unending awful news surrounding the novel coronavirus has been the emergence of Andrew and Chris Cuomo as sibling rivals. We’ve watched Governor Cuomo, the elder brother, and Chris, the CNN anchor, bicker on-air about calling their parents and which one is their mother’s favorite. We’ve heard about the younger Cuomo’s fever dream in which his brother donned a ballet costume. (Chris Cuomo was diagnosed with Covid-19 at the end of March.) It’s funny to think about these two people, who are major voices in the world right now, growing up under the same roof — the ways in which their early years together might have influenced the public figures they are now.
As a kid, I often felt like my younger sister and I were in the lyrics from a bad pop song. The kind that uses two very different types of women as foils for each other. She was class vice president and a cheerleader and I couldn’t dance or win an election if I bribed people to vote for me. (Which I might have considered, unlike my sister who would never.) Real life is, of course, more nuanced than a Top-40 tune. School came pretty easily for me, largely because I enjoyed it. For Bailey, my sister, it was more a means to an end. (We work for the same company now, so really it…
