The perfect sister : what draws us together, what drives us apart / Marcia Millman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Millman, Marcia.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sisters--Psychology.

Sisters.

Sisters--Case studies.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 275 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Orlando : Harcourt, [2004]

Summary:

Sisterhood is one of the most complicated relationships a woman can have. Throughout their lives, sisters are confidantes, competitors, touchstones for shared memories, and, sometimes, each other's harshest critic. Our siblings are our first peers and often our last link to our families. But sisters who grow up under the same roof actually experience very different families; they inhabit distinct positions, express unique talents, and elicit different responses from their parents. Marcia Millman has spent hundreds of hours interviewing sisters to examine how these complex bonds are formed and how they keep changing throughout life, for better and for worse. Millman has discovered that sisters who are able to fully appreciate the different realities they experienced as children are more likely to be close as adults. In this book there are sisters who were always close and sisters who became friends later in life; there are sisters who shared their childhoods but developed painful rifts as adults. But even those who are at odds often feel deeply attached to one another -- perhaps because, as Millman finds, the sister bond is inseparable from a woman's connection to her mother. Still, all women can transform their relationships as long as they relate to the sister of the present and not only to the sister of the past. Here we learn about our sisters, our families, and ourselves. And the moving stories in this book offer the key to understanding, appreciating, and enriching this lifelong, incomparable bond.

Contents:

Identical twins and their husbands

Life savers: sisters who mother each other

Guilt and sharing alike

Perfect sisters: little women

The sister with a secret

Becoming friends as adults

Empathy, listening and understanding

Outsider sisters

Sisters who leave and sisters who stay

The wishful sister

From imagined sisters to real sisters

Conclusion: making amends.

ISBN:

0151008957

OCLC:

53000251

Online:

Publisher description