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The relationship between siblings is profoundly affected by and profoundly affects other aspects of family life and development. The second pregnancy affects the firstborn. Parents' idealized expectations of the sibling relationship bring disappointment. There is increase in caretaking responsibilities; they must help the firstborn accept the permanence of the newborn in the face of his or her wish to get rid of it. Problems may arise when parents transfer ambivalent attitudes toward their own siblings onto their children. No less troublesome are parental tendencies to split and to project ambivalent character attitudes onto their children. The child's oedipus complex often uses a sibling in a displacement from a parent. Siblings mutually alter the timing and quality of their psychosexual development. Libidinal development is shaped in mutual play characterized by rapid shifts from one modality and erogenous zone to another. For the older child, stages may be intensified regressively or prolonged as the younger develops; the younger child, on the other hand, may be stimulated precociously or be forced into passive roles in play. Aggression is a problem for the older child, to be dealt with by identification with the parents and the wish to be loved by them.