The Perfect Sister: What Draws Us Together, What Drives Us Apart - Softcover

MARCIA MILLMAN, social psychologist and professor of sociology at the University of California-Santa Cruz, is author of the bestseller Such a Pretty Face: Being Fat in America, Warm Hearts and Cold Cash, and The Unkindest Cut. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area and New York.

PRAISE FOR THE PERFECT SISTER:

"Marcia Millman is one of the most talented observers of intimate life of our time. She brings to mind Herbert Gans or Studs Terkle: like these gifted interviewers, she gives us her fine insights but lets her subject s story and humanity directly touch the reader. Sisters will and should devour this book; those of us who are sister-deprived will find out fascinating and touching details about family life and women who share blood, history, and personal growth through their connection with one another."--Pepper Schwartz, author of Everything You Know About Love and Sex is Wrong

"Marcia Millman's study of sisterhood gives us new insights into an age-old bond-one that has been relatively ignored by social scientists. Combining research and readability, The Perfect Sister will help countless siblings understand and improve their relationships."--Marilyn Yalom, author of History of the Wife and Birth of the Chess Queen

From THE PERFECT SISTER

"I would do anything for my sister. I adored her. And she was always there for me in the important ways. But it wasn't equal. I accommodated to her. We were supposed to take turns going to a grocery store that was a block away, and I would go with her when it was her turn, just to be with her. But she never came with me when it was my turn. I'd have to trudge to the store by myself. Many years later, when I worked in an office, it was always such a powerful thing for me when a friend was willing to walk me to the corner for lunch or walk me to the vending machines, just to be with me. Because my sister wouldn't do it. But we were the most important person in each other's lives; she was my lifeline." (page 34)

"Growing up, I was like her mother, not just her sister. I was burdened as a child. Taking care of the twins kept me from having a social life." (page 244)

Sisterhood is one of the most complicated relationships anyone can have. Throughout their lives, sisters are confidantes, competitors, touchstones for shared memories, and, sometimes, each other's harshest critics. 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 adult sisters who are close are those able to fully appreciate the different realities they experienced as children. In this book there are sisters who were always close and sisters who became friends later; there are sisters who shared their childhoods but developed painful rifts as adults. But even those who are at odds often feel deeply attached--perhaps because, as Millman finds, the sister bond is inseparable from a woman's connection to her mother. Still, all of us can transform our relationships, as long as we relate to the sister in the present, and not just 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.