As someone who grew up with a much older brother, I always wondered what it might feel like to have a sister. The examples I had right in front of me weren’t too great, as my friends’ older or younger sisters always seemed to be causing them trouble or at least some sort of inconvenience, and yet I was always under the impression that I was losing out on something awesome. That’s why what comes next makes a lot of sense to me.
According to a recent study conducted by Laura Padilla-Walker of Brigham Young University (Utah), relationship between siblings possesses an absolutely unique quality. The research deals with the influence of siblings and parents within the family, however Padilla-Walker underlines the importance of siblings, saying that “they give kids what parents don’t”.
Here is what they did and what they came up with:
The study included 395 families with more than one child, at least one of whom was an adolescent between 10 and 14 years old. The researchers gathered a wealth of information about each family’s dynamic, then followed up one year later. Statistical analyses showed that having a sister protected adolescents from feeling lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscious and fearful. It didn’t matter whether the sister was younger or older, or how far apart the siblings were agewise.
The research says that having a brother is also good (phew!), as it also promotes caring relationships between siblings and teaches to be protective of others. Even fighting (or in research terms – conflict) is not such a bad thing, because conflict teaches kids to deal with their emotions and eventually – make up, which are good social skills to begin with. It is a total lack of affection, the lead researcher says, that is far more dangerous than conflict.
More about the research – here or in the August issue of the Journal of Family Psychology.
Meanwhile the results of a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (the project lasted a whopping 68 years) supports the idea that close sibling relationships reduce risks of depression in adulthood, and goes even further, claiming that poor and distant sibling relationship may actually lead to depression :
Even after taking into account the quality of relationship with parents, both poorer relationships with siblings during childhood and a family history of depression independently predicted both the occurrence of major depression and the frequency of use of mood-altering drugs by age 50.