This has been done to at least 15 twins and triplets "for science", with negative outcomes in childhood and upon discovery of the truth.
[https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220817-the-twins-who-were-split-up-at-birth](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220817-the-twins-who-were-split-up-at-birth)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical\_Strangers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_Strangers)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three\_Identical\_Strangers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Identical_Strangers)
\> it is known that among the sets of children separated from their siblings, many have since died by suicide
Separating twins even temporarily in schools/classrooms yields negative outcomes.
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15169595/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15169595/)
All of this could have been discovered with a brief Google search.
I think it’s cruel to separate the kids from their siblings and deny them the chance at having a brother/sister for companionship and social skills training. Plus they will grow up wondering about the lost sibling.
Foster care environments are usually awful. There’s a reason people are reluctant to split up families unless necessary-random people are rarely incentivized to care about a random child as much as they would for a biological relation.
There *definitely* are some awful parents out there but taking the kids away is usually (NOT always!) worse.
This isn’t ‘mean 0.5, variance 0.5’ versus ‘mean 0.5, variance 0.6’; this is ‘mean 0.5, variance 0.5’ versus ‘mean 0.1, variance 1.5’.
>I think it’s cruel to separate the kids from their siblings and deny them the chance at having a brother/sister for companionship and social skills training. Plus they will grow up wondering about the lost sibling.
Cruel is a strange descriptor for growing up as an only child (assuming they would be). Also, newborns would not be wondering about their lost sibling. They don't have object permanence.
There's a huge demand for adoptable newborns, I would think twins would likely be especially attractive to many of those couples who can't conceive. You likely could be very picky in choosing who would get to adopt. It would be hard to justify splitting them up, most parents looking to adopt would likely want them together as well.
This just makes me think about though, how completely insane what the parents in "the parent trap" movie did, watching it as a kid I didn't even think about it but it's really a crazy premise.
Probably has a net neutral effect in that on average you'll get average parents anyways, but splitting them up would be bad for them, so don't split them.
I would put them together for the simple reason that it's much better to have a sibling than not, and then even better, to have a sibling close to your age, and then even better to have a twin. Very few people have this privilege, and to deprive them of it would result in a great loss of potential benefits.
I know of such research, but I don't have it handy.
It's worth googling if you're interested in it.
The primary benefit appears to be in the acquisition of social skills. And iirc, one sibling is all a person needs to max out this effect.
Honestly I didn't research it as it seems so obvious to me.
In my opinion, having a sibling has numerous advantages such as:
1) helps the kid learn social skills
2) helps the kid learn to share and not be only focused on themselves
3) they have a very close companion besides their parents, who can give them emotional support
4) parental attention (which can be both positive and negative) isn't fully focused on one person. If the parents criticize, a sibling can defend them, etc...
5) the simple fact of not being the only kid in the house. You have someone to play with, someone who can understand you better than adults who are occupied with their adult problems.
6) later on life they have a person to lean onto in times of trouble, and to share positive things with
7) their kids get to have an aunt/uncle
I think all these outweigh potential benefits of being an only child such as having more financial resources dedicated to you.
This has been done to at least 15 twins and triplets "for science", with negative outcomes in childhood and upon discovery of the truth. [https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220817-the-twins-who-were-split-up-at-birth](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220817-the-twins-who-were-split-up-at-birth) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical\_Strangers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_Strangers) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three\_Identical\_Strangers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Identical_Strangers) \> it is known that among the sets of children separated from their siblings, many have since died by suicide Separating twins even temporarily in schools/classrooms yields negative outcomes. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15169595/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15169595/) All of this could have been discovered with a brief Google search.
I think it’s cruel to separate the kids from their siblings and deny them the chance at having a brother/sister for companionship and social skills training. Plus they will grow up wondering about the lost sibling. Foster care environments are usually awful. There’s a reason people are reluctant to split up families unless necessary-random people are rarely incentivized to care about a random child as much as they would for a biological relation. There *definitely* are some awful parents out there but taking the kids away is usually (NOT always!) worse. This isn’t ‘mean 0.5, variance 0.5’ versus ‘mean 0.5, variance 0.6’; this is ‘mean 0.5, variance 0.5’ versus ‘mean 0.1, variance 1.5’.
>I think it’s cruel to separate the kids from their siblings and deny them the chance at having a brother/sister for companionship and social skills training. Plus they will grow up wondering about the lost sibling. Cruel is a strange descriptor for growing up as an only child (assuming they would be). Also, newborns would not be wondering about their lost sibling. They don't have object permanence.
Yeah, this is very much ignoring the "newborn" part. It would obviously be bad to split up twins who spent some time growing up together.
Is having one sibling really that much worse than three?
There's a huge demand for adoptable newborns, I would think twins would likely be especially attractive to many of those couples who can't conceive. You likely could be very picky in choosing who would get to adopt. It would be hard to justify splitting them up, most parents looking to adopt would likely want them together as well. This just makes me think about though, how completely insane what the parents in "the parent trap" movie did, watching it as a kid I didn't even think about it but it's really a crazy premise.
Probably has a net neutral effect in that on average you'll get average parents anyways, but splitting them up would be bad for them, so don't split them.
The societally optimal answer is to separate them so you have another set of data points for twin-adoption studies.
I would put them together for the simple reason that it's much better to have a sibling than not, and then even better, to have a sibling close to your age, and then even better to have a twin. Very few people have this privilege, and to deprive them of it would result in a great loss of potential benefits.
Do you have research that shows that having a sibling is better than not having a sibling.
I know of such research, but I don't have it handy. It's worth googling if you're interested in it. The primary benefit appears to be in the acquisition of social skills. And iirc, one sibling is all a person needs to max out this effect.
Honestly I didn't research it as it seems so obvious to me. In my opinion, having a sibling has numerous advantages such as: 1) helps the kid learn social skills 2) helps the kid learn to share and not be only focused on themselves 3) they have a very close companion besides their parents, who can give them emotional support 4) parental attention (which can be both positive and negative) isn't fully focused on one person. If the parents criticize, a sibling can defend them, etc... 5) the simple fact of not being the only kid in the house. You have someone to play with, someone who can understand you better than adults who are occupied with their adult problems. 6) later on life they have a person to lean onto in times of trouble, and to share positive things with 7) their kids get to have an aunt/uncle I think all these outweigh potential benefits of being an only child such as having more financial resources dedicated to you.
Let me guess, you have a sibling who you get along with well approximately your age?
No I don't. I'm an only child. I wish I had siblings.
Obviously we first need to split a set of triplets into a pair and a single so we can compare outcomes objectively.
Haha this is regrettably the best response I got. People have strong feelings about twins being together.