For Siblings, Inequality Starts at Home

By DALTON CONLEY

Dalton Conley is director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University and author of The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why.

Take the case of Skip, 56, and Jim, 50, two brothers from a middle-class household who matured at different points in the 1960s (these case studies and others are from in-depth interviews). Their family history shows just how subject the American family is to cultural trends.

When Skip entered high school in Fairfax, Va., Kennedy was in the White House, and America was still very much as it had been in its postwar halcyon slumber. It was the age of the space race and the missile gap -- really still the 1950s -- and the family reflected that: Skip and Jim were raised in a strict household dominated by Robert, their critical and demanding father, who was a career Army officer. Robert was the only son of a South Boston Irish Catholic family. His escape from a tough neighborhood came with his World War II experience: He was a fighter pilot who was shot down more than once and spent significant time in an internment camp. He returned from the European campaign a hardened man, resentful of the limited opportunities that Irish people from scrappy backgrounds enjoyed, despite his sacrifices for the country. So he stayed in the Army and treated his sons as if they were soldiers in his command, offering a hand to shake in lieu of a hug or kiss -- up until the day he died in 1994.

Skip met or exceeded all of Robert's expectations: starting on the Fairfax High School football team, being named All-State, and then gaining admission to the U.S. Air Force Academy. At first, father and son had trouble getting a congressman to sponsor Skip's entry into the relatively new military academy, since local congressmen were already committed to other candidates. Then they sought the help of Rep. John W. McCormick of Massachusetts, speaker of the House at the time, who also happened to be from South Boston and had known Skip's grandparents from the old neighborhood. They finally gained his ear, only to have their hopes dashed when he told them that the slots had already been taken for that year. But then, an hour or two after they had returned home disappointed, the phone rang. It was McCormick, informing Robert that one of his nominees had been disqualified for medical reasons.

Skip's timing had been impeccable -- and it continued that way. Since his pilot training took so long and since deployments were based partially on experience, he escaped doing any time in Vietnam, other than flying a few airlift missions in 1974, after formal U.S. involvement had ended. After a distinguished career as an officer, he retired to the private sector in 1989, working as a highly paid lobbyist for the Northrop Grumman Corporation, one of the largest defense contractors. (Of course, now he says that he wished he could have been an artist or a guitarist.)

Jim, by contrast, came of age after the countercultural revolution of the '60s and found himself caught between his father's values and those of his peers. It was the early '70s, and even playing sports was not considered cool at the time. Drug use was rampant, tie-dye was the fashion of the day, and the antiwar movement was raging. Jim's behavior reflected the new trends. He dressed too casually for his father's taste and practically made his old man's blood boil with his long hair. But he tried his best to please his father -- he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps, first at a junior college and then at a four-year institution. But by then, ROTC students who wore their uniforms on campuses were often jeered at or worse. The Army was hitting a low point in terms of morale and respect. Jim ended up torn between the expectations of his father and the social unrest that surrounded him.

As a result, he was ambivalent about everything his brother had pursued. Set by his father on the same path, Jim's career never matched that of the golden boy Skip. Though he eventually did become an Army officer, he held a series of low-status positions, and after leaving the service ended up teaching high-school-level Junior ROTC in Florida. Today Skip makes two to three times what Jim makes and has significantly more wealth.

The consequences of their distinct trajectories are not just economic, however. The siblings rarely speak. "My mother is sort of the intermediary," Skip relates. "I'll ask her how my brother's doing." Both brothers are at a loss for why they don't communicate more, chalking it up to the age difference, spaced just a few years apart -- but separated by a generation gap. Siblings in American society already have less contact than those in most other countries, so when a relationship is fraught with social and economic differences, nothing is written in blood -- so to speak -- saying that siblings have to stay in touch. Of course, with an emotionally distant father, family psychological dynamics probably didn't help matters between Skip and Jim.

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