“Education was Equally Important for All Us Siblings”: Family Cultures of Mobility,Gender and Higher Education in Middle-Class India

Sibling Comparisons of Academic Ability

Echoing the findings of other studies of middle-class Indian families (Barn et al., 2023; Gupta, 2023; Kumar, 2011), our informants recall growing up in homes that placed great emphasis on academic performance. Family elders praise the younger generation for accomplishments and reprimand them for not receiving good marks at school. In the course of doing so, they draw attention to the collective family implications of a child’s academic achievements. Their message to children is that doing well at school is of collective benefit, a matter of pride, status and potential economic security. Growing up outside of Chennai, Karun recalls being constantly told to be a high achiever at school for the sake of the family. He and his brothers felt huge pressure to do well, knowing that the collective well-being of the family rested on their performance:

In our family, it was all about doing well at school. For my father and grandmother, it was always the question: what are your marks? We had to do well for them. It was a constant pressure to work hard for their sake. We knew they were counting on us to be there for them in the future. (Karun, late fifties, Canada)

Karun speaks of sharing pressures and anxieties about school with siblings. He and his brothers all faced family expectations to be stellar students. Along with creating a sense of sibling camaraderie among siblings, these shared concerns are also a potential focus of rivalry and division. Given that individual differentiation and the comparative performance of students are at the heart of modern schooling, it is not surprising that siblings are assessed within families for their academic aptitude in relation to each other. Throughout the life course, siblings play an important role in each other’s identity formations (Jensen et al., 2022). As Davies (2019) notes, this includes the development of identities of academic ability: ‘growing up in the same familial generation, often in the same household, can make siblings a foil—a comparison and accounting tool—for young people when considering their progress at school, and watching an older sibling advance though the education system’ (p. 211).

In their recollections, informants frequently describe themselves in terms of their academic ability, using siblings as a point of comparison. As we see in Gitu’s account below, siblings develop identities and reputations of ‘good student’ or ‘bad student’ in relation to each other:

My brother and sister were better students than me. I wasn’t a very good student and I failed in class. My second elder brother was good in education though my eldest brother wasn’t very good in his studies. My younger sister was a good student and kind of overpowered us with good academic results. (Gitu, late forties, Kolkata)

Research shows the academic reputations of older siblings to shadow the experiences of younger siblings at school (Davies, 2019; Holland, 2009). Reflecting this, Mukur speaks of being compared to her sisters by teachers at school. Measured against the academic brilliance of her sisters, Mukur was viewed as the less scholastically talented child, both at home and at school. She recalls a teacher describing her as a poor student in comparison to her sisters—a remark that angered her at the time, even as it spurred her to work harder:

My sisters were renowned for their results, my elder sister especially. She also got a rank in the board exams. That way she excelled. In our family, she was described as the brilliant one. We were all in the same school and I was known as the sister who was not so brilliant. I remember in Class 8 the Maths teacher said, ‘why are you like this when your sisters are always at the top of the class’? I felt angry. I did try more after that but I was never like my sisters. (Mukur, fifties, Mumbai)

Within a high-stakes educational system, sibling comparisons of academic performance can feed into currents of competition and jealousy between children in the family. This is especially so when these comparisons are accompanied by parental favouritism towards the child who is the good student. Madhurima is among those who felt that a parent (in this case, her father) favoured a sibling who was better in studies. She recalls growing up with a sense of low self-esteem in relation to her sister:

Definitely, my father always used to favour my sister. He loved her a lot because since childhood she was consistently good in studies. I was not so good in studies. I developed a kind of inferiority complex. My family, particularly my father, had very high expectations from us to pursue science because of the prestige and the salary. My sister became an engineer and my father still favours her to some extent. I went into the humanities track. (Madhurima, mid-thirties, Kolkata)

For Shampa, it is not parental favouritism per se but the opportunity to leave home to study, (despite being the youngest child) that fostered enduring sibling jealousies. Shampa’s high exam scores in high school gave her a slot at a prestigious national university. This enabled her, unlike the other three children in the family, to leave her hometown for higher education.

Sibling relationships are emotionally intricate, encompassing attachment and loyalty as well as rivalry and competition. Reflecting this complexity, sibling gaps in academic success did not necessarily result in sibling resentments. Mithu, for example, bears no ill feelings towards his elder brother, a successful wealthy high-tech entrepreneur. He explains his own comparatively modest career success to be a result of their divergent academic abilities. His brother had been a brilliant student who had gained admission to the premier engineering institute in India. Seemingly content with their unequal life trajectories, Mithu uses the neoliberal language of personal choice and responsibility to affirm the fairness of their uneven class outcomes:

I chose the path of studying commerce because it was easier for me. Because I couldn’t study much; I wasn’t that good at studies. My elder brother, he was a brilliant student, an IITian [ Indian Institute of Technology]. He had the ability to make money in technology. His road, he chose. My road, I chose and I followed that. This is about personal choices. (Mithu, late forties, Mumbai)

Sibling Comparisons of Family Financial Support

Sibling identities of academic ability can evolve and fluctuate over time. However, once in motion, they have a self-fulfilling quality. Within a system organised around funnelling whereby educational achievements build on each other, those who are good students accrue institutional opportunities over time, such as admission into a prestigious college that facilitates entry to graduate programmes. Shifts and modifications in family expectations about the academic paths of particular children accompany these developments. For example, family elders may channel those who are not so successful at school into roles that are less dependent on education. A less academically inclined child may be steered towards staying close to home, perhaps to run a small business or to assume primary responsibility for taking care of elderly parents. For women, poor academic performance can reinforce a gendered pathway towards marriage rather than higher education and career.

Family strategy adjustments in response to the variable school performance of children include the prioritisation of educational funding for those who are academically more successful. As described earlier, Shampa’s high exam marks gave her admission to a prestigious national university. In response, her father willingly invested more money into her schooling than that of her siblings. From his perspective, a high level of expenditure on her education is legitimate and worthwhile, given her record of success. Similarly, studies show families adjusting their gendered educational expectations in response to evolving academic histories (Belliappa, 2013; Tokita-Tanabe, 2021). As Shampa establishes herself as a stellar student, her father shifts the focus of his ambitions towards her and away from the eldest Raja. The change is, however, difficult to accept for Raja, who feels resentful of the financial prioritisation of Shampa’s education:

In high school, Shampa became the star student. My father and grandfather were devoted to making sure she had all the support she needed because she deserved it. When the household was struggling financially, her funding stayed intact; the rest of us were not always so lucky. (Raja, late forties, Kolkata)

Aneesha expresses frustration over the greater family financial support for education received by her younger sister Neesha than herself. She understands the discrepancy to have arisen from changing family financial circumstances rather than dissimilar academic performance. By the time Neesha was ready to pursue higher education, the family business was flourishing. This allowed her parents to bear the costs of Neesha leaving home and attending university in a major city, unlike what happened for Aneesha. Aneesha’s remarks highlight the larger understood importance of going to university in a major city away from home. Beyond the prestige of the degree, living independently, especially for women, fosters autonomy, confidence and the skills to navigate the broader world:

I feel that I am handicapped. I feel that I am bound within the four walls- being in the same locality, same house, same town for years and years. I have never been given that chance or that opportunity to get out. I think had I ever seen the outside world, it would have been different for me. For my sister, after she went out of the state to study, many things developed within her that were not there before. She found a voice to put her thoughts into deeds. She chose her career, her place of work. I could not do that, I did not get the opportunity. (Aneesha, late thirties, Odisha)

Rashi similarly describes unequal sibling opportunity to study away from home. Rashi has a master’s in cultural studies from a local university in her hometown in Assam; the degree has left her ill-prepared for the job market. Given limited family finances, her parents chose to invest in her elder brother and twin sister Rita’s studies. Her parents had always had higher expectations for her sister who had displayed signs of being a strong student early on. Still, Rashi felt deprived of the chance to study away from home in her desired field:

I wanted to pursue Political Science in my Masters’ degree. My mom, she insisted that I study here locally for my Masters, which had no option for Political Science. It was less costly. At that time, they had the expenses for my brother and sister. My sister was doing well and I did not get the chance. You know, I did not want to do Cultural Studies, but I did it. Right now, this subject is not giving me any benefit. I am unable to even apply for any jobs with a degree in Cultural Studies. (Rashi, early thirties, Assam)

Both Rashi and her sister Rita speak of having a close and warm relationship. Still, Rashi’s sense of unequal access to family financial support for education is a source of tension between them. Rita is aware of Rashi’s perception that she received less funding for her education than her sister:

I do not think my parents favored one of us over another. Although my sister might feel differently, that I got the privilege. My mom asked her to study locally because of the course fee and the cost of living in another place. Now my sister talks about that in front of me. I can feel she has in her mind that she did not get the same chances as me. She does not say it like that but I feel bad and I also feel guilty. At the time it was happening I did not realise it. Maybe they were spending more on me. At the end of the day, finance is the most important thing. In that sense, yes, she was neglected. (Rita, early thirties, Assam)

Ajoy is another informant who feels stymied in his educational pursuits due to inadequate family funding. In his case, however, the resentment he feels towards older brother Bijoy stems from Bijoy’s failure rather than success as a student. His parents had had high aspirations for their oldest son. Despite modest economic circumstances, they spared no expense towards Bijoy’s schooling, expecting that he would do well and become a source of financial security for the entire family, including his younger siblings. These hopes disintegrated as Bijoy dropped out of college and developed drinking and gambling habits. Ajoy resents Bijoy, not only for the heartache he has brought to the family but also for his absorption of financial resources that might otherwise have been available to Ajoy:

There was a particular time four years ago when if I had funding from my family, I would be somewhere better right now. I would be in Canada. I would have met the people I wanted to and be doing my dream job. My parents did not feel they could spare the funds. I understand their feeling – they have to hold on to whatever they have left to support them in old age. They always thought my older brother would be in a great position by the time I was ready for college. They supported him and supported him and still, even though he is almost 40, they are still supporting him and they will continue doing that. There is nothing left for them to give me. (Ajoy, mid-twenties, Kolkata)

At the time of the interview, Ajoy was freelancing as a graphic designer, along with a sideline job as a food delivery driver. Ajoy, as we have seen earlier, feels thwarted in his ambition to study photography in Canada because of a lack of family funds which Bijoy has wasted away. However, the fact that Ajoy is seeking money for a degree in photography—a field with relatively uncertain career prospects—is also relevant here. Strategies of investment into a child’s education reflect a family’s elders’ perceptions of the value and prospects of the targeted field of study. From the perspective of their parents, neither Ajoy nor Bijoy showed signs of fulfilling the middle-class project of class mobility through entry into prestigious professional occupations. Under these circumstances, which offered little assurance of financial support in their retirement years, it made sense to hold onto whatever savings they had left.

Siblings as Sources of Educational Support

As seen thus far, the emphasis on academic success that animates middle-class family cultures can spark competition and resentments among siblings. There is also a flip side of cooperation and support among siblings as they navigate the challenges of schooling. Informants recall siblings helping them with homework, serving as informal tutors and emotionally supporting them as they went through the many anxieties of being a student. Nandini recalls trying to keep her brother (younger by one year) calm on the days before his exams:

Before his exams, I helped him study and I helped him to be not so nervous. He was a sensitive boy. I made him listen to music and play board games to calm his nerves. Even now, he says, I don’t know if I could have gotten through the exams without you. (Nandini, mid-fifties, Canada)

Age organises the directional flow of siblings’ education support. With respect to knowledge and experience, older siblings are generally in a better position to help younger ones with school than vice versa (Holland, 2009). Davies (2019) notes how

older siblings exert more influence on their younger siblings than vice versa, be that through social support, the ‘rubbing off’ of reputation or a longitudinal vantage point for viewing one’s educational journey … the organisation of school by age places older siblings in a unique position of influence. (p. 223)

In the middle-class Indian cultural context, the structural influence of older siblings is reinforced by the traditional scripts of age hierarchy. Entwined with the ethos of family collectivism, these scripts affirm both the authority of older siblings and their obligation to support younger siblings.

Ashok speaks of being a major support for younger brother Alok. In addition to guiding and supervising Alok through school, Ashok paid his tuition fees. More recently, he helped Alok find a job at a difficult time. Even now, although Alok is working, Ashok continues to provide him with financial support. Since Ashok is in a much stronger economic position, he pays the private school fees for Alok’s children. Being the elder brother, Ashok takes great pride in the role of a protector. He frames the support he gives within the ideals of family collectivism and brotherly obligation. In the following remarks, he further affirms the value of education and his commitment to making sure the younger generation of the family to go to the best schools:

For his education, I went to the college and spoke with his principal about admission and arranging fees. When he was coming out of a business start-up that did not do well, I put him into a job in a company since I was familiar with the circle there. I am his older brother; it is a natural thing, to support the younger brother. Even now, when he is short of money, I pay for the children’s school fees. I always tell him, never compromise on their education. The children of our family need to go to the best schools. (Ashok, early fifties, Chennai)

Another case of an elder sibling giving support involves Romit and his sister Oishi, younger to him by almost 10 years. In the absence of their father, Romit assumes a role of guardianship of Oishi. He paid for Oishi’s tuition and living expenses when she was in college. Since then, he has continued to support her as needed. Romit articulates a strong code of moral responsibility for older siblings to care for younger ones:

Every elder sibling has the moral responsibility to financially take care of their younger sibling, at least until the age they are able to fend for themselves. And it doesn’t only end there. When the younger sibling, whether it is a brother or sister, gets married, your responsibility remains. It is your duty to have a relationship on the same terms you had even before the marriage. (Romit, late thirties, Kolkata)

For the most part, elder sibling’s financial support for education emanates from older brothers to others. The gendered directionality of the flows points to the intersections of age and gender in practices of sibling’s monetary support. Sisters are more likely to be recipients than givers of monetary support for education. These patterns are however malleable, as suggested by cases of elder sisters funding the education of younger brothers. Preetha is the older sister (by nine years) of brother Pratik. Coming from financially difficult family circumstances, Preetha is able to complete her college education only after getting married, with the support of her husband. She then finds a job and draws on her income to fund her brother’s college expenses. In addition to paying his tuition, she helps Pratik find a part-time job so that he could take care of any additional expenses. Along with emphasising the age gap between them, Pratik frames Preetha’s relationship with him in maternal terms. She is like a mother who exercises authority and protection over him. And her husband (Pratik’s brother-in-law) is like a father figure to him. In his guardianship and under his protection, these relationships are parental in nature:

My sister is more like a mother than a sister. She has always taken care of me and guided me. You see there is a big age difference of nine years between us. I was about eight when she got married. I remember, during my high school Board exams, she came and taught me. She was strict to make sure I passed. She paid for my tuition. It is also like that with my sister’s husband. I would say that he is like my father, he takes good care of me. (Pratik, mid-thirties, Hyderabad)

Gendered Family Cultures of Education

The high levels of education among women in our sample reflect the widespread support in middle-class Indian families for the education of both sons and daughters. However, the sibling education histories we gathered also reveal the significance of gender, albeit often in implicit and subtle rather than overt and direct ways. Mohit, for example, the only son in the family, speaks of a culture in the home that valued education for all of them, including his sisters. At the same time, he concedes an underlying culture of gendered expectations. The education of his sisters was shaped by implicit family messages about the primacy of marriage and domestic roles in their lives and the need for them to remain in a sheltered home space. As noted earlier, there is a particular significance for women of going away from home to live and study. These experiences, away from the direct supervision of family, allow women to develop a sense of autonomy and independence:

Education was equally important for all. But it was never a question for me, I always knew I had to do well and leave home to study and work. For my sisters, it was different. There is the idea that they will eventually get married and it’s not as important for them to have a career. I was encouraged to go out and get exposed to diverse situations. I am not scared of the world. My sisters have always been in their protected space. (Mohit, early thirties, Bangalore)

For Pala, a college teacher and older sister of Samit, subtle gendered expectations had paved a path towards a humanities field of study instead of the more prestigious and potentially lucrative sciences. Pala does not, however, view these expectations in a negative manner. She is happy to have studied a subject (history) that she actually liked rather than one forced on her for practical reasons. She sees her educational pathway as a successful one, enabling her to have a teaching career and independent life. A single woman in her early fifties, Pala successfully rejected family pressures to get married when she was younger. Even though she had not taken an educational pathway leading to a high-paying job, she is satisfied with her educational choices and the autonomy afforded by her teaching job:

Samit [younger brother] and I were more or less the same kind of students. But we chose a different stream and that’s how it ended up in different outcomes for us. He studied engineering. Both of us studied in English medium schools and we had the freedom to choose whatever we wanted to do. I had never put a lot of consideration into my career. I liked history. I am very content that I studied history and I can now teach history. There’s also the factor that girls and boys are encouraged to think about schooling differently. The boys are taught they need to do something that’s going to pay so they can provide. There is an emphasis on careers. Everyone thought I would get married and my husband would take care of me. Of course I did not ultimately choose to get married. (Pala, early fifties, Kolkata)

As Pala suggests, among the consequences of the particular pressures faced by boys to study in the direction of a prestigious career is the relatively greater freedom given to daughters to pursue a wider range of subjects, including humanities ones. Thus, along with potential advantages, higher family expectations are not without drawbacks for sons, including less freedom to study in an area of interest, regardless of its future career potential. Shampa traces her brother’s academic failures to their father’s insistence that he should become an engineer despite a lack of aptitude for the subject:

When my eldest brother couldn’t get through his engineering entrance exam, my parents’ hearts were broken. You know, my father never bothered to know what my brother liked to do; he was made to study what my dad thought was important and prestigious for the family. My brother did not have a knack for engineering. He never had the opportunity to discover his own talents and realize his true potential. (Shampa, late forties, the USA)

Along with constraining choice in field of study, gendered family cultures of education enhance the stigmas of academic failure for boys. As mentioned earlier, families can respond to the mediocre school performance of daughters by focusing on marriage as an alternative to education and career for them. As boys do not have this option, pressures about their performance are especially sharp. According to Shampa, her elder brother Raja suffers deeply from feeling like a disappointment to his parents who had expected him as the eldest son to do well and support his younger siblings. The tense relationship between the siblings is driven by Raja’s low self-esteem and discomfort with his younger sister’s academic and career success. Shampa’s achievements disrupt the traditional cultural scripts of age and gender hierarchy in their relationship.

Adjustments in parental ambitions for an eldest son are also described by twin sisters Rita and Rashi. When they were growing up, their father’s fervent dream was to see his son become a doctor. This changed when their older brother did not pass the necessary exams for medicine. He moved to a course in economics and eventually received a master’s in business administration. Even though he remained in a professional career track, his failure to become a doctor altered family dynamics. The attention shifted to Rita, a good student who passed a competitive exam and achieved a high-ranking government post. In a marked change away from the expected family roles, Rita, rather than the brother, is seen and treated as the sibling head of the family. She bears expenses for her parents’ medical treatment and is always consulted in important family decisions. Their father expresses great pride in Rita’s achievements, which are a source of status and security for the family. Gendered expectations for the siblings have shifted over time.

Post-Marriage Education Trajectories of Women

Along with a rise in women’s education and labour force participation, studies show the continued importance of traditional expectations affirming the primacy of marriage and domestic caretaking pathways in women’s lives (Bhattacharyya, 2019; Vijayakumar, 2013). As we have seen, gendered expectations for education are both powerful and malleable. Among our informants, the structural consequences of these gendered expectations are reflected in the particular importance of marriage in the educational and career pathways of women. In narrating their educational histories, women informants go beyond childhood experiences in their family of origin to highlight the post-marriage family environments into which they marry. In some cases, marriage marked the conclusion of education and career, whereas in others, marriage enabled their continued development. For Preetha, for example, a ‘love marriage’ into a family with greater economic means than her own enabled her to continue her education and obtain a bachelor’s degree in commerce. Her husband was supportive and had the financial means to fund her educational expenses:

After completion of my 10th, I completed my +2 in the government college. It was a women’s college. Those 2 years of +2, I faced a lot of financial issues. I wanted to support my parents and also wanted to study further. Then I met my husband and got married in 1993. After marriage, I did not face these financial issues. My husband supported me a lot. He wanted me to study more. (Preetha, early forties, Hyderabad)

In contrast to Preetha, Smita describes the dampening impacts of marriage on her education and career. Before marriage, she had completed a degree in commerce and aspired to continue in a master’s programme. However, after marriage, she found herself weighed down with domestic responsibilities and the emotional challenges of difficult in-laws. Her husband was not opposed to his wife studying further and getting a job. But neither did he actively support her or relieve her of the domestic responsibilities and pressures being imposed on her:

I started with taking care of my husband’s family right after marriage so my own plans were considerably hampered during that time. Taking care of my in-laws and then my daughters, it followed one after another. When I was first married, our house was regularly frequented by the families of my husband’s four sisters and their children. Cooking for them and attending to them was my responsibility, while he was out. And they would make a huge fuss about anything that went amiss on my part. They always behaved like I’d robbed their brother from them, like he was an investment the family was supposed to reap benefits from but I came along and failed them. And even now, I have to constantly cater to my mother-in- law while my husband works or tours and my daughters are abroad. I feel caged in this house. (Smita, early fifties, Kolkata)

The post-marriage education and career trajectories of women are shaped by a multiplicity of conditions. In comparing Preetha and Smita, a possible source of disparity is their age difference. Preetha entered into adulthood at a time of greater women’s participation in education and the formal labour force than Smita who is almost 10 years older. However, the historical context is not the only relevant difference. Indrani, Smita’s older sister by a year, also enjoyed greater post-marriage opportunities than Smita. Both Smita and Indrani had obtained college degrees in commerce before marriage. Their lives took different directions when Indrani followed her husband to the USA after marriage where she studied computer programming and developed a successful professional career. Indrani speaks of the different choices made by their husbands and how migration abroad had produced a post-marriage family environment with greater education and career opportunities for her than her sister:

Our paths are different because our husbands chose different lives. For her husband, staying in India with the family was most important. My husband wanted to have a life in the USA. Before I worked, I was also a housewife so my work was also like hers, cooking and looking after my sons, so not much difference in life paths. But living here in the USA is very different from living in India. Very different. We live independently here, it’s just my husband and sons I have to worry about. My sister has been frustrated in her life by the many demands of her in-laws. In my case there was no question that I should develop my potential and independence. (Indrani, early fifties, the USA)

Those growing up with sisters of a similar age compare themselves to each other closely as they reflect on the gendered opportunities and constraints in their lives. This was the case for Swati and Aditi, twin sisters with different post-marriage life trajectories. Both sisters have master’s degrees and both had arranged marriages within a few months of each other. Swati moved to Singapore soon after marriage when her husband obtained a lucrative position there. Swati has a son and she works as a science teacher. Her husband is encouraging to pursue a PhD. Swati positively compares her own supportive post-marriage family environment with that of her sister. Aditi has tried to find a job but has not obtained a suitable one. Aditi’s sense of failure, as Swati describes, is compounded by disparagement from her in-laws:

I think for women, what you are able to achieve in your education and work, it depends a lot on in-laws, like what kind of in-laws are you getting. If they are supportive and caring then your life also will be smooth and tension free. My sister lives with her in-laws and they destroy her confidence with all kinds of remarks. Her mother-in-law comments on how dark she is, how she can’t do anything. My in-laws are not like that, they have encouraged me to move ahead. They want me to realize my goals and to complete my Ph.D. (Swati, mid-thirties, Singapore)

The two sisters communicate frequently with each other. In their conversations, Swati often urges Aditi to stand up to her mother-in-law and assert herself:

I get irritated with her when her in-laws are rude to her. Why does she remain quiet? I tell her to give it back to them. She is not an assertive person, that is part of the problem. She is easily discouraged by any problem in front of her.

Swati’s remarks draw attention to the psychological dimensions of post-marriage family environments for women. In other words, the education and career trajectories of women are shaped by the emotional support received after marriage. Even when women are not actively prohibited by spouses and in-laws from pursuing degrees or jobs, their ability to do so reflects the broader character of the family environment. Also highlighted are the deep contests surrounding traditional gender roles for women after marriage. As women with high levels of education, both Swati and Aditi entered marriage with expectations of being able to pursue their education and career ambitions. While Aditi has been frustrated in these pursuits, her sister’s voice is an ongoing reminder of the legitimacy of these expectations and her desire to achieve them.