(Ex)Changeable Siblingships was a research project conducted at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University from 2011-2014. The Egmont Foundation financed the project. The project was based on empirical material collected throughout 2011 and 2012. It involved close to 100 children and their parents as well as selected professionals who work with children.
The project was about siblingship as a social and cultural phenomenon in contemporary Denmark. Being a sibling, having siblings and getting siblings are conditions in the lives of most children; actually 90 per cent of all children are registered as having siblings. Despite the prevalence, we have little knowledge of how children perceive being siblings, who they consider as siblings, and what they do or do not do together. Neither do we know much about how this phenomenon is culturally understood. Do children consider all the children they live with as siblings, even if they do not have parents in common? Can you be more or less real siblings? Can you stop being siblings?
Results of the research project was published in the book "Siblings – Practical and Sensitive Relations" and the film "(Ex)changeable Siblingship – Experienced and Practiced by Children and young people in Denmark"