Perspectives: Family Dynamics

In this episode we chatted with Catherine Carr, author of Who’s The Favourite? The Loving, Messy Realities of Sibling Relationships, and Dalton Conley, Professor of Sociology at Princeton, whose research into the genetics of family life has produced findings we weren’t expecting.Here is the one that has stayed with us most. Children shape their parents just as much as parents shape their children. From as young as 18 months, children with higher genetic potential for educational success are drawing more reading, more play, more cognitive investment from their parents, not because parents are consciously choosing it, but because the child is eliciting it. The parenting is a response to the genome.Catherine brought something equally striking from the human side. The roles our families assign us in childhood, the responsible one, the funny one, the difficult one, follow us into our adult lives in ways most of us don’t realise. Into our workplaces. Into our relationships. And the labels hold even when the person wearing them has long since moved on.There is also something in this episode about the conversations we never have. The ones where we sit down with our siblings as adults and ask: what was childhood like for you? What did you experience that I didn’t see? Catherine describes it as spinning around and suddenly seeing the whole story from the other side of the room.Most of us keep putting those conversations off. This episode is a gentle argument for having them sooner.The tween talk question at the end — “I love my family, but sometimes they really annoy me. Is that normal?” — got the most immediate answer of any question we’ve asked. Both guests, simultaneously: yes. Completely.The episode is out now — wherever you listen.Penny & Jenny Perspectives from the Informed Perspective Get full access to The Informed Perspective at theinformedperspective.substack.com/subscribe