Well, in the one case I know of, with the girl 15 or 16 and the boy 18 or 19, they ended up shipping the girl off to live with her father, because they just would not stop having sex, which ooged out both parents.
It’s called the Westermarck effect.
Really? I’d heard about the Westermark effect as well and assumed that attraction among kids who had been raised from a young age together was rare. How often does this happen? Myself, I can’t imagine finding a sibling I’d been raised with attractive. Just does not compute!
They were happy with things other than books, that’s for sure. They actually had a velvet Elvis, which was draped in black after “The King” died.
He learned plumbing on the job, tried setting up his own business, failed, went back to working for someone else, tried again later. It took a lot of work and hard times before success came.
It was not a life I’d have been happy with, but they were good folks.
I know someone who married a woman with two daughters. (I don’t know whether he legally adopted them.) Then the woman left him, leaving her daughters with him to raise.
One of the girls had a boyfriend who was having family problems, so this dad took him in too. Eventually he grew so close to the boy that he now thinks of him as a son. So now he says, “It’s kind of weird to have my son dating my daughter.” But of course none of these people are biologically related.
::looks left, looks right, then cautiously raises his hand::
I suspect it’s something that is seldom discussed. And if I had to guess, I’d guess that it’s more likely to occur when the siblings have a strong antipathy towards each other as young kids.
Guess, hu?
Ha! You must know “Andy”! We were skateboard buddies in the eigth grade. In college I ran into the third guy in our skateboarding posse who updated me on Andy’s shenanigans.
His parents divorced and his dad remarried when Andy was 17 or 18. His step-mother had a daughter about Andy’s age from a previous marriage. Their bedrooms right next to each other made things awfully convenient. One day his step-mom caught them and she chased him with an axe. He ended up at “Angela’s” house (a former classmate from our junior high years) and had to stay there for a few weeks while his parents sorted out his new living arrangements.
Oh, wait. You said the girl was shipped off to her father’s. Andy got sent to his mom’s.
I seem to remember that the strength of the effect is dependent on how much you see your mother figure showing affection to the other person. So anyone raised in a group home with all parents interacting with all children would have this happen.
Jonathan
But it might explain why if you had a best friend who you grew up with, you might still find them attractive?
Getting into specifics, I always wondered if the Dawson-Joey attraction when they got older was realistic or if it would be super incestuous in real life. That is, knowing someone since you were five, spending a lot of time together, sleeping in the same bed till you’re fifteen, and then eventually one day post puberty realizing you’re attracted to them. At one point, Dawson’s mother does say she sees her (Joey) as a surrogate daughter. Hmmm.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Cruel Intentions, a 1999 movie with Reese Witherspoon, (her then-husban) Ryan Philppe, and Sarah Michelle Gellar, that deals with this very topic.
SMG’s character and RP’s character are step-siblings who hate each other and are terribly sexually attracted to each other. SMG makes a bet with RP: if RP can successfully bed a virgin (RW), RP gets to bed SMG; if he fails, she wins his car.