A sister: the psychological benefits

New findings that sisters bestow all manner of psychological benefits on each other is true – up to a point, says Judith Woods.

• When my daughter was born six months ago there was the usual joy at the arrival of a new baby but an added sense of historic occasion. Tabitha Rose is the fifteenth girl in a row to be born into the Woods family.
• My mother came from a coterie of girls. She had five daughters, and we have eight daughters between us. My niece is currently expecting her first born and is, of course, anticipating a girl. When her husband opined there was a fifty per cent chance of it being a boy, he was met with horrified disbelief from the assembled matrons, as though he had suggested that the sun rotates around the earth, or cake makes you fat.
• Having said that, if a boy pops out he will probably be treated like a living god, but that’s novelty value for you. Whatever it is that makes our distaff side so dominant, the result is an amazing (and yes formidable) clan of womenfolk.
• As we have to buy in our men, so to speak, husbands and brothers-in-law are referred to en masse as the Woods Boys and are duly allowed a lads’ weekend away together once a year by way of group therapy.
• But back to sisters. The new findings that female siblings bestow all manner of psychological benefits is true, up to a point.
• A sister, after all, is a best friend who will never desert you, no matter how often you sneak out wearing her prized pixie boots and snarl up her precious Visage tape, before stuffing it under the chest of draws and denying all knowledge.
• Yes, Ruth, it was me. Sorry. So am I well balanced and gloriously unencumbered by emotional baggage? Absolutely not. Yes, it was sometimes just like a scene of domestic bliss from Louisa M Alcotts’s Little Women. Then again, there were distinct House of Bernarda Alba moments, too.
• I was the youngest, you see, and as we were brought up in genteel poverty, my bank-manager father having died while reading a story in bed to us shortly before my third birthday, mine was an existence of fifth hand clothes and benign neglect, which I attempted to counteract by becoming a bumptious little show off.
• But no one minded; unlike the overt competitiveness of boys, the rivalry among girls is subtle and unspoken and has more to do with social hierarchy than thrashing each other at sports. As the baby – a hideous epithet that clings to me 40 years on – I have had carte blanche to posture to my heart’s content. Apart from when one sister decided I was too fat and devised a fitness regime that involved being tied tourniquet tight to a pole on the front porch – to squeeze me thinner – and then being chased around the garden with a stick, so that I would burn off more calories. I was four.
• I could list endless indignities such as being teased to the point of incandescent rage; cruelly excluded from big girls’ games; called Snowy for no apparent reason (which clearly incensed me); and being hit on the head with a hairbrush for crying as a toddler (yes Grace, it’s indelibly etched).
• Sisters, you see, may forgive but we never quite forget what happened when we were five. But in truth the good far outweighed the bad; singing in the car when we drove off on holidays, the thrilling excitement when my three eldest sisters came home from boarding school each month, trips to Mrs Scroggy’s sweetshop for two ounces of floral gums, and wonderful loyal shoulders to cry on when a boy – yes, one of those wretched creatures – had the temerity to break a Woods girl’s heart.
• Our mother died when I was in my early 20s, and with each passing year my relationship with my sisters evolves and grows deeper as we rely on each other for emotional solace, Christmas lunch, and fabulous family parties. I appreciate my sisters more and more as we negotiate the highs and lows, trials, tribulations and triumphs of adult life.
• When my first daughter was born it was my sister who came to stay for days, tenderly steering me through the perilous waters of early motherhood.
• And now I have two girls, born six years apart but destined, I hope, to be as close to each other as I was, and am, to my sisters. I hope they too will love each other unconditionally and support each other unquestioningly. And when they are my age, bringing up families of their own (girls obviously), they will truly appreciate how magical their bond is. Friends come and go; a sister is unique, irreplaceable. A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.