Rhetorical Analysis Of Paired And Pared: The Sibling Effect

In chapter eleven, “Paired and Pared”, of The Sibling Effect, author Jeffrey Kluger informs his audience about twins and only children and how they are different than other broods. Not only are twins and only children, referred to as “singletons,” biologically different, but their emotional, physical, psychological, and social development is as well. By devoting an entire chapter solely to twins and singletons, Kluger is indirectly claiming that these offspring view the world in a special, and sometimes unexplainable, way. Kluger validates this claim by the use of governmental policies, psychological studies, controversial viewpoints, and personal narratives. Kluger opens up the chapter by summarizing the harsh views of psychologists G. Stanley Hall and Abraham Arden Brill. They argue that only children have no hope in becoming acceptable human beings and cannot change this fact. Hall goes as far as to use words such as “pampered, narcissistic, [and] socially inept” to describe only children (224). Hall’s opinion is nothing compared to bold statements made by Brill. Brill exclaims that, “’it would be best for the individual as well as the race that there

Though he, again, fails to inform the readers of who performed the study or what type of study it was, the author does quote it saying that, “[the] study found that 78 percent of Americans believed that singletons are “disadvantageous””(226). The author then uses this information to back up his claim that although Americans had a bad outlook on only children in the past, now “singletons, at last, are getting a break” (226). Because he neglects to sufficiently inform the audience about the studies, the information Kluger does include seems vague and only included to support his claim. Though the studies used in this case are not detailed enough to prove Kluger’s claim, Kluger does a good job of supporting most of the material included in this