What Effect do Siblings have on Development - Research Paper Example

?What effect do siblings have on development? Introduction Siblings play a very important role in the moral, cognitive, intellectual and motor development of other siblings within a family (Berger, 2001). Parents are not the only primary caregivers in a child’s developmental process, siblings also act as more than secondary caregivers whom younger siblings follow and consider as role models, consciously or unconsciously. Children spend most of their time with siblings than their parents, playing pretend-plays with them, exploring the world with them, and sharing things with them. However, where there are so many merits of having siblings in family, the biggest demerit is that a child may not get chance to converse with his parents if there is elder sibling to answer all the questions. The younger one may not get the opportunity to express his feelings better than the older sibling and his thoughts may remain unexpressed. This paper tends to present a literature review regarding the role of siblings on development. Research Section Berger and Nuzzo studied in their research how older siblings influence the motor development of younger siblings. They interviewed parents of 51 sibling pairs to determine the onset of their children’s motor development. They found that in almost all the cases, it was evident that older siblings affected younger siblings’ motor development as the latter crawled and walked much sooner than their elder siblings had. In cases where older ones moved sooner, it was found that the parental resources were inadequate when the younger child was born which affected his motor development. I agree with Berger and Nuzzo because I have observed many children who come at number 2 or 3 in their sibling order and have learnt to move much sooner than their older siblings. Reid, Stahl and Striano (2010) present a similar research in which they focus on motor development of children in or without the presence of older siblings. In their longitudinal research, infants of age 5-12 months were observed playing. The researchers used Mental Bayley Scale, coded the play in terms of the production of infant goal-directed actions, and concluded that “infants with siblings produced fewer goal-directed actions at 5 months than infants without older siblings, but at 12 months they produced relatively more goal-directed actions than infants without older siblings” (p.325). I agree with the idea that as the children grow older, they start imitating their elder siblings more and more. Downey (2001) presents a different research in which he talks about family size and its effect on children’s development. He suggests that as the family size increases, the parental resources and their time and energy all get distributed so much so that each child gets a little share and not enough. So, older siblings tend to lessen down the cognitive development due to which “children with few siblings score higher on tests of cognitive skills than children with many siblings” (Downey, 2001). However, I do not totally agree because I believe that parental attention is that kind of abstract source that cannot be lessened with each coming child in the family. Parents have the ability to increase their scope of energy and attention as they deal with more kids. Azmitia and Hesser (2008) studied how older siblings and older peers affect the cognitive development of younger siblings. They conducted a pottest in which younger children got instructions from their older siblings and peers. The researchers found that “siblings are unique agents of cognitive development” (p.430) and that the children who imitated and followed their elder siblings showed higher pottest scores that those who followed their peers. They also found the older siblings more happily offered their guidance than did the peers. I agree with this because it is natural for a sibling to help another sibling more than any outsider can do. There is a very important research by Begum and Blacher (2010) who studied the influence of gender, age and family order affecting the relationship between siblings. There were 70 sibling dyads as participants of which 47 dyads consisted of one sibling with intellectual disability. They found from mother reports that typically developing adolescents showed more warmth in their relationship with the opposite sex siblings; while, intellectually disabled siblings were closer to the siblings of the same sex. Also, the younger normally developing sibling was more in power than the older normal sibling; while, birth order did not count in sibling dyads of intellectually impaired siblings. McAlister and Peterson (2006) tested a sample of 63 children twice in a longitudinal design over 14 months to examine their theory-of-mind (ToM) understanding in relation to their number of child-aged siblings (1–12 years). Age-appropriate batteries of ToM tests emphasizing false belief were given at the start of the research, when children had a mean age of 4–2 (range: 3–3 to 5–6), and at the end, when mean age was 5–4. The findings implied that the children with at least 2 siblings scored much higher on both the earlier and the later battery tests than those who had no siblings. Thus, the more the siblings, the higher the ToM score. This strengthens my belief that siblings greatly affect the cognitive development of younger siblings. Wong et al. (2009) studied what role siblings played in the identity development in adolescence and emerging adulthood. It was a three-wave longitudinal design consisting of 498 sibling dyads. They found that age and gender of siblings strongly affected sibling relationships. They reported that, “Positive relations between siblings' identity and changes in identity of respondents provided support for modeling processes between siblings” (p.673). I agree with the idea that the identity formation of older siblings influences the identity formation of younger siblings as the latter tends to follow the former. It was also concluded that gender and birth order of siblings also have an effect upon whether older siblings’ identity formation processes influence those of their younger siblings. There is a unique research presented by Chien and East (2011) who studied the influence of childbearing adolescents on younger siblings. The participants included 243 Latino younger siblings and their mothers, 121 of whom lived with a childbearing adolescent sister and 122 of whom did not. The researchers found that, “The younger siblings of childbearing adolescents have poorer school outcomes and exhibit more internalizing and externalizing problems compared to their peers without a childbearing sister.” I also agree that childbearing adolescents are a big stressor in a family which suppresses the normal psychological development of younger siblings. All of the above mentioned research relates to my research topic because these studies help me better understand the role of elder siblings in motor, cognitive and intellectual development younger siblings. Conclusion I conclude from this research that studies in past threw much light on how siblings affect each others’ development. I agree with researchers who believe that elder siblings tend to fasten up the process of motor and intellectual development of younger siblings, and I also agree with the idea that younger children tend to obey and follow their elder siblings more than peers or any significant other. However, I do not believe that parents’ attention decreases with the growing number of children, gender or age of the children. Questions raised by the research The research raises these questions: how a child without a sibling lags behind in motor or intellectual development than a child with siblings? Is having a sibling really important for better development of children? How siblings can help in moral development of younger siblings? These questions have not been addressed in past research and need to be discussed in future studies. References Azmitia, M., & Hesser, J. (2008). Why siblings are important agents of cognitive development: a comparison of siblings and peers. Child Development, 64(2), pp. 430-444. Begum, G., & Blacher, J. (2010). The siblings relationship of adolescents with and without intellectual disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 32(5), pp. 1580-1588. Berger, K.S. (2001). The Developing Person through the Life Span, (8th ed.) New York: Worth Publishers. Berger, S.E., & Nuzzo, K. (2008). Older siblings influence younger siblings’ motor development. Infant and Child Development, 17, pp. 607–615. Chien, N.C., & East, P.L. (2011). The younger siblings of childbearing adolescents: parenting in?uences on their academic and social-emotional adjustment. J Youth Adolescence, issn 0047-2891, p. 1-14. Doi: 10.1007/s10964-011-9715-x Downey, D.B. (2001). Number of siblings and intellectual development: The resource dilution explanation. American Psychologist, 56(6-7), 497-504. McAlister, A., & Peterson, C. (2006). A longitudinal study of child siblings and theory of mind development. Cognitive Development, 22(2), pp. 258-270. Reid, V., Stahl, D., & Striano, T. (2010). The presence or absence of older siblings and variation in infant goal-directed motor development. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 34(4), pp. 325-329. Wong, T.M.L., Branje, S.J.T., VanderValk, I.E., Hawk, S.T, & Meeus, W.H.J. (2010). The role of siblings in identity development in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Journal of Adolescence, 33(5), pp. 673-682. Read More