What do successful people have in common? Meaningful sibling relationships.

Boston Globe

18-04-2025

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Which is why I was excited to pick up 'The Family Dynamic: A Journey into the Mystery of Sibling Success,' out on Tuesday, May 6, from Pulitzer Prize-winner Susan Dominus, the mom of college-age twins. In the book, she chronicles the trajectories of modern, high-achieving families to tease out lessons from their upbringing. Some were well-connected; others weren't. Some were prosperous; some weren't. But they did have a few things in common.
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We chatted about nature versus nurture, how much parenting really matters, and why sibling relationships are sometimes the best predictor of future outcomes.
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What really struck me about this book is the age-old question: nature versus nurture. How much of our kids' capacity for achievement is hardwired or parented?
I do hope that parents who read this book feel less pressure to 'make' their children a certain way.
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I'll just talk about my own kids: I think parents of fraternal twins are really sensitive to the limits of the parenting effect. I have fraternal twin boys. We read to them exhaustively every day for years, and we read them the same stories. We had the same rules in the household for both. We had the same expectations for both. I fed them the same food.
One is the social chair of his fraternity at [a large university], and the other one is at a tiny liberal arts college in Santa Fe that has a great books program, reading Aristotle and studying ancient Greek. They're extremely different, and we raised them the same way. To some extent, you have to think that they just kind of came out that way.
I do think that parents overestimate the effect that they have on their children's desire to achieve. Kids who are seeking autonomy might respond with what my friend [psychologist] Lisa Damour calls the 'kiss of death' effect. Whatever a parent suggests, the child wants to do the opposite. I think they overestimate their ability to manage a child's ambition or drive, and I think they underestimate the sibling effect.
The Family Dynamic explores how sibling relationships affect future success.
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What's the sibling effect?
In a lot of the families I spoke to, the kids weren't necessarily trying to prove themselves to their parents, but they were trying to live up to their siblings — not to please their parents but because they wanted to be their siblings' equal. Or there was competition among the siblings that spurred them on in positive ways, or there were siblings who were really looking out for their younger siblings.
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There was one Chinese immigrant family, the Chens. The older siblings really wanted the younger siblings to outdo them. They each said that they wanted the younger ones to do even better. I think that was just part of the family culture, because it was a little bit of them against the world.
Parents have less control over this than they think, and they should see that as liberating. … I say in the book that this is both the great illusion and the great responsibility of parenthood: to think that you're responsible for your child's success.
What else did families of driven siblings have in common?
The most consistent theme is that parents did convey a message of 'all things possible.' In fact, if I could rename the book, I might even call it 'All Things Possible,' because it wasn't so much parents putting pressure on their kids. There was very little of that. But there was a lot of optimism. A lot of the parents in the book themselves were tremendous overcomers. Either in word or deed, they had already shown their children that incredible things could happen if you really stuck to it or believed in yourself.
What I saw in a lot of these families was that the siblings all remembered an attitude of great positivity and optimism from their parents. They were people who said things like, 'With God's help, all things are possible' or, 'The sun shines down on all of us.' Many of the parents were comfortable letting their kids be independent, take risks, or make difficult choices (such as the Holifields, whose daughter chose, as a teenager, to be one of three children to desegregate a high school in Tallahassee); and many parents fostered a creative open spirit, showing a love of and dedication to travel, exposing their children to culture.
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A lot of the parents were themselves sort of extraordinary figures … people who had immigrated or made things happen against all odds. A lot of the families were led by legendary professional educators (like Ellis Marsalis, father to Wynton and Branford) and Esther Wojcicki (mother to tech pioneers Susan and Anne Wojcicki), a beloved journalism teacher.
Something you see in these families is curiosity, openness to experience. The kids were encouraged to dream big — not to say, 'You have to go out there and win an Olympic medal,' but they did encourage them to really believe in themselves, to believe that the world was theirs for the taking, that they could make change, and that they were strong enough to make change.
What if a parent has one kid who is super successful — things come easy — and a kid who struggles? They're raised in the same house. They're encouraged to dream big. What do you make of that dynamic?
I do think that sometimes the comparisons can be insidious, and kids are really sensitive to that.
I think it's important to expose that child to as many opportunities for spark as possible: classes, museums. But it's also important to emphasize for that child that life is long and that, whatever their strengths are, and that child definitely has strengths, those are going to serve them really well in life. You have to adjust your expectations to your child, because if you set them too high, then we know that it really does become counterproductive.
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The idea that everyone's going to reach the same standard is definitely unhealthy. Recognize that there's a roll of the dice. Everyone can learn math, but some kids are going to be innately more gifted; that's just a fact of life. To think that, if only you parented the less academically successful child better than [their] sibling, that's misguided, for sure.
Your book is called 'The Family Dynamic.' How much are family resources and connections important?
I think with siblings, there can sometimes be a network effect. Siblings can really amplify each other's careers. One family came from a pretty financially disadvantaged background, but as their careers progressed, each one benefited from the fact that their siblings' careers were also progressing. I don't think that any one of them would have been as successful had they not had the network of equally driven, high-achieving, and very supportive siblings.
There's power in numbers. If you're trying to make your way in the world, and you have three siblings who are fairly powerful and who are making introductions and rooting for you and whispering your name in the ears of possible people to hire you, that matters for sure.
Any other common threads?
So many educators were in these families. Not every parent can become an educator, but they can think like an educator. They get involved in their schools … making clear the value of education and the love of learning — the idea that school is a happy place and a place where you should feel comfortable.
I do think being involved in your kids schooling, being involved in the school itself, having that kind of family connection to a school, bridges that gap between family, that's safe and nurturing, and the school environment.
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The other thing I saw a lot of was parents who made the house a pretty warm and safe environment. Being a parent who's trying to make your kid 'work harder'? It's hard to imagine that really being a great environment for the child. We've seen that backfire.
We live in an era of specialization and club sports. I see for my son in basketball: Playing on the town team just doesn't cut it anymore. Is there a sweet spot between specialization and encouragement?
I think there is. I think that to the extent that parents can, follow your kids' dreams. A lot of 13-year-olds want to be professional baseball players or soccer players. Maybe you have a sense that's probably not in the cards. But, sure, to the extent that you can afford it, let them take it as far as they want to go. Follow their lead.
Diane Paulus was dancing in the American Ballet Theatre at a very young age, and her mother would show up. Show up for every event that you can that your work schedule will allow; let them know you support them; drive them where they want to go to the extent that your schedule will allow. But once you get there — and this is a term she used — watch without desire.
'Watch without desire': I love that term.
You don't want to care more about the outcome of this game than the kid does. You want them to know that you're there for them. You're there with the drink at the end. You're there to get some ice cream afterward. I don't think there's value in being the parent who coaches the coach. I've seen this in my own life. When parents yell from the sidelines, it's just more often demotivating than encouraging. I'd much rather be the parent who cheers for the other team that's losing and shows the kid the value of rooting for the underdog.
Any other lessons for families in the thick of it, wondering how their kids will turn out?
I think things like picking where your child goes to summer camp, if you have those resources, encouraging them to work with a coach whom you really respect and admire, or a music instructor you think can both inspire them musically but also enforce some real discipline? That can come from outside the home.
Don't settle for the first music instructor you meet. Try to find someone whom you think will genuinely inspire your child. Or, when you think about encouraging your child to play a sport in high school, maybe it's not the sport that you think about — maybe it's the coach who's really incredible, who kids love. Encourage your kid to do that sport because you want the role model as much as you want the sport.
As a good reporter, you try to be objective and open-minded. Was there anything surprising or counterintuitive in your research?
I went into the book thinking: I'm going to write a book about how to raise high-achieving families. I'm going to interview all of their families about what they did to make their children so successful. And the first thing that you do when you start to do this is run into all of this research that says that parenting effects are smaller than we think they are.
I think that we conflate nurture with the environment. Nurture, your home life, is a very small part of the environment. Your kids are exposed to teachers, best friends, your neighborhood.
[For] most of the people I spoke to, the major turning points in their lives, or major motivations, came from their siblings. Why did Sarah True become an Olympic athlete? She would say it's because she didn't want to compete with her siblings academically. She wanted to beat them in something, so she went into sports. That was the biggest surprise to me.
I think we all underestimate the effect of siblings on young people's life choices and motivations. I say in the book that parents set up the expectations and the values, but it's really the siblings who help young people execute on that a lot of the time, in part because we take advice more readily from our siblings than from our parents at certain stages of our lives.
Has this book changed your own family dynamic?
I think that I became less hard on myself, in a way. I would like to say that I became a better parent. But there's this really interesting quote that I love in the book from Dan Belsky, an epidemiologist who does some work in behavioral genetics.
He basically said: If you think it's hard to change your child, try changing yourself.
I think I leaned in more to embrace each of my kids' idiosyncrasies. I became more resistant to the idea that it's a parent's job to 'make' a child a certain way. Instead, it's a parent's job to find the thing that your child is most excited about and encourage that and make them feel good. Have your home environment be a safe environment, so that they have the strength and energy to pursue whatever they care most about in their lives.
Interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
Kara Baskin can be reached at