Oh, Brother: How Nature and Nurture Can Conspire to Create Ideologically Opposed Siblings

by Christina Gillham

Like many brothers, Brad and Dallas Woodhouse share a lot of interests. They both love skiing, and following North Carolina State football and basketball. But bring up the subject of politics, and the two veer in sharply different directions.

“My brother is out to destroy the country,” says Dallas, 36, only half jokingly. A Republican, he works for the North Carolina division of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that advocates for low taxes and small government. Brad Woodhouse, 41, is the communications director for the Democratic National Committee. “My brother is a right-wing nut job,” Brad says, also half jokingly.

Recently, the brothers have even taken their views public, arguing different sides of the health-care debate—and trading barbs—on media outlets such as CNN.

It may seem unusual for two siblings who grew up in the same house, with the same parents, and under more or less the same circumstances to end up on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But it’s not that uncommon, researchers say. A quick look around the cultural landscape might prove the point: liberal columnist Maureen Dowd has published lengthy comments by her conservative older brother in her column. And famously liberal actor Alec Baldwin’s younger brother Stephen is a born-again Christian conservative.

“Basically, all siblings, animal and human, are hard-wired to compete over parental investment,” says Frank Sulloway, a visiting professor at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Personality and Social Research and author of Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives. In other words, choosing opposing sides of the political spectrum may simply be one manifestation of good, old-fashioned sibling rivalry, born from an unconscious desire to vie for Mom’s and Dad’s attention and to differentiate oneself from one’s sibling.

Sibling rivalry precedes the story of Cain and Abel, of course, and nearly everyone with a brother or sister experiences it in one form or another. Psychoanalysts have had a field day with the subject; Sigmund Freud famously described rivalry between brothers as an Oedipal battle for Mom’s love. Freud’s contemporary, Alfred Adler, believed that siblings differentiate themselves, either consciously or unconsciously, in order to promote the survival of their own genes. “From an evolutionary perspective, it’s good for siblings to be different,” says Susan McHale, a professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University. “If selection pressures come to prevail, one sibling will survive. If they’re all alike, they’re all likely to succumb.”

But other factors may also contribute to siblings’ differing political views. The order in which they were born is one. Sulloway’s studies have shown that, in general, older siblings are more likely to be conservative, and second- and later-borns progressively more liberal. The Woodhouse brothers, of course, are a statistical anomaly. Dallas, the conservative one, is the youngest, and Brad, the liberal, is the middle child. Their older sister is apolitical, both brothers say, but leans conservative (Brad says, “I have no doubt she’s a Republican. I’m surrounded by ’em.”).

Of course, when it comes to politics, views are also shaped by life experience. A man who sees his small business heavily taxed may grow into a firm believer in the conservative notion of small government; one who can’t afford health insurance might trend more liberal. Dallas says he became a conservative when, as a television reporter, he began to notice what he called “government waste.”

But political viewpoints are also something of a genetic crapshoot. Recent studies have shown that a person’s liberal or conservative viewpoint is partly based on his or her brain activity. Siblings share only about 50 percent of genes, which leaves the remaining 50 percent open to a roll of the dice. So, yes, it’s partly your brain that determines whether you vote red or blue (or none of the above).

Whether or not all the potential explanations for their beliefs matter to the Woodhouse brothers is doubtful. And, in spite of it all, the brothers maintain that they love each other and are really close. Still, in this contentious political climate, it can be hard to put passions aside. “This stuff heavily divides us,” says Dallas. “I think we’ll both fight to the bitter end.”

GILLHAM is an associate editor at NEWSWEEK.