My son is extremely, perhaps miraculously, affectionate toward his sister. We avoided the landmines of sibling rivalry and brotherly contempt we’d seen in so many of our friends’ second or third kids – primarily, we think, because the four-year age gap between them negated any sense that he was in direct competition with this cute little pet we’d just ordered. He immediately embraced his baby sister as a novelty; a sometimes loud, smelly doll that captivated him and, better yet, earned him brownie points any time he was nice to it.
Within days of her being born, he was telling everyone she was ‘his’ baby, and would make a grand performance of fetching her things and patting her on the head. Though we largely took this to be performative, it became clear that his affection was in earnest when he started waking her in the night to stroke her face and ‘make sure she was all right’.
