The Family Dynamic: How Families Inspire Successful Siblings
In her new book, Susan Dominus explores the
mysteries of sibling academic and professional success
By Carolyn Wise
How is it that all the siblings in one family can become highly successful professionally? Is it laid-back parenting or energized parenting? Nature or nurture? Could it be birth order? Or just plain luck? Susan Dominus explores these questions and more in her excellent new book, The Family Dynamic.
Inspired by the Brontë family and its three gifted and prolific sister novelists, Dominus interviewed families and studied psychological, biological, and sociological research to find out how it happens that multiple siblings in a single family achieve such great heights.
The families Dominus profiled differ greatly—ethnically, socioeconomically, geographically—but certain trends emerge. Primarily, that the siblings lift each other up; they succeed together. The siblings in each family enjoy competition, especially with each other, but are also close, tight-knit, and supportive. They help each other in school and push each other to succeed in all areas. In one family, the siblings have weekly phone calls to connect and strategize. Regardless of how close they are to their parents, the siblings in each family are a cohesive and formidable unit.
But Dominus’s insights aren’t the only thing that makes her book a success. Part of what makes The Family Dynamic so enjoyable is that it isn’t offering any didactic parenting advice, only reflections and suggestions. Dominus discusses the family dynamics (see what I did there?) of these extraordinary people objectively, thereby giving readers a sense of perspective. The closest to guidance she comes is: be active, optimistic, supportive, and a place of refuge for your children. But she issues no specific directives for parents to raise their children to succeed. “All things are possible,” she writes, for parents and their children.
For me, the most powerful takeaway was articulated by Dominus’s last successful interviewee:
“Parenting doesn’t matter that much, provided you give your kids love.”