in learning to be good, children make a contract with the world wherein they promise to give up those aspects of themselves which are unacceptable to their parents and in return for such a sacrifice they will be rewarded, if not now, then when they grow up. Thus we grow up needing to see the world as a Just World, and our need often blinds us to reality.
However, the belief in a Just World and the child’s contract with the world gives the child a framework for negotiating relationships with their siblings. Thus the phrase “It’s not fair” comes early to a child’s lips. The conduits between the child and the Just World are the parents, and so the child goes as a supplicant to the parents. When the parents fail to deliver the required justice, the children battle it out between themselves. Like all human beings, children judge their deserved rewards as being greater than observers might judge them and again, like all human beings if the opportunity arises children will take a little more than they deserve. However siblings watch each other like a hawk watches its prey. (what one sibling judges as just or deserved is not the same as the other)… unless a child comes to understand the justice is a meaning created by human beings and not an everlasting attribute of all that exists, that child can never free himself from battle of one kind or another with his siblings. This is why sibling rivalry can last a life time.
Children dream of fame, fortune and love, not just because they see these things as being pleasant in themselves, they see them as the rewards which will show that they are good, and because they are good they are safe…… (and so) rich people so often take their riches as proof of their superior virtue.
Dorothy Rowe
My Dearest Enemy, My Dangerous Friend : Making and Breaking Sibling Bonds
Emerging From The Dark Night 