The pros and cons of splitting up siblings needs to be examined from a situational point of view. I have friends who would sooner die than be separated from their siblings after a
divorce. I, on the other hand, would have paid money to get as far away from my sister as possible. My relationship with her has always been
delicate at best, and there are many reasons for that. I won't get into them now, because it isn't relevant.
The Pros
In some cases, I guess separation may make the heart grow fonder. I know in my own case, only years of being at least a thousand miles from my only sibling has enabled us to be friends in any way. It gives the separated offspring a reason to sit down and calmly discuss life when in each other's company. Most of the time. :)
Another positive aspect is that siblings living apart aren't constantly being compared to each other. I never felt like I had to live up to my sister's
accomplishments because I didn't live with her. My parents never really brought it up, either. It would have been pointless, because how was I supposed to know what to live up to if we didn't live together?
The Cons
Raising children apart from each other can be very hard. The siblings have a harder time relating to each other and keeping an open perspective of both parents.
I hated my mother, so I lived with my father.
My sister hated my father so she lived with my mother. It's very easy for a parent to poison their child's mind against their counterpart when there's nobody around to defend the absent parent. This happened in my own case, and I see it happen all the time in other divorces.
It's much worse if there's a large age difference between the children. My sister is four years older than I am, and so we didn't normally discuss the affairs of the world with any great enthusiasm to begin with. Whenever we visited, (only a few times a year, even less now, thirteen years later) we more or less made a point of not coming into contact with each other at all. She was my sister, but on various levels she was also a stranger. Although, if one child is severely
introverted to begin with, it really won't matter how close, or far apart, they eventually live.
These are the pros and cons as I experienced them during my childhood. There are many facets of my life that could be outlined here that might help to frame the story a little better, but I'm not sure if that belongs in this particular writeup. Suffice to say that my sister and I are not best friends, and we never have been. In my case, living apart was the only solution.