Abstract
Studies of family financial assistance with home ownership have focused exclusively on vertical forms of assistance, in which members of older generations help younger relatives to finance home ownership. Consideration of the role of siblings has been limited to accounts of their competing requests for assistance, leaving the topic of lateral assistance between siblings absent from these discussions. This article presents findings from interviews with 80 donors and recipients of family financial assistance with home ownership in Australia, which included a significant number of sibling donors and recipients. It argues that sibling assistance is often provided to compensate for an absent parent, protect the assets of parents or restore perceived fairness. In so doing, it challenges the notion of parent donors as the arbiters of fairness in family financial assistance with home ownership and outlines some of the practices through which lateral financial assistance between siblings tends to be transmitted.
Introduction
Recent research on siblings has challenged Coleman’s (1988) famous claim that siblings dilute one’s access to the social capital transmitted from parent to child. Authors such as Holland (2008) and Aaltonen (2016) have, for instance, shown that rather than solely posing competition for parental social capital, siblings may actually aid in the cultivation of social capital by providing important ‘insider information’ and emotional support in the context of schooling, helping to ease transitions for younger siblings. However, no research has yet challenged Coleman’s parallel claim about siblings diluting one’s access to economic capital. Indeed, where siblings have been included in research on family financial assistance, they have been discussed solely in relation to their competing claims for parental resources (see Heath, 2018). In response to this area of silence in the literature this article focuses on the role of siblings in providing financial assistance to those trying to enter into home ownership. Research on the topic of family financial assistance with home ownership has, much like wider sociological literature, focused primarily on the parent–child relationship. Indeed, this tendency is reflected in the popularisation of the nomenclature ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’. However, as this article will show, the sole focus on parents as providers of financial assistance, and consideration of siblings only as competitors for parental resources, in existing literature sidelines the role that siblings can play in the provision of family financial assistance.
In this article I draw on the findings of an interview-based study conducted with 80 donors and recipients of family financial assistance with first home ownership in the Australian state of New South Wales. The call for participants for this study asked that potential participants had provided or received financial assistance with home ownership from a relative (rather than a parent) in order to allow for the possibility that some people may have received assistance from grandparents, aunts, uncles or other older relatives. However, the call was answered by a significant number of sibling donors and recipients. These participants form the focus of this article.
The article starts by providing an overview of existing research on family financial assistance with home ownership, and of sociological work on siblings. It then provides an overview of the study underpinning this article. The findings of the study are then presented with the aim of outlining the three tendencies that characterised lateral financial assistance with home ownership, and in order to consider how they were shaped by the dynamics of sibling relationships. This article ultimately contributes to the literature on family financial assistance and the asset economy by showing that siblings may act as providers of, rather than simply competitors for, family financial assistance, and by outlining some of the ways in which lateral financial assistance tends to be transmitted between siblings.
Family Financial Assistance with Home Ownership
Research on family financial assistance with home ownership, or the so-called asset economy, is booming at present. Work on this topic typically falls into two main camps: (1) studies focusing on intergenerational wealth inequities and concerns that intergenerational financial assistance may lead to intragenerational inequalities among members of younger age cohorts (Adkins et al., 2021) and on how this practice is reconciled with notions of meritocracy (Moor and Friedman, 2021), and (2) studies addressing the role of family dynamics in the provision and receipt of intergenerational financial assistance (Cook, 2021; Druta and Ronald, 2017). Notably, in their work on the latter topic Druta and Ronald (2017) turned to Mauss’ (1990 [1925]) classic account of gift exchange to argue that, due to its typically large scale, financial assistance with home ownership represents a gift that cannot be met with immediate reciprocity. They argue that it therefore prompts recipients to provide financial assistance of this kind to their own children when they reach adulthood, allowing reciprocity to unfold through subsequent generations. This account of reciprocity is clearly incompatible with forms of family financial assistance that are transmitted laterally rather than vertically. The issue of reciprocity and the norms underpinning it therefore represent an area of interest in this article that is returned to in the discussion section.
Research on family financial assistance with home ownership is being conducted across many national contexts (Cui et al., 2020; Druta and Ronald, 2017; Lux et al., 2021). While these studies document a shared turn (back) to the family in response to welfare state retrenchment and austerity measures, they are nevertheless marked by national differences due to differing welfare state regimes (Ronald and Lennartz, 2018). The Australian experience of increasing rates of intergenerational financial assistance with home ownership shares similarities with that of the United Kingdom and United States, both of which have historically high rates of owner-occupied housing tenure, but have witnessed declines among young adults in recent decades due to affordability challenges (Arundel and Ronald, 2021).
As outlined above, the role of siblings has gained significantly less attention than that of parents in research on family financial assistance with home ownership. There are, however, two notable exceptions to this tendency. In her qualitative study of single young adults’ housing pathways Heath (2018) focused on participants’ discussions of their siblings in relation to their experiences of family financial assistance with housing. Heath found that while participants expressed faith in their parents’ presumed fairness, they nevertheless commonly sought to position themselves as ‘more responsible’ or ‘more deserving’ than their siblings. Much like in the work of Coleman, Heath’s study positions siblings solely as competitors for finite parental resources. This view of siblings is echoed in other studies such as Emery’s (2013) quantitative examination of the impact of birth order and number of siblings on the provision of family financial assistance and Keister’s (2003) work on the impact of number of siblings on individual wealth in adulthood (see also Johnson, 2013; Siennick, 2013; Suh, 2020).
In contrast, Nethercote (2019) has sought to shed light on the dependencies between non-spousal co-resident adults, including (but not limited to) siblings. In so doing Nethercote highlights the complex forms of assistance and interdependency that exist beyond parent–child dyads. Importantly, Nethercote (2019: 269) finds that these relations are often characterised by ‘ambiguous, asymmetrical material and emotional dependencies’. In other words, these are not relations of like-for-like assistance and repayment.
While Heath’s study provides important insights into the complexity of sibling relationships, and highlights some of the factors that are commonly weighed up when decisions about providing financial assistance are being made, it nevertheless treats siblings as competitors for resources. In contrast, Nethercote positions those who are in lateral relationships (including siblings) as potential sources of assistance. However, while this work opens the door to considering lateral forms of assistance, it is not well positioned to analyse the specific dynamics of sibling donors and recipients due to its broad focus on a range of relationship types. In order to consider how these dynamics may be considered in sibling relationships I now turn to the sociological literature on siblings.
Siblings in Sociological Perspective
While sociological research has focused primarily on parent–child relationships, a small yet compelling body of literature has focused on the sociological significance of siblings. This literature has focused primarily on the development of sibling relationships during childhood (Davies, 2015; Edwards et al., 2006; Punch, 2005, 2008), as well as in the context of specific identity-based considerations, such as in Song’s (2010) work on mixed race siblings, Winther et al.’s (2015) work on the negotiation of sibling relationships in the context of parental divorce and Meltzer’s (2018) work on the impact of living with disability for both disabled and non-disabled siblings.
Recently, Davies (2023) has addressed the topic of siblings in sociology, exploring the significance of siblings in everyday life as well as their role in wider social processes. While seeking to untangle the complex ‘ups and downs’ of sibling relationships Davies draws on Brownlie’s (2014) concept of ‘being there’, which was developed to conceptualise mundane practices of emotional support that rely less on talk than on simple presence. ‘Being there’ carries with it a sense of ‘reachability’ in principle, if not in practice. For instance, Davies’ (2023) empirical examples show how adult siblings may gain a sense of emotional support from their relationship, even when contact between them is sporadic. Although it does not cover the full spectrum of sibling relationships – which may be characterised by severe conflict, or indeed relationship breakdown – the concept of being there nevertheless provides a means of understanding the sibling relationship by highlighting how everyday experiences of ambivalence and relative emotional distance may give way to strong expressions of care and support in times of need. Davies (2023) also understands siblings as key to the relational construction of self. She argues that siblings provide important points of comparison, with older siblings especially providing the frame of reference for parents in relation to experiences taking place from pregnancy and birth all the way through to adulthood. Additionally, because they typically occupy a similar generational location (see Mannheim, 1952 [1927]) siblings are able to use each other to make lateral comparisons in relation to key normative milestones (for instance, marriage, home ownership, childbearing).
In this article I draw on the concept of ‘being there’ and attend to lateral comparisons between siblings to understand siblings’ experiences of providing and receiving financial assistance from each other. Importantly, as stated above, while sociological work on siblings highlights the way in which these relationships may involve the transmission of resources such as care and practical support, the direct transmission of economic resources between siblings is rarely touched upon. This article therefore builds upon the sociological literature on sibling relationships by considering how these dynamics may interact with and be shaped by the provision and receipt of lateral financial assistance.
Methods
The data underpinning this article are drawn from a larger study of family financial assistance with first home ownership in Australia that includes 80 participants; 40 donors of family financial assistance with home ownership, and 40 recipients. As mentioned above, the call for participants asked for individuals who had either given or received assistance of this type to a relative, with the intention of including older relatives such as grandparents, aunts and uncles alongside parents. However, over a quarter of the participants who responded to the call were siblings, and a decision was made to include these participants in the study and explore the dynamics of this donor–recipient relationship as part of the wider study.
This article therefore draws on interviews conducted with 24 participants who had either given or received financial assistance with home ownership from a sibling. Eighteen of these participants were donors, while only six were recipients, and efforts to recruit further participants who had received financial assistance from siblings proved challenging. A possible reason for this is discussed in the findings section. This study includes both related donor–recipient pairs and unpaired donors and recipients (for discussion of the methodological decisions underpinning this see Cook, 2022). The sibling donors and recipients include two pairs and 20 unpaired participants.
In-depth interviews were conducted with the participants between March and October 2022. They explored participants’ lifetime housing experiences, investments and assets, experiences of buying and selling property, the nature, timing and impact of intergenerational financial support, future housing aspirations and more general future plans. The recipients were first-time buyers aged 18–40 who had purchased a property in the last 18 months, or were intending to buy a property in the next six months, and had received at least AUD$5000 from a relative to assist with the purchase. The donors were individuals of any age who had provided financial assistance of at least AUD$5000 with first home ownership to a relative within the previous 18 months, or were planning to do so within the next six months. The project received approval from the University of Newcastle Human Research Ethics Committee (protocol number H-2021-0323).
Recruitment took place with the support of a professional recruitment company with extensive prior experience working with academic researchers. This approach was undertaken due to the ‘hidden’ nature of the sample. The interviews were approximately one hour in duration and were primarily conducted over Zoom. The participants were provided with a AUD$50 gift card to thank them for their time and contribution to the study. The participants were recruited from the Australian state of New South Wales, and were living primarily in the state’s capital city, Sydney.
The participants reflected a broad range of professions, levels of education, family backgrounds and life circumstances. Of the donors, four were managers, four were professionals, six were technicians or trades workers, three were clerical or administrative workers and one was not in paid work due to caring responsibilities. In terms of education, six had a postgraduate qualification, six had a Bachelor’s degree, five had a vocational or trade qualification and one had completed secondary school. Ten of the donors were born overseas, with four born in India, two in China and one in New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia. Additionally, 16 of the donors owned their own home, and of those six also owned at least one investment property. Only two of the donors were not home owners, which suggests a possible tendency for sibling donors to provide assistance only once they have already entered the property market. Of the recipients, four were professionals, one was a sales worker and one was a clerical or administrative worker. Two of the recipients had completed postgraduate qualifications, and the remaining four had completed Bachelor’s degrees. Only two of the recipients were born overseas, both in India.
The data were analysed using a method adapted from Deterding and Waters’ (2021) ‘flexible coding’, and the data presented in this article represent four of the primary themes that emerged during analysis: assistance as complementary, assistance as protective, restoring fairness and dynamics of sibling relationships. The findings are organised around these themes, and the quotes presented below were chosen to exemplify themes that were reflected throughout the dataset.
Complementary Assistance
For many of the participants, financial assistance from siblings was provided alongside assistance from parents and other relatives. The most overt example of this was provided by Lata, aged 25, who provided AUD$5000 to her older brother to help him to raise the deposit for his property. Lata was single, living in the family home and working in an administration position while pursuing a creative project on the side. The assistance that Lata provided was accompanied by assistance from several other relatives of both Lata’s brother and his partner: Yeah, lots of help from family, like the girl’s family helped a lot, like her siblings as well, and then my parents helped, and then, yeah, I sort of just knew they were struggling and I was like ‘I’ll help too.’
While discussing her decision to provide assistance Lata expressed that she initially wanted to assist her brother, and that her decision to do so was strengthened when she became aware that other family members were doing so: Yeah, I was kind of just thinking, like I saw them struggling and before I knew anyone else was helping I was like – I think jokingly I was like ‘I’ll help’ sort of thing. But then I did hear ‘Oh, [Aunt and Uncle] are helping’, and then my parents said ‘Oh, are you?’, and I was like ‘Yeah, it’s family’, and that kind of like strengthened my decision I guess.
Notably, Lata and her family were Sikh, and Lata felt that this influenced their experience of assisting her brother. She explained this, stating: ‘I think our religion is very much about – even like the langar that they give, the free food, to everyone sort of thing – I think it runs on generosity and sort of giving as much as you can.’
Although Lata’s case includes by far the greatest number of relatives providing assistance in the present study, it nevertheless represents a relatively common experience for sibling donors. Specifically, siblings often provided assistance alongside parents in order to help their sibling ‘get over the line’ in relation to either reaching a 20% deposit (which would allow them to avoid paying for lender’s mortgage insurance) or extending their borrowing capacity. When assistance was provided in this way, and for this purpose, it was generally a smaller amount when compared with the funds provided by parents. It was also almost always a loan, and was characterised by strong expectations of repayment. In this way, it differed from funds loaned by parents, which are liable to be converted into a gift over time (Cook, 2021; Heath and Calvert, 2013). Importantly, the status of this assistance – most often a loan with strong expectations of repayment – meant that it was subject to different norms of reciprocity when compared with funds provided by parents. Specifically, while money gifted by parents has been found to create an expectation to reciprocate by financially assisting one’s own children with home ownership in the future (see Druta and Ronald, 2017), money loaned by siblings did not generate a similar expectation of reciprocity as it was much more likely to be repaid relatively quickly. Siblings’ provision of financial assistance alongside other family members was generally associated with a relatively low level of conflict and negative emotions, and generally did not appear to stem from normative pressure to ‘step in’ to provide assistance. This appeared to be due to the lower amount of pressure that sibling donors in these circumstances felt to provide assistance (as they were not the only source of financial assistance, and indeed typically provided the lowest amount of all the parties involved), as well as the fact that these sibling donors received repayment relatively quickly. Indeed, the need to provide repayment to siblings was typically prioritised over repayment to parents and other older relatives, highlighting the different norms associated with each relationship type. While this type of sibling assistance did not appear to be associated with a high degree of familial conflict, it has sociological implications. Specifically, it suggests that prospective first home buyers may be turning not just to their parents for financial assistance, but to multiple family members, further exacerbating existing equity concerns related to who can and cannot access family financial assistance.
Protective Assistance
In contrast to those who received assistance from both their parents and siblings, several of the participants asked their siblings, or were asked by their siblings, to loan them money to raise a deposit so that they did not have to ask their parents. This was primarily because their parents were retired, and were therefore on a fixed income and may be unable to provide financial assistance without compromising their own financial security. For instance, when asked how she came to borrow AUD$100,000 from her brother Kelly, 34, who was working in an administration position and living with her partner, responded:
Because we were short in terms of the deposit so . . .
So was it that you were trying to get to 20%?
Yeah trying to get to 20% to avoid paying that additional insurance. So we asked – or I asked him. Because I know he purchased a property three or four years beforehand. So we were just short a little bit and so we thought ‘Okay we’ll ask him.’
And I’m wondering, why did you decide to ask him rather than like your parents for instance?
I guess because my parents, they’re not working anymore. So didn’t want to burden them I guess.
When asked the same questions Kelly’s brother Jonathan, aged 33, working in project management and living with his wife, responded with the same explanation: Yeah I was the first one that she could come to because my parents have retired so they didn’t really have any – it was expensive for them to move to Sydney, so they didn’t really have any money. Because they did buy a place in Sydney. But yeah, I was the first point of call.
Jonathan’s characterisation of himself as the ‘first port of call’ suggests that if he were to decline Kelly’s request she would likely approach another family member. Jonathan’s decision to assist Kelly also appeared to be informed by their parents’ life stage. Jonathan repeated multiple times that their parents were ‘retired’ or ‘older now’. When asked whether he felt that it was his responsibility to assist his sister because his parents were retired Jonathan responded ‘yes, I’m responsible to help them if they need it’. In this way Jonathan appeared to equate assisting his sister with his obligation to help his parents, which in turn appeared to be informed by the strong social norm of filial obligation to support elderly parents in Chinese culture (see Albertini et al., 2019).
While Kelly had not seriously considered who she would approach if her brother was unable or unwilling to provide assistance, this issue was a central point of consideration for several of the sibling donors. Specifically, these donors felt obliged to provide financial assistance to their siblings so that they would not request assistance from their parents. For instance, Gemma, aged 35, married with one child and working in administration, lent AUD$40,000 to her brother to help him to reach a 20% deposit and increase his borrowing capacity when he and his family found themselves unable to enter the property market. When asked how the arrangement came about Gemma was clear that she offered the assistance, rather than being asked to do so by her brother, stating that ‘he wouldn’t ask’. When asked why she offered to provide assistance and whether her mother considered providing any assistance Gemma responded: From my mum, no. So my mum is not 10 times worse off than we are, but she’s not as . . . all she has is her own home, and I would never want her to touch that because I feel like she’s worked so hard for 30 plus years now to pay off that house . . . She doesn’t have any other surplus funds, so I think for that reason I just offered it – so it wouldn’t come from Mum. She doesn’t have the extra cash and I think from my siblings and I, we’re all a little bit better off than she is. I just wouldn’t want him to ask her. She doesn’t have it, and it would have to come from the house.
Similarly, Jennifer, who was aged 48, lived with her husband, worked in administration and owned several investment properties, provided a AUD$300,000 loan to her brother so that he would not accept assistance from their father. Jennifer characterised her brother as ‘a spender’ and identified herself as a ‘saver’. As Davies (2023) highlights, siblings often use each other as points of comparison, considering their shared and opposed characteristics. This particular point of comparison is, for Jennifer, rooted in childhood experiences:
I used to see my brother and he would just spend like anything and then he’ll have nothing and then he’ll come to me and go, ‘Oh, can I just have some of yours?’ and I’d be like, ‘No, you can’t.’
Was that when he was younger?
Yeah, when we were growing up, like 10 or 12. And even to this day – he’s always been one to spend.
When asked how the agreement that she would loan her brother AUD$300,000 came about Jennifer responded: Well, he pretty much asked. He’s not one to normally ask for these things. We just started talking about property and this and that and one thing led to another. I think he wanted to ask me for a while but just felt like maybe he couldn’t. But he just sort of started the conversation and one thing led to another and then he sort of said, ‘There’s a home that I want to buy but I just need your assistance’ because he has kids and his salary isn’t the highest.
Jennifer also went on to say that her brother had initially asked her father for assistance, stating: ‘He actually did ask my dad, but his money is tied up. I think he can untie it but I think it’s going to cost him some fees and also the ATO 1 may go, “Hey . . .”.’
Although Jennifer’s father was willing to pay the fees necessary to ‘untie’ the funds for his son ‘if he had to’, Jennifer decided to lend her brother the money in part because she felt that he ‘shouldn’t have to’. Importantly, Jennifer also identified that if her father were to provide assistance to her brother it was unlikely to be documented in her father’s will, as he’s ‘not good with that sort of thing’, meaning that the assistance provided to her brother would not be reflected in the division of her father’s estate between the siblings after his death. The decision that some siblings made to provide financial assistance so that it would not be requested from their parents therefore appeared to extend beyond protection of the present-day financial circumstances of parents, also encompassing protection of their assets ahead of their eventual division between the siblings. Additionally, all of the donors discussed in this section experienced some degree of class mobility. They had each pursued higher education, were employed in professional roles and owned their own home. In comparison, their parents typically had very few assets other than their home, meaning that if they were to provide financial assistance to their children they would likely be compromising their own security of tenure by either selling their home or accessing equity release. In comparison to complementary forms of lateral financial assistance discussed above this form of assistance appears to be subject to strong normative obligations concerned with safeguarding the financial security and well-being of parents, and thus has significant scope for conflict between siblings.
Restoring Fairness
Whether financial support from siblings was provided alongside parental financial support or in an effort to protect parental assets it is clear that financial support between siblings is generally interpreted and understood in reference to parents. This was also the case in situations in which siblings provided support in an effort to restore or maintain a sense of fairness within families. In contrast to Jennifer’s situation, in which she loaned money to her brother in part to ensure that she would not be disadvantaged when her father’s estate was divided between the siblings in the future, several of the participants loaned or gifted funds to their siblings to ensure that they were not perceived as the subjects of favouritism, or as benefitting from unfair or unequal parental treatment. For instance, Amanda, who was aged 38, working in logistics and married with two children, explicitly evoked the notion of fairness while discussing her decision to use equity from her property to provide financial assistance to her brother: So I think [providing the assistance] is just fair for him because my parents helped me with 20% so I thought it’s not fair if – because now they don’t really have a lot of savings anymore to help my brother.
By providing her brother with AUD$40,000 – half the sum that their parents originally gave her – Amanda felt that she had restored a sense of fairness in light of her parents’ inability to assist her brother in the same way that they assisted her when she bought her property.
Similarly, Nisha, who was aged 36, working as an accountant and living with her husband, received a AUD$20,000 loan from her mother and grandparents when she bought her property, and then in turn provided a AUD$25,000 loan to her sister because her mother and grandparents were no longer in a position to do so. When asked about her motivations she reflected that she provided the assistance because she wanted to ‘help them out’, referring to her sister and brother-in-law. However, when probed she also admitted that it was ‘unfair’ that she received a loan when the same offer was not extended to her sister. Notably, Nisha, whose parents were born in India, also identified that lending money within the family was ‘more normal’ in Indian families, providing a cultural justification for the ease with which she lent money to her sister.
The notion of restoring or maintaining fairness extended even further for some of the participants. As already discussed, siblings act as a natural yardstick against which one can measure their own progress along key milestones in both childhood and adulthood due to – in most cases – sharing a similar generational location. In two cases siblings intervened to provide financial support in an effort to help their sibling to match their own progress, or even to compensate for their perceived lack of progress relative to such milestones. In the first case Brian, aged 39 and working as an ICT coordinator, had been saving for a deposit while living with a partner for seven years, and had been in the process of searching for a property when the relationship broke down. The loss of a second income, and of the portion of the deposit his partner had saved, meant that Brian experienced significant challenges trying to purchase an apartment independently. His sister loaned him AUD$75,000 to help him to extend his borrowing capacity – assistance that was offered by his sister but negotiated and formalised primarily with his brother-in-law. When he was asked why he thought his sister offered the assistance to him he replied: I think it was, well, not only obviously there was the help, but I thought it was also probably a little bit, not so much feeling sorry for me, but the fact that I’d ‘wasted’, you know, seven or eight years with this last relationship putting goals together, together. But then that falling apart, so sort of back to being single and back to having to stand on my own two feet, look after myself. Whereas for her and her husband, it’s much easier with dual incomes for my brother and his partner, much easier with dual incomes. So I think it was just that little bit of yeah, just assistance, to get me on it, get me in.
Brian identifies here that while his sister did not ‘feel sorry’ for him, she was nevertheless aware of the differences between herself and their other brother and Brian. Specifically, that they were married and part of dual-income households, while he was not. Indeed, Brian’s assessment that he had ‘wasted’ seven or eight years in a relationship that ultimately ended appears to be judged at least in part by comparing his situation to that of his siblings and finding his own lacking. The provision of assistance by Brian’s sister therefore appeared to serve the function of helping him to ‘catch up’ to his siblings in one important way, even if he could not do so in relation to his relationship status. Brian’s sister’s choice of providing him with assistance to purchase property as a means of helping him to ‘catch up’ with his siblings takes on particular significance in the Australian context in which home ownership is often equated with ‘full’ adulthood (Colic-Peisker and Johnson, 2012).
Patrick, aged 45, married with children and employed as a consultant, similarly provided a AUD$35,000 loan to his sister to help her to buy the property that she had been renting for the previous 10 years, which was offered to her at a below-market price by her former landlord. When asked whether he provided this assistance because his parents were unable to do so he responded: Oh definitely, definitely, there was no way, [parents] needed helping out themselves. Basically we’re sort of a welfare family so it was kind of – it was kind of a bit of a miracle really that I found myself in a situation where I could do it. Never would have ever thought that it would happen in my wildest dreams.
In addition to compensating for largely absent parents and an extremely challenging upbringing, by providing this assistance Patrick also appeared to be compensating for his four siblings’ perceived lack of progress when compared with himself, especially as he identified his own life circumstances as a ‘miracle’ when considered alongside his upbringing. When asked why he provided assistance to his sister, Patrick identified that he did so in part because he had achieved milestones such as marriage, parenthood and secure employment, while his siblings had not. Specifically, his siblings were all unmarried and childless, with Patrick reflecting that they had ‘sadly most likely missed the boat’ on these milestones. They also (with the exception of the sister to whom he provided a loan) did not own property. In comparison Patrick owned four properties. The assistance that he provided to his sister, and was willing to provide to his other siblings, therefore appeared to be, in part, an effort to share his own good fortune in order to restore a sense of fairness.
As Heath (2018) has highlighted in her work on siblings, the concept of fairness – although subject to interpretation and by no means fixed – is central to family life and practices. However, the findings presented in this section demonstrate that parents are not the sole arbiters of fairness within families. Indeed, it is clear that siblings may take proactive steps to maintain and restore fairness in many different ways within family relationships. This finding has implications for practices beyond financial assistance with home ownership, as siblings may also seek to restore fairness in relation to other forms of family financial provision (for instance, inheritances).
Sibling Relationships
While, as Davies (2023) argues, it is reductive and limiting to conceptualise siblings solely as competing for parental resources, it is nevertheless important to be mindful that sibling relationships are subject to interpersonal and structural power dynamics. Indeed, McIntosh and Punch (2009) critique the use of the term ‘lateral’ to refer to sibling relationships due to the power differentials that often form within them. Sibling relationships were typically negotiated in practice, and differed even within a single family. For instance, two of the participants, Jacob, aged 24 and employed as a builder, and his older brother Elliot, aged 27 and employed as an accountant, decided to jointly purchase an investment property, and chose not to include their older brother in this arrangement:
So I’ve got two other brothers, and we were just talking about buying a house and we all, yeah, they’re still, well we got money sitting here, may as well do it. And my oldest brother, he’s not very good in the finances, so he, we said to him, we said, all right, we need to save 10 grand in three months or whatever it was. And if you don’t hit that mark in three months you’re out.
And so was that to save up a deposit, or did you ask him to do that just to show that he could save?
It was because me and Elliot, my other, my middle brother, we knew each other can save. It was a, it was a test for him, I just wanted to see if he was committed.
Oh right. Because otherwise you might buy a place with him and he just wouldn’t make the repayments.
Exactly. So it was more of a test and then he didn’t make, within a month we sat down and said, ‘how are you going with your . . .?’ Like, ‘have you got $3000 yet?’ And he goes, ‘no, I can’t’ and we said ‘don’t worry about it, you’re out’.
Jacob and Elliot’s experience echoes Finch and Mason’s (1993: 167) finding that financial assistance does not flow directly from one’s genealogical relationship with a family member; rather ‘a sense of responsibility for helping someone else develops over time, through interaction between the individuals involved’ (italics in original). However, as Edwards et al. (2006) highlight, sibling relationships are nevertheless attached to considerations such as birth order, gender and cultural expectations. For instance, while Jacob and Elliot clearly had a relationship of trust, having jointly purchased an investment property, Jacob was nevertheless the only donor in the study who initially refused to provide financial assistance when they were asked to do so by their recipient. Jacob was also one of the only donors who was a younger sibling, seemingly upsetting the norms of birth order. Specifically, while in the process of purchasing his own home independently Elliot found that he had a shortfall of about AUD$5000 due to the cost of some urgent repairs. He asked Jacob to lend him this money, with the promise that he would repay it as soon as he received his tax return (in approximately three to four months). While recounting Jacob’s initial refusal Elliot stated:
I asked and he said no. I asked again and then he said yes.
Why did he say no the first time?
He was like, ‘You’re my older brother. You should know better. Why am I lending you money?’ and stuff like that and then obviously he had his wife there, wasn’t his wife at the time but yeah, the wife was there and I guess she just convinced him to do it. I told him, ‘If you just give me three or four months, I’ll be able to give it back.’
Interestingly, while discussing the loan Jacob did not mention that he had initially refused to lend Elliot the money. Instead, he emphasised how trustworthy his brother was, stating ‘I would have given him double.’ He also mentioned that his wife played only a peripheral role in the decision to lend the money to Elliot, stating that they ‘didn’t really discuss it’ and that ‘she was fine with it’, contradicting Elliot’s assumption that she had been instrumental in the decision. The dynamics at play between Jacob and Elliot closely mirror the dual sentiments of annoyance and care that have commonly been associated with sibling relationships both in childhood and into adult life, and reflect the notion of siblingship as ‘being there’ (Davies, 2023). Specifically, while Jacob had clearly teased his brother about borrowing money from a younger sibling and had not been forthcoming about his positive opinion of his brother when speaking to him, when Elliot needed help Jacob was willing to provide it.
Returning to the imagined role that Jacob’s wife played in the negotiation of loaning money to Elliot, it is important to note that while brothers- and sisters-in-law were present throughout this study, all but one of the conversations in which financial assistance was either requested or offered were held with siblings, rather than with their partner. It was in these conversations that the particularities, ambiguities and ambivalences of sibling relationships came to the fore, as they represented a crucial moment at which the passivity of ‘being there’ shifted to a more active and direct instance of support (Davies, 2023). However, while considering the relationships between the siblings in this study it is important to note that very few characterised these relationships as particularly close. Participants’ discussions of the nature of their relationships with their siblings were instead almost uniformly marked by the ambivalence that has commonly been associated with siblings in previous studies both in childhood and in adult life (see Gulløv et al., 2015).
Notably, the ambivalence and tendency for comparison that characterises sibling relationships provides a potential explanation for why it was difficult to recruit recipients of sibling financial assistance into the study (at least when compared with donors). As a case in point Will, aged 30, received financial assistance with home ownership from both his parents and his brother at separate times. During the interview he confessed that while he had admitted to friends that he had received assistance from his parents, he had not told anyone in his life about receiving assistance from his brother. When asked why this was the case he stated: ‘It’s embarrassing. I think that’s it . . . I guess because parents you can understand. You know, it’s natural. But [brother] is in the same place as me.’ Will’s notion that his brother was ‘in the same place as me’ evokes their shared generational location, and highlights the way in which accepting assistance from a sibling may cause one to negatively evaluate their own progress and standing. Indeed, the sense of embarrassment associated with accepting lateral financial assistance from a sibling (as opposed to vertical assistance from a parent or other older relative) may ultimately go some way to explaining why this practice is not often discussed and has received very little attention or consideration in both the scholarly and popular literature.
Conclusion
The findings of this study ultimately serve to contest Coleman’s (1988) claim that siblings dilute one’s access to the economic capital transmitted from parent to child by highlighting some of the ways in which siblings can be providers of, rather than simply competitors for, family financial assistance. I have argued that financial support with home ownership provided by siblings falls into three main categories: complementary support provided alongside funds from parents and other family members, typically at a lower rate; support provided to circumvent the need for a sibling to ask for support from parents, therefore protecting the parents’ assets; and support provided to restore a sense of fairness among siblings, often in response to an earlier instance of assistance provided to the donor sibling. These forms of lateral family financial assistance with home ownership each have different implications when considered alongside the existing literature on intergenerational financial transfers. Complementary forms of assistance suggest that there may be additional flows of family financial assistance provided to first home buyers who are already tapping into the so-called ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ that have been heretofore undetected in large-scale longitudinal studies capturing intergenerational flows of support. This finding highlights the need for studies in this area to account fully for this possibility rather than focusing solely on parent–child flows of financial assistance. Support provided in order to protect parental assets resonates with Coleman’s conceptualisation of siblings as competitors for parental resources, but highlights the potential complexities of this experience by demonstrating how it can actually lead to the provision of resources between siblings. Finally, the provision of support to restore fairness contests the notion of parents as the arbiters of fairness in the context of family financial assistance (see Heath, 2018), providing an important contribution to existing understandings of families, money and notions of fairness.
While the present study provides the first published account of lateral financial assistance with home ownership as a social practice, it includes a limited number of recipients and related donor–recipient pairs. There is therefore significant scope for further research to verify the three categories of support that have been identified in the present study by including a larger number of recipients, and by speaking to donor–recipient pairs. The importance of the latter is highlighted by the inconsistent account that one of the donor–recipient pairs in the present study (Jacob and Elliot) provided, underscoring the value of seeking multiple perspectives where possible. The finding that flows of assistance between siblings were shaped not only by the siblings’ relationships, but also by factors such as birth order, gender and wider social and cultural norms, as well as by comparisons between the siblings, also highlights the need for further research to provide more detailed insight into the significance of each of these aspects of identity in the context of lateral family financial assistance.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the participants in my study. This project would not be possible without their generosity and candour.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: this work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grant DE220100071.
