If you’ve ever gone months, or years, without speaking to a brother or sister, you’re far from alone. Roughly 28% of adults experience at least one period of estrangement from a sibling at some point in their lives, according to peer-reviewed research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. A separate, more recent YouGov poll puts the current, active rate at 24% of American adults, meaning roughly one in four is estranged from a sibling right now. Sibling relationships are often assumed to be the most permanent bonds in a family. The data tells a messier story.
What the Research Actually Found
The estrangement figures come from a study by demographers Karsten Hank and Anja Steinbach, who analyzed data from 5,729 respondents and 10,374 sibling pairs drawn from a long-running German family panel survey, tracking participants across multiple waves over time. Published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, the study defined estrangement as either having no contact with a sibling or having infrequent contact (less than monthly) combined with low reported emotional closeness. Under that definition, the researchers found that “28% of respondents in our sample experienced at least one episode of estrangement from any sibling,” while estrangement occurred more than once, with different siblings, in about 14% of cases.
Importantly, the researchers also found that estrangement is often not permanent. Roughly 75.5% of sibling pairs in the study experienced no estrangement at all across the observation period, and among those who did go through a rupture, many later reconciled. That pattern shows up in U.S. survey data as well: the YouGov survey of 4,395 American adults, fielded in the summer of 2025, found that 45% of people currently estranged from a sibling say they’d be willing to reconcile, a lower rate than estrangement from a child (70%) but still nearly half.
What Actually Drives Siblings Apart
The German study identified genetic relatedness as the single strongest predictor of estrangement risk, meaning half-siblings and step-siblings face meaningfully higher odds of drifting apart than full biological siblings, though that effect is heavily influenced by how much time siblings actually spent living together growing up. Siblings who shared a household for less of their childhood, whether due to a parent’s divorce, remarriage or death, were more likely to end up estranged as adults, regardless of biological relatedness. Sister-brother pairs also showed a slightly higher estrangement risk than sister-sister pairs in the data.
American respondents describe more everyday triggers. In the YouGov poll, the most commonly cited reasons for sibling estrangement were personality conflicts (29%), lies or betrayal (29%) and manipulative behavior (26%). Notably, the same survey found that 38% of American adults report being currently estranged from at least one family member of any kind, with siblings the single most common relationship type affected, ahead of parents (16%), children (10%), grandparents (9%) and grandchildren (6%).
Why This Matters Beyond the Numbers
Sibling relationships tend to be the longest-running relationships most people will ever have, often outlasting relationships with parents, spouses and even children in terms of sheer years shared. That’s part of why researchers have taken a growing interest in quantifying how often those bonds actually break, and why estrangement in this specific relationship carries a distinct kind of weight. Unlike a friendship that fades naturally, sibling estrangement usually involves an active rupture, a specific conflict, betrayal or long-simmering resentment that reaches a breaking point.
The research also complicates a common assumption: that estrangement is rare, or that families who experience it are unusual. With roughly a quarter to nearly a third of adults affected by sibling estrangement at some point, according to two independent data sources using different methods on different continents, the experience turns out to be closer to common than exceptional. What varies most isn’t whether a rupture happens, but whether it heals. The same body of research suggests reconciliation is neither guaranteed nor rare, sitting instead somewhere in the middle.
The Hank and Steinbach study also found that a history of estrangement tends to predict future episodes, meaning siblings who’ve already gone through one rupture are statistically more likely to go through another, even after reconciling. That doesn’t mean every reunion is fragile, but it does suggest that whatever caused the original rift, whether it was a parent’s death, a falling-out over money, or years of accumulated resentment, often needs to be addressed directly rather than simply outlasted for a relationship to stabilize long-term. For anyone currently not speaking to a sibling, the data offers a specific, evidence-based kind of reassurance: it doesn’t make the situation less painful, but it does mean it isn’t unusual, and it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s permanent either.
